A brief CV

Karen Reekmans is a teacher trainer-researcher at the PXL University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hasselt (BE) for the projects Erasmus+ KA2 ArtiCULan and taalCULTuur. She teaches didactics for early foreign language education in multilingual primary and preschool education. She won the European Language Label Award in September 2019.

Education through the arts for inclusive learning in multilingual classrooms

In this presentation, we will present the ArtiCULan approach to sustain responsive and stimulating teacher-child interactions through interdisciplinary artistic workshops.  ArtiCULan – Art, Time, Culture and Language – is an Erasmus+ KA201 project aiming to offer to all children, including multilingual and refugee, the opportunity to be involved in meaningful and rich artistic experiences. The team will present the Assessment Tool, a tool designed to offer a set of principles and indicators to support teachers in the design, observation and reflection upon the most relevant features underlying creative, expressive and meaningful experiences. We will discuss the value of arts education for qualitative interactions in multilingual classrooms and refugee classes. Throughout the presentation, we will share videos and examples illustrating key features of the workshops. We will also share lessons learnt throughout our project, welcoming participants’ ideas and suggestions.

ArtiCULan was created by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts PXL Hasselt (Belgium), the University of Porto (Portugal), the Istanbul University – Cerrahpaşa (Turkey) and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain). This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.