James Cummins

Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Department at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Cummins teaches graduate courses in the Second Language Education Program. Courses that he recently taught include “Critical Pedagogy, Language and Cultural Diversity,” “Research Seminar on Second Language Literacy Education”, and "Foundations of Bilingual and Multicultural Education”.

Dr. Cummins’ research focuses on literacy development in multilingual school contexts as well as on the potential roles of technology in promoting language and literacy development.

Dr. Cummins holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) and has been a recipient of the International Reading Association's Albert J. Harris Award (1979). He also received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the Bank Street College of Education in New York City (1997).

In recent years, he has been a co-investigator on a large-scale SSHRC-funded project entitled "From Literacy to Multiliteracies: Designing Learning Environments for Knowledge Generation within the New Economy”. He is currently involved in a project to validate the Ontario Ministry of Education's Steps to English Proficiency assessment tool. He is also conducting a research review on English Language Learners' academic trajectories.

Mª Jesús Frigols

Specialist in design and implementation of CLIL programme

María Jesús Frigols is one of the authors of the 2008 award winning book Uncovering CLIL published by Macmillan, Oxford. Having taught languages at secondary, vocational, and higher education, she has been involved with curricular development and teacher training since the 1980s. Since 2000, Frigols has collaborated with an international team exploring ways in which to improve and upgrade education through CLIL. Since then, she has been involved with the development of good CLIL practice in Spain and through European Union initiatives in a range of countries. She is currently in an advisory capacity at the Board of Education in Valencia, Spain. She acts in consultancy roles in the public and private sectors, is closely linked to the design and evaluation of European development work, and from 2007-2010 is expert coordinator of CLIL-CD in the 3rd medium programme of the European Centre for Modern Languages in Austria.

Fred Genesee

Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Fred Genesee is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at McGill University, Montreal, where he has worked since 1978. He has carried out research on some of the first immersion programs implemented in Canada and has helped educators around the world develop their own immersion programs. His work has sought to debunk persistent myths surrounding bilingualism and second language acquisition in early childhood.

Dr. Genesee’s current research interests include language acquisition in preschool bilingual children, internationally adopted children, and the language and academic development of at-risk students attending bilingual programs.

Dr. Genesee is the author of numerous professional and scientific research reports and books, including Learning Through Two Languages: Studies of Immersion and Bilingual Education (1987), Educating Second Language Children (1994), Classroom Based Evaluation in Second Language Education (1996), Beyond Bilingualism: Multilingualism and Multilingual Education (1998), Dual Language Instruction: A Handbook for Enriched Education (2000), Trends in Bilingual Acquisition (2000), and Dual Language Development and Disorders (2004).

He has served as a consultant on second/foreign language and bilingual education in countries around the world, including Japan, Spain, Germany, Estonia, Hong Kong, Latvia, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, and Italy.

Xavier Gisbert

Director General for Quality Improvement in Teaching of the Department of Education of the Madrid Regional Government, Spain.

Xavier Gisbert Da Cruz has a degree in French Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid and is Professor of French. He has carried out most of his teaching career in different secondary education schools in Andalucía and Madrid. From 1997 to 2000 he held posts in the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture such as technical advisor, counselor and Head of the Cabinet of the General Secretary of Education. After a short period in the National Institute for Assesment and Quality of the Education System (INECSE), he was appointed Counselor of Education in the Spanish Embassy of London and Dublin, post that he held until 2004. He later headed the Regional Centre of Innovation and Training “Las Acacias” and, since 2007, he is Director General for Quality Improvement in Teaching of the Department of Education of the Madrid Regional Government.

During his stay in the United Kingdom, he was a member of the “International Learning and Research Centre Advisory Committee” and the “MFL Consultative Committee for ITT”. He has directed and taught in-training courses, many of them related with language teaching and learning. He has also directed publications and studies such as“Estrategia Nacional de Lenguas para Inglaterra”, “Reforma Educativa en Inglaterra. Etapa 14-19”, “La Dirección de los Centros Escolares”, “Institutos Especializados en Inglaterra”, “El País de Gales. Sistema Educativo”, “Irlanda del Norte. Sistema Educativo”. Xavier Gisbert has published different articles concerning education and his experience in both the national and international field is outstanding.

David Marsh

Especialist in Language and Communication at UNICOM, Continuing Education Centre, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

David Marsh has worked on multilingualism & bilingual education since the 1980s. He was part of the team which conducted groundwork leading to the launch of the term Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in 1994. In 2002, he coordinated the production of CLIL - The European Dimension: Actions, Trends and Foresight Potential for the European Commission (DG EAC). This overview of the situation in Europe was used in the compilation of the 2004-2006 EC Action Plan: Promoting Language Learning & Linguistic Diversity.

Born in Australia, educated in the UK and now based in Finland, he has extensive experience in teacher development, capacity-building, research and consultancy in a range of different countries in Africa, Europe and Asia. In 2004 he produced Special Educational Needs in Europe - The Teaching and Learning of Languages: Insights & Innovation for the European Commission (DG EAC). From 2005-2007 he has managed various international research and development assignments on education and curricular developments.

During 2008-2009 he coordinated an international research team (on behalf of the European Commission) examining the evidence available concerning the impact of multilingualism on the brain. Up to 2010, he acts as Strategic Director for CCN (Europe), and handles various educational development and research initiatives in the European Union & East Asia.

He was awarded a joint commendation by the English Speaking Union in 2008 for publishing work on CLIL, and a 2009 Estonian Education Sciences Award for Applied Didactics. He has published widely and is co-author of Uncovering CLIL (Macmillan 2008) and a forthcoming 2010 book on Content and Language Integrated Learning (Cambridge University Press).

He is now working on linkage between evidence of the impact of languages on the brain and how this links to the use of specific language learning methodologies, alongside the development of a Macro Framework for CLIL Teacher Education (European Centre for Modern Languages, Council of Europe).