Future Challenges in Early Language Learning and Multilingual Education
ELLMEnet is a free international network conceived as an open space for sharing and discussing, with the purpose of consolidating the area of very early multilingual education around the world.
As a key part of our mission, we bring together researchers, practitioners, policy makers, students, and other professionals, not only through regular webinars but also through our major international events.
We have successfully celebrated three ELLME conferences, in Granada (2022 and 2024) and Greece (2025), and will soon hold our fourth edition in Gdansk (Poland).
Aims of the network:
- to encourage research and cooperation between researchers and other educational agents in the field of very early multilingual education (early childhood education, 0 to 6/7 years old approximately).
- to provide online spaces to promote debate and facilitate connections between researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders from across the globe.
- to cover issues concerning research and teacher education regarding mother tongue, heritage languages, endangered languages, foreign languages, additional languages, etc. covering school, home and community contexts.
- to encourage research that explores developments in early language policies and practices that promote justice, inclusion and social cohesion.
- to fill an existing gap in the international panorama, since, on the one hand, the network focuses concretely on early childhood, and, on the other, it aims to be international and inclusive, not giving primacy to English, but including all kinds of languages and multilingual contexts, not only formal schooling.
The network is based at the University of Granada, and is coordinated by Prof. Beatriz Cortina-Pérez (University of Granada, Spain) and Prof. Mila Schwartz (Oranim College Education, Israel).