On March 21, the first work meeting of AMuSE took place at EURAC in Bolzano. All the international partners of the team were represented by their leading researchers in the project: Esta Sikkal (University of Tartu), Elisabeth Furch and Thomas Bauer (University of Teacher Education Vienna), Basil Schader (Zurich University of Teacher Education), Tore Otterup (University of Gothenburg), and Jochen Rehbein (METU Ankara) as well as the external consultant Bernard Dumont (France) and Marie Leroy and Alexander Onysko of the host institution.

The day was devoted to discussions on the work progress of the project team and on the diverse contexts for researching the representation of multilingualism in schools of the participating countries. Jochen Rehbein provided an account of the difficulties in implementing research on Kurdish and other regional languages in Turkey due to prevalent socio-political attitudes. Esta Sikkal referred to bilingual schools using Russian and Estonian in Estonia; Tore Otterup mentioned the possibility to contribute with sketching the situation of the Saami in Sweden; Elisabeth Furch shared first experiences and problems that the Austrian team came across when intending to visit schools in Austria, and the researchers of EURAC added their first impressions gained from interviews and school visits in Ladin speaking valleys. Basil Schader presented the structure and first contents of a database that collects examples of good practice on multilingual education. The database is intended as a reference tool for educators, teachers, and future teachers and will be made freely available online in the course of the project. Joint work on these aims of research as well as exchange of methodologies on data collection in multilingual classrooms constituted further topics of the work meeting. In order to promote such discussions and facilitate the exchange of information, the team of EURAC presented a newly adapted platform that will be used by the team members for these purposes. Furthermore, the internal discussion on the promotion of multilingualism in schools will be taken as a starting point to involve the target groups of AMuSE (policy makers, heads of school, teachers) in open discussions on the topic. This is also the purpose of the three international conferences and expert meetings of AMuSE, and the planning of these events brought the work meeting to a close. The first event to be held in September at the University of Teacher Education in Vienna (lead organizers Elisabeth Furch and Thomas Bauer) promises engaging and insightful discussions on the topic of multilingualism in schools and for teacher education. Check out “Conferences” soon to find out more about this event.