Dobrochna Futro

In her interdisciplinary PhD thesis, Dobrochna explores the possibility to use insight gained from researching how contemporary art engages with multilingualism to design new approaches to language learning and develop resources for teaching Polish language in Scottish primary schools.

Dobrochna study how works by the Polish-born artists Małgorzata Dawidek, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Monika Szydłowska create different spaces of learning through their engagement with languaging in migratory contexts and uses her findings to develop a pedagogical model that will be piloted with young learners of Polish in a Scottish primary school but will be applicable across other languages.

Polish is now, after English, the most commonly spoken language in Scottish schools and my project will result in providing teachers with resources for teaching Polish in a multilingual and multicultural context.

Dobrochna explores research into multilingualism as it is undertaken by contemporary artists and evaluates its potential for language pedagogy, test affordances of an art-centred, indigenous and multilingual investigation into multimodal and intra-modal code-switching practices of contemporary artists and examine what (and how) we can learn about multilingualism from art that combines languages with other artistic means of expression.

Dobrochna employs the concept of art practice-as-research and art-as-pedagogy and situate my research within the framework of translanguaging, migratory aesthetics, and critical indigenous pedagogy.