Móðurmál organised its 5th annual conference on 25th and 26th August 2017. This time, the main theme was the comparison of mother tongue instruction in Sweden, Canada/Alberta, and Iceland. Two professionals were invited from the International and Heritage Languages Association in Edmonton, Alberta, and one from the Mother Tongue Center in Lund, Sweden. Dr. Josephine Pallard and Dr. Trudie Aberdeen introduced the Albertan model of heritage language education, its structure, and accreditation process which enables the students of heritage language school to collect credits for their further university studies. Silvia Cordero introduced the Swedish practice in which mother tongue instruction is provided by a regional authority and mother tongue classes take place in schools after school hours.
The conference was preceded by a meeting with City and State representatives at the office of the School and Leisure Department of the City of Reykjavík, in which the experts from Edmonton and Lund shared their knowledge about their subsequent models of provision of mother tongue instruction to bilingual children, and the accreditation processes.
At the conference, mother tongue teachers of Móðurmál presented the good practice, research, and projects that took place in the past school year, and the richness and the quality of their work were evident. The conference was finished with a workshop on project based heritage language teaching, given by Dr. Aberdeen. Parallelly with the conference, two author reading sessions took place. The first one was organized by the society Czech in Iceland who invited the author of children´s historical adventure books Veronika Válková. The second session took place at the end of the conference and Abenda Darko from the Ghanaian Móðurmál group read from her new book Folktales from Ghana.
Among guests were mother tongue teachers, school teachers, employees of the City of Reykjavík and researchers from the University of Iceland. The conference took place in Veröld, the house of Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, in collaboration with Vigdís International Centre for Multilingualism and Multicultural Understanding; wonderful refreshments were provided by Nice Catering Service.
The annual Móðurmál conference not only provides further professional training to teachers and creates a platform for meetings and discussions of interested participants from different professional backgrounds, but it also gives an excellent opportunity to community leaders, teachers, and artists to present their work.
Móðurmál thanks to the International and Heritage Languages Association in Edmonton, the Association of Friends of the Polish School in Reykjavík, Vigdís International Centre for Multilingualism and Intercultural Understanding, and the Department of Education and Youth of the City of Reykjavík for the financial and other support.
