The Future of Education

This paper intends to present and critically discuss insights obtained from the innovative educational research project called Teaching through the Eurovision: a multimodal research project launched in 2016 in Maltese schools and later involving other schools around Europe (Newspoint, 2016).  Adopting an innovative multimodal approach (based on Kress, 2010, Jewitt, 2009 and Cremona, 2015), the project proposes Eurovision Song Contest [ESC] related material as a tool through which student-centred learning contexts may be created in situations where students might encounter particular language learning difficulties. This ESC related material includes songs, music videos, interviews, images and other online material.

The first part of the oral presentation aims to give the attendees the opportunity to participate in one of the innovative hands on multimodal tasks which is part of the Teaching through the Eurovision project. Those present for the session will have the opportunity to comment about the pedagogic effect of this activity adopting the perspective of language students and language teachers.

Later, the presentation will proceed by linking the outcomes of the first part of the discussion, with the critical analysis of actual video footage from schools in Malta and Sweden. The part of the discussion will show actual examples of the pros [i.e. the increase in motivation, variety, student participation] and cons [i.e. time challenges, vast syllabus challenge, group work issues etc] interviewed teachers suggested they encounter when implementing the research project in actual language learning contexts.