Roundtable

This roundtable will be a chance to discuss matters that have arisen during the conference with Janice Bland and Sunny Lau, partners in the ELLiL project, and the keynote speakers Frank Serafini and Jena Habegger-Conti, while Stephen Krashen will join via Zoom. We want to debate and explore issues around teacher education, in-depth learning with children’s literature, English language learning, interculturality, diversity and critical literacy. Delegates will be invited to contribute from their perspectives with perceptions from their own contexts: different countries, different school settings as well as different roles as university researchers, teachers, and student teachers.

Janice Bland is Professor of English Education, Nord University, Norway, and guest professor at Oslo Metropolitan University. Her research interests are children’s literature from picturebooks to young adult fiction, creative writing, visual and critical literacy, English language and literature pedagogy, global issues, ecocriticism, interculturality and drama. Janice leads the Nord Research Group for Children’s Literature in ELT and is editor-in-chief of the diamond open-access journal Children’s Literature in English Language Education. Among her publications are two monographs and three edited volumes; her latest book is Compelling stories for English language learners: Creativity, interculturality and critical literacy (2022) with Bloomsbury.

Sunny Man Chu Lau, Professor in the School of Education at Bishop’s University, Québec, is Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Integrated Plurilingual Teaching and Learning. She specializes in critical literacies, literature and language teaching, and related teacher education. Her research focuses on the use of plurilingual pedagogies to support language and content learning for critical engagements. She co-edited the book volume Plurilingual pedagogies: Critical and Creative Endeavors for Equitable Language in Education (Lau & Van Viegen, 2020) and is a co-editor for Critical Inquiry for Language Studies.  

Jena Habegger-Conti is Professor of English literature and culture at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL) where she researches and teaches in the field of critical multimodal literacy, with a focus on ethical awareness and intercultural learning. Her recent publications include ‘Intercultural learning and images in ELT: Exploring cultural imaginaries through photographs’ (with Cecilie W. Brown, 2022) and ‘“Where am I in the text?” Standing with refugees in graphic narratives’, Children’s Literature in English Language Education 9.2. (2021). She leads the HVL research group Researching Teacher Education, Language and Literature (RETELL) and she has recently been appointed as Director of the Norwegian Study Centre at the University of York, UK, 2023-25.

Frank Serafini is a Professor of Literacy Education and Children’s Literature at Arizona State University. Frank has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in the field of literacy education, multimodality, and children’s literature. His newest book entitled Beyond the Visual: An Introduction to Researching Multimodal Phenomena was published in 2022. Frank has garnered numerous awards for his teaching and research including the Distinguished Professor of Children’s Literature from the International Literacy Association, the Dina Feitelstein Research Award from the International Literacy Association, and the Distinguished Educator Award from the International Visual Literacy Association. Frank’s current research projects include visual and multimodal research designs, the history of picturebooks, and the complex relationship of words and images in children’s literature.

Stephen Krashen is Professor Emeritus at the Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California. He has published near 600 papers and books (mostly papers) on second language acquisition and literacy (but explains that he has been doing this for nearly 60 years). Many of his papers and books are available for free download at sdkrashen.com. He was the 1977 incline bench press champion of Venice Beach, California. Stephen’s The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research (2004, 2nd edn) has been a classic for more than 20 years on the topic of students’ access to books and literacy education. Stephen will join the Roundtable by Zoom link.