1. Dip your toes into The Language & Power Podcast, which focuses on some of the language in and around COP 26 in Glasgow? https://languagepowerpodcast.org/

2. Good stuff from Dee Rutgers and colleagues at Cambridge University on how multilingual students perform compared to their monolingual peers, Multilingualism, Multilingual Identity and Academic Attainment: Evidence from Secondary Schools in England https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/students-who-self-identify-as-multilingual-perform-better-at-gcse

 Here’s the whole article (‘a bit technical’, Dee says; PDF below, nonetheless!) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15348458.2021.1986397

and here’s the website of the MEITS (Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies) project within which the research was conducted https://www.meits.org/

Another article from the Education team in Cambridge looks more specifically at the UK’s national failure to learn languages https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/facultyweb_content/news/cultivating-multilingual-identities-could-reverse-crisis

3. Here’s a short video introduction to the UNESCO Futures of Education Report: Reimagining our futures together https://youtu.be/j8aXSTN71MY and below you’ll find copies of both the full report and the executive summary.

“Our world is at a turning point. We already know that knowledge and learning are the basis for renewal and transformation. But global disparities – and a pressing need to reimagine why, how, what, where, and when we learn – mean that education is not yet fulfilling its promise to help us shape peaceful, just, and sustainable futures.”

[file x2]

4. And, finally, you don’t need to be a graduate of Sydney University to listen to the talk by Daniel Kahneman that they’re hosting at 23:00 UK time on Tuesday, 16^th November. Registration here https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xGMwGzk9RDWdEDYz7VMLCg

Kahneman’s previous book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, was a huge success worldwide. His new book, Noise, is “an exploration of systemic flaws in human judgment and offers a simple process for how people and organisations can make better decisions”. We’d all better listen to his talk, then!