The linguistic and cultural diversity in many areas of Europe, consequence of certain sociodemographic and sociopolitical phenomena, has transformed urban areas into multilingual and multicultural spaces where people with very diverse socioeconomic situations, life and educational trajectories and ways of communicating coexist. As a result, schools and high schools have experienced changes in the student composition which require a move from understanding the language education of children and youth to proposing changes transforming their education into a plurilingual one. In recent years, there has been a push to transform previously monolingually framed education policies and practices into multilingual ones (Conteh & Meier, 2014). The proposal to reconsider the framework for the language education of children and youth has been reflected at a European level -through recommendations (e.g. European Comission, 2019)- and at the regional level (e.g. Generalitat de Catalunya, 2017, 2018, in the case of Catalonia, Spain). Despite of this, research and official reports provide evidence that both educational institutions and the training of future educational agents regarding providing plurilingual, language sensitive and socially just education still leave much to be desired (e.g. Birello, Llompart & Moore, 2021) . Thus, efforts must be put into reconsidering educational practices and programs with regards to future educators’ preparedness for inclusion in multilingual and multicultural contexts, in line with the detected need for linguistically and sensitive teachers and other educational agents (Alisaari et al., 2019; Lucas & Villegas, 2013).

The CULT project (Constructing a Collaborative Understanding of Learning and Teaching for the XXI century, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, PID2020-115446RJ-I00) aims at responding to this need by developing a dialogue between teacher educators and future educational agents (teachers, pedagogues and social educators), a non-formal education program already carrying out successful plurilingual teaching with migrant origin families (AFEX-AFFM program, Casa Asia) and a Service-Learning office. The objective of the project is to offer a new understanding of plurilingual education and inclusion in the development of future educators, as well as providing grounds for mutual growth towards a more equitable education and social life.

The project follows a collaborative and participatory action research (Stetsenko, 2014) and ethnographic methodology (Lassiter, 2014) -which situates children and youth as co-researchers-, and incorporates participation in Service-Learning. Over the three years of the project (2021-2024) an empirical analysis of the proposed collaboration will be completed through observations, the collection of interactional data and the development of workshops. From these, a collaborative understanding of and training for linguistic diversity and inclusion in language teaching and learning will be constructed. In this presentation, we will present and analyze data collected during the first year based on the understanding of the functioning of the collaboration and the interaction of the participants: future educators, AFEX-AFFM program facilitators and children and youth volunteers. Specifically, we will analyze the collaborative construction of the sessions and the understanding of plurilingual teaching and learning between the facilitators of the AFEX-AFFM program - who are young people with a migrant and diverse personal trajectory - and the future educational agents. Following the premises of conversation analysis and critical discourse analysis, we will analyze group discussions, training sessions and the collaborative preparation and development of the AFEX-AFFM sessions.

Our analysis will contribute to understanding how this multi-dimensional, multi-directional and multicultural learning space is constructed and how it helps to connect with and redefine existing Initial Teacher Education proposals and to promote more inclusive and linguistically sensitive training for teachers, pedagogues and social educators. Moreover, our analysis will focus on the identity co-construction of future educational agents and AFEX-AFFM facilitators as agents in developing a plurilingual and inclusive teaching and learning for the 21st century. All in all, the results of the analysis will provide ideas regarding the desired inclusive education in Catalonia but but also in other European contexts.

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