Today, European societies experience increasing linguistic heterogeneity and the instantaneous flow of information enabled by the internet. It is almost platitudinous to state that the ‘new’ media landscape of Web 2.0 provides opportunities for learning and communication that did not exist, say, a decade ago. Open-source, interactive, agentive and multimodal platforms (e.g. blogs, wikis and social media) are utilised on ever-smaller and portable devices (smartphones and tablets) across formal and informal educational settings. Yet, deterministic views of new technologies as a panacea for language learning should be avoided. Rather, the ways in which social agents interact with and respond to those technologies impacts learning. Educational research therefore requires a sociotechnical approach to determine the impacts of digital tools on (multilingual) learning. Accordingly, we ask: how are agents of language education equipped to utilise the affordances of digital media and technologies?

We respond to this question via critical consideration of different settings and agents, in particular parents and teachers. This allows us to build on educational research which has long considered multilingualism in classrooms (e.g. Gogolin, 1994; Garcia & Baker, 1995; Schechter & Cummins, 2003) by adding a ‘digital’ dimension to this field. Furthermore, we respond to current digitalisation trends in educational policy across Europe. For instance, the European Commission’s Digital Action Plan (2018) states that “digital technology enriches learning in a variety of ways and offers learning opportunities, which must be accessible to all.” Yet it remains unclear how this new environment may (or may not) specifically enrich the learning experiences of young multilinguals, many of whose languages are excluded from or hold marginal positions in national education systems. How are they supported by those responsible for guiding their learning and linguistic development?

The symposium begins where our educational and linguistic foundations begin: the family (cf. Holdoway, 1979). Despite the significance of family to language development and educational success, it remains an under-researched context for digital learning. The study presented here examines digital practices among heritage language families in the UK with children of primary school age. Paper 2 then moves to the formal classroom, specifically to chemistry lessons for refugee pupils in Germany. Multilingualism in regular subject lessons is an area of increasing research interest (e.g. Redder et al., 2018), while findings on the inclusion of refugees in education systems are just now appearing since the current refugee crisis began. This paper will report on an intervention study with pre-service teachers to integrate tablets into the classroom in order to support newly-arrived pupils The final paper then considers technology itself, namely the development of a multilingual app and game for the professionalisation of primary school pre- and in-service teachers for multilingual education, representing the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and the Basque Country.

We address a range of settings in this symposium in order to a) capture multilingualism in its many manifestations in Europe; b) provide a nuanced picture of digital learning and its interaction with traditional structures; c) investigate the attitudes and experiences of social agents vis-à-vis multilingual digital learning. Taken altogether, the symposium takes a socio-technical approach to multilingual learning with digital tools – i.e. how humans and the structures of society interact with, adapt and develop digital technologies. By considering both the needs of users and the affordances of technology itself, we can document how agents of learning respond to digital tools and how this may impact multilingual learning in turn.

While our papers and presenters represent different national and regional contexts, the settings considered in this symposium (family-classroom-technology) and the issues that emerge are not geographically limited but are relevant across all European societies.

European Commission (2018). Digital Action Plan. Brussels: European Commission. García, O. & Baker, C. (eds.) (1995). Policy and Practice in Bilingual Education. Extending the Foundations. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters. Gogolin, I. (1994). Der monolinguale Habitus der multilingualen Schule. Münster/New York: Waxmann. Holdoway, D. (1979). The Foundations of Literacy. Toronto: Ashton Scholastic. Redder, A. et al. (eds.) (2018). Mehrsprachiges Handeln im Mathematikunterricht. Münster: Waxmann. Schecter, S. & Cummins, J. (eds.) (2003). Multilingual education in practice: Using diversity as a resource. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.