Celebrating Our Achievement at the Awards Ceremony
Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne
We are thrilled to announce our Multilingual Education Teaching Team (A/Prof Julie Choi, Dr Elena Pirovano, Dr Elahe Shakshi Dastgahian, Dr Shu Ohki, Dr Tharanga Koralage, Melissa Slamet) has received the Faculty of Education Teaching Excellence and Innovation Award. This prestigious award is the culmination of a decade of dedication to developing the subject Multilingual Practices in Global Times, which is designed with Arts-Rich Translanguaging Pedagogies principles in mind. Year after year, student feedback has highlighted how transformative this subject has been, underscoring its impact on both personal and academic levels.
Although I (Julie) wasn’t able to attend last night’s awards ceremony, I am thrilled to share that our representative, Dr Tharanga Kalehe Pandi Koralage, delivered a speech with eloquence and passion. Tharanga’s full speech encapsulates what makes this subject so special and why it continues to hold such significance for both staff and students. I am sharing it here to gain a deeper understanding of our shared journey.
The speech delivered in the Faculty of Education Excellence Awards Night
“I’m honored to accept this award on behalf of Associate Professor Julie Choi and The Multilingual Education Teaching Team. While some of our team members are here with us tonight, others couldn’t join us, so I’m sharing words from Julie that represent all of us and the collaborative work we’ve accomplished together.
What we’ve achieved as a team represents a dream born from our own journeys as transnational individuals who’ve lived between languages, shuttled between cultures, and navigated the complex terrain of learning in English while carrying the rich tapestry of our multilingual worlds within us.
Accomplishing higher education in one language while moving fluidly between worlds, norms, and academic expectations is an extraordinary feat—yet so many of our multilingual learners have grown up with deficit discourses that ignore, silence, and devalue their incredible ways of knowing. Nowhere in traditional education are we having conversations about what they possess: multilingual resources that are valuable assets for learning and development.
Over the past decade, we’ve had the enormous privilege of helping students see themselves differently – transforming their view from linguistic burden to linguistic brilliance. We’ve shown them they are the experts of their own rich, multilingual experiences through an approach we call arts-rich translanguaging pedagogy.
In a world where multilingualism is the norm—not the exception—and where the position of English is shifting such that knowing only English increasingly puts you at a disadvantage, we’re not just teaching a subject, we’re helping students realise their full potential that has been systematically undervalued for far too long.
We’re deeply grateful to have a space at the University of Melbourne, and the faculty has been incredibly supportive of our efforts in this regard.”
A heartfelt thank you to Tharanga for representing us so wonderfully. Go Team Multilingual Practices in Global Times! Your hard work and commitment continue to inspire us all.
