Symposium 2024
Fifth Symposium of Southern Ontario Universities on “Reimagining Languages and Literacies in Education”
Today’s diverse and complex societies constantly challenge scholars, practitioners, and learners to re-evaluate and re-imagine their understandings of theories and their impact on our practices. Defaulting to traditional ways of thinking, clouds our vision and can prevent us to see differently and think from multiple perspectives, something which is crucial in our changing realities. This Symposium aims to create a space for critical reflection to re-envision the education of languages and literacies in ways that promote sustainable and equitable futures.
This year’s Symposium will be the fifth Symposium of the Southern Ontario Universities. As such, it has become an anticipated event for faculties and students alike, to whom it offers a supportive setting where they can exchange, discuss and learn from each other’s recent, on-going or future research across different contexts, languages and cultures. As in the previous editions, this year too these discussions will be framed and enriched by two keynotes from two scholars, one from a local and one from an international context respectively, both operating in the languages and literacies field.
We are excited to announce that the fifth Symposium of the Southern Ontario Universities will take place October, 4-5, 2024 at Western University and we invite you to submit contributions to one of the three different strands (presentations, roundtable discussion, poster presentations) in which participants will discuss new research avenues, including:
- bi-/multi-/trans-/plurilingualism in language education
- multiliteracies and multimodalities
- teachers’ and students’ agency
- mobility, migration and inclusion
- impact of language policies
- innovation in language teaching methodologies and assessment
- artificial intelligence in language education
- language acquisition and language use
- technology-assisted language learning and teaching
- online learning and distance education
The Symposium will provide a unique opportunity for scholars (faculty members and graduate students) working in languages/literacies education to learn about each other’s work, exchange ideas, and showcase or discuss their research. It will also provide a platform to establish and expand opportunities for academic networking for future collaborations.
This fifth Symposium, hosted by Western University and jointly organized by the Center for Educational Research on Languages and Literacies (CERLL), will help further strengthen the collaborative network in languages/literacies education research across Southern Ontarian Universities that the Symposium has created over the past years. The hybrid format will ensure that the Symposium continues to reach a broader, national and international audience as was the case in the past online editions. With plenaries, presentations, roundtable discussions and poster sessions as well as social events, the Symposium will provide all participants, from Ontario and beyond, with a unique opportunity to become a part of the broader languages/literacies education academic community.
Plenary Speakers
Dr. Walcir Cardoso is a Professor of Applied Linguistics at Concordia University. He conducts research in second language acquisition within an approach that combines insights from theoretical and applied linguistics, intending to promote an effective and socially realistic pedagogy for language teaching in both traditional and computer-assisted environments. The quality of his research was recognized in 2011 when he received the Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in Foreign Language Education. In 2017, he received a UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize, a team award as a co-investigator with the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance. In 2023, his paper on the use of intelligent personal assistants was included in UNESCO’s list of the “100 Most Influential Academic Articles on Educational Robots. Dr. Cardoso has also been recognized with prestigious teaching honours, including the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (Concordia University), Professor of Merit Award (Société pour la promotion de l’enseignement de l’anglais au Québec), and Concordia’s Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching. Outside of academia, he writes about audio equipment, works as a consultant for Lexicon Branding designing and evaluating brand names, and experiences other worlds in the form of music, poetry, and cinema.
Presentation Resources
Dr. Constanza Tolosa is a Senior Lecturer in Languages Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Constanza’s research and teaching expertise is the learning and teaching of languages. Her current areas of research include the development of intercultural competencies through language education, the intersection of pedagogy and different technologies, and the use of communicative tasks in foreign language classrooms. An experienced language teacher and language teacher educator, Constanza teaches in different degrees as well as in pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes at the Faculty of Education and Social Work. Her two recent book publications are available as Open access: and .
Presentation Resources
Panel Discussion: CERLL & Plurilingual Lab
CERLL and Plurilingual Lab came together for an invited panel to talk about the role of research centres not only for research but also for the scholarly community at the respective institution. Together, Dr. Enrica Piccardo, Dr. Jim Cummins, Aisha Adebayo and Lisa Lackner from CERLL, OISE and Dr. Angelica Galante, Jon Wayne dela Cruz, and Yunjia Xie from the Plurilingual Lab, McGill University unpacked the histories, activities and educational impacts of the research centres.
