As Qatar Foundation (QF) marked the International Day of Education 2026, experts shared insights on why multilingual education matters and how learning can build bridges between the past and the future, through the Thunai Conference.
One of a series of events and platforms organised by QF’s Pre-University Education to celebrate a day that reinforces how education is everyone’s right and responsibility, the conference at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel explored the importance of bilingual models of education that have a global outlook while remaining rooted in cultural and linguistic identity.
Among the speakers was cognitive psychology and multilingualism expert Prof Roberto Filippi of UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, who is the director of the leading London-based university’s Multilanguage and Cognition Lab. His session examined the question of what the outcome of seeing student languages as a resource for designing how they learn, rather than a challenge in need of managing, can be.
In his talk, ‘Co-Creating Multilingual Futures: Learning to Thrive in a Rