Reimagining
Over the past year, international school teachers, leaders and partner organizations from around the world have gathered to reconnect in person. The prevailing discourse has focused on transformation: the species-wide disruption of the pandemic, a long-overdue commitment to DEIJ and the urgency of global challenges like climate change. Independent and international schools are changing, evolving and transforming. Looking towards the future rather than the past, teachers and students are navigating more multilingual, multimodal and personalized learning environments – and reimagining what school can be.
I am excited to share that we are also reimagining how we serve international schools. After 10 years, the WIDA International School Consortium, a global network of schools committed to equity for multilingual learners, will transition to a new research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Multilingual Learning Research Center (MLRC) will provide a space for shared inquiry through research, evaluation and development. Looking forward to the next 10 years, we will investigate important questions related to multilingual teaching and learning. Leveraging the power of a global network, the MLRC will consider problems of practice faced by educators around the world and offer schools opportunities for participatory action research.
In the last decade, we have co-constructed relational, reciprocal and evidence-based learning experiences together with educators around the world. UW-Madison looks forward to contributing to the ongoing research: helping us both harvest and harness innovation across the global education community, creating more equitable schools and advancing learning together.
As we prepare to launch this new research center, we will share more details in the coming months.
We look forward to you joining us on this journey,
Jon Nordmeyer, WIDA International Programs director