Friday Session Speakers
York University
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
Vytautas Magnus University
Title:
University of Toronto Mississauga & York University
Title:
University of Zagreb
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
Western University
Title:
National Tsing Hua Universit
Title:
University of Toronto & York University
Title:
Niagara College
Title:
York University & University of Toronto & McGill University
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
Universidad de Santiago de Chile
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
Middle East University
Title:
Western University & University of Toronto
Title:
Glendon College-York University
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
Glendon College
Title:
University of Regina
Title:
McGill University
Title:
Western University
Title:
Vytautas Magnus University
Title:
University of Wollongong Australia
Title:
University of Zagreb
Title:
Dhofar University
Title:
University of Zagreb
Title:
Saturday Session Speakers
University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd
Title:
Metropolitan Autonomous University, Mexico
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
Western University
Title:
Niagara University Ontario
Title:
University of Valencia
Title:
Fanshawe College
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
York University
Title:
University of British Columbia
Title:
York University
Title:
University of Toronto
Title:
Poster Sessions
- Kiana Kishiyama:
- Sheila Batacharya:
- Jessica Ing:
- Yaseen Ali:
- Sara Pagliaro:
- Xiaoyue Chen:
- Jessica Lovett, Stéphanie Gaillard & Andrew Clark:
- Aicha Adoui:
- Geettana Srithayananthan:
- Majid Farham:
- Lingyao Shu:
- Libera Maria Lai:
- Stéphanie Gaillard & Marie Culpepper:
- Bakht Ullah & Hikmat Ullah:
- Trisha Dowling:
Roundtable Discussions
- Majid Fatahipour:
- Anastasia J. Khawaja & Kiley Marouf:
- Anna Bartosik & Kathleen Kinsella:
- Tin Yuet (Tiffany) Tam:
- S M Sanzana Rahman:
- Gabrielle Forget:
- Rob Grant:
- Stephanie Salib:
- Mahnaz Dehghantezerjani & Mahdieh Roshanbin:
- Lingzi Zhuang, Yuhan Liu & Bolun Li:
- Richard Martinez:
- Elianis Paez Concepcion:
- Yuou Sheng:
- Germaine Tondji:
Committees
- Ana García-Allén (Western University)
- Giacomo Folinazzo (Niagara College)
- Ibtissem Knouzi (York University)
- Geoff Lawrence (York University)
- Marie-Paule Lory (University of Toronto Mississauga)
- Enrica Piccardo (91ֱ)
- Gail Prasad (York University)
- Pablo Robles García (University of Toronto Mississauga)
- Barbara Schmenk (University of Waterloo)
- Shelley K. Taylor (Western University)
- Marlon Valencia (Glendon College)
- Zhaozhe Wang (University of Toronto Mississauga)
- Aisha Adebayo (91ֱ)
- Tyson P. de Moura Umberger (Western University)
- Lisa Lackner (91ֱ)
- Ana García-Allén (Western University)
- Enrica Piccardo (91ֱ)
- Shelley K. Taylor (Western University)
- Shaden Samir Attia (Western University)
- Le Chen (University of Toronto)
- Stéphanie Gaillard (Brown University)
- Mahdi Ghadamgahi (York University)
- Farzaneh Salehi Kahrizsangi (University of Ottawa)
- Michael Koslowski (91ֱ)
- Wenmin Liang (Western University)
- Kayvan Shakoury (Western University)
- Jiyoung Shin (University of Toronto Mississauga)
- Alexis Skopelitis (York University)
- Jia Wei (Western University)
Presented By
The Symposium 2024 is being presented by the Faculty of Education at Western University and the Centre for Educational Research in Languages and Literacies (CERLL) at the 91ֱ, University of Toronto. This event is a collaboration with the Department of Languages and Cultures at Western University, the Graduate Program in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics at the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics at York University, the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Waterloo, the Language Department at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and the Centre for Research in Education at Niagara College.
