Towards Diversifying Early Language Development Research: The First Truly Global International Summer/Winter School on Language Acquisition (/L+/) 2021

Qualche tempo fa è stato pubblicato sul Journal of Cognition and Development un articolo, al quale ha contribuito anche la nostra docente Silvia Benavides Varela. La pubblicazione è nata a partire dalla International Summer School L+ sull'acquisizione del linguaggio, organizzata per la prima volta nel 2021: https://www.dpss.unipd.it/summer-school-2021/home e riproposta quest'estate https://www.lplusschool.org/about
Entrambe le edizioni della scuola sono state finanziate in parte dal bando Shaping a World Class University dell'Università degli Studi di Padova e ha avuto un grande successo, non solo perché si sono iscritti più di 900 studenti da tutto il mondo (soprattutto da zone tradizionalmente meno rappresentate in scienza), ma anche perché promuove lo spirito di inclusione che caratterizza la scienza oggi.

L'articolo, in inglese, si trova al seguente link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15248372.2023.2231083?journal Code=hcd20

Abstract:
With a long-term aim of empowering researchers everywhere to contribute to work on language development, we organized the First Truly Global /L+/ International Summer/ Winter School on Language Acquisition, a free 5-day virtual school for early career researchers. In this paper, we describe the school, our experience organizing it, and lessons learned. The school had a diverse organizer team, composed of 26 researchers (17 from under-represented areas: Subsaharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Central and South America); and a diverse volunteer team, with a total of 95 volunteers from 35 different countries, nearly half from under-represented areas. This helped world-wide Page 5 of 5 promotion of the school, leading to 958 registrations from 88 different countries, with 300 registrants (based in 63 countries, 80% from under represented areas) selected to participate in the synchronous aspects of the event. The school employed asynchronous (pre-recorded lectures, which were close-captioned) and synchronous elements (e.g., discussions to place the recorded lectures into participants' context; networking events) across three time zones. A post-school questionnaire revealed that 99% of participants enjoyed taking part in the school. Notwithstanding these positive quantitative outcomes, qualitative comments suggested we fell short in several areas, including the geographic diversity among lecturers and greater customization of contents to the participants’ contexts. Although much remains to be done to promote inclusivity in linguistic research, we hope our school will contribute to empowering researchers to investigate and publish on language acquisition in their home languages, to eventually result in more representative theories and empirical generalizations.