Presentation

The Interuniversity Research Centre "LinE - Language in Education" aims to promote national, international, and multidisciplinary research, didactic experimentation, and dissemination collaborations on the key role that language and communication play in all the phases of teaching, such as the construction of knowledge, teacher-student and student-student interaction, assessment, with particular attention to the integration of different communication modes (linguistic, gestural, visual, musical, symbolic-mathematical, ... ) in education.

The Centre focuses on the linguistic and communicative strategies adopted in the teaching of different disciplines, both at a secondary and a tertiary level of instruction, both in the mother tongue and in foreign languages.

Since the inauguration in 2022, the LinE Centre has grown in terms of the number of its members and the extension of its scientific network, which currently includes 303 researchers from 44 different scientific-disciplinary fields, from both the social and natural sciences, from universities and research centres in numerous European and non-European countries (Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom,United States of America), divided into the 12 units coordinated by the 12 partner universities (University of Trento (Leading Partner), Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, Free University of Bolzano, Ghent University, Universität Innsbruck, University of Malta, University of Messina, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, University of Padua, University of Parma, University of Turin, University of Verona).

The main objectives of the LinE Centre are as follows:

1. build an international multidisciplinary scientific network among scholars studying the topic of language in education from a range of perspectives, such as educational linguistics, applied linguistics, language teaching, subject-specific education; 

2. promote research on the role of language in education across disciplines through the mother tongue or additional languages (FL, L2, L3, …); 

3. reflect upon the linguistic and communicative components of teaching, such as argumentative construction of academic discourse, textbooks, academic and technical report writing, multimodality, teacher-student and student-student interaction; 

4. investigate teachers’ language models across disciplines, including non-linguistic ones, at all education levels and such methodological approaches as LAC (Language Across Curricula), ICLHE (Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education), EMI (English Medium Instruction), CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), bi/multilingual education programmes, education through a minority language; 

5. raise awareness among school and university teachers concerning the role of language in education, in terms of language for general academic purposes as well as for specific purposes, and of linguistic and interactional features of in-class exchanges; 

6. reflect upon the challenges of inclusion and of the internationalization processes and dynamics (internationalization at home and abroad, and beyond Englishization) at all educational levels and across disciplines; 

7. develop resources and share best practices in teaching methodology, techniques, strategies, and models across disciplines, languages, and national education systems; 

8. share up-to-date bibliographical references, reports, and research materials on language in education on the LinE Hub website; 

9. disseminate research findings and achievements across the academic community through publications, conferences, thematic panels, workshops, summer schools, meetings among the LinE Hub branches; 

10. organize and coordinate outreach and public engagement activities for schools, families, stakeholders, general audience, such as teacher training courses, seminars, participation to science festivals or social media.