In this document, we introduce you to the potential and practicalities of using linguistic landscapes (LLs) in education and provide suggestions for integrating LLs in educational settings and in teacher education programmes. Although LLs have been studied for some time now – from inter alia linguistic and political perspectives – classroom studies have been relatively scarce. Knowing that LLs can enhance learning and reflection, we wondered why little pedagogical and didactic attention had been paid to them. Identifying this gap, as well as the desire to address it, was the starting point of the LoCALL project. LoCALL, which stands for Local Linguistic Landscapes for Global Education in the School Context, was an Erasmus+ project that ran from 01.09.2019 to 31.08.2022. The aim of the project was to acknowledge the value of contemporary diversity in language education by mapping local LLs and discussing them collaboratively and comparatively at an international level. A further aim was to tackle the formative needs of teachers to deal with (linguistic) diversity in language education. The approach taken by LoCALL was to propose the LL as an authentic and multilingual resource in overcoming those needs. The LoCALL team comprised researchers and teachers in the cities of Aveiro, Barcelona, Groningen, Hamburg and Strasbourg.

Co-funded by the Eramus+ Programme of the European Union (Project ID 2019-1-DE03-KA201-060024)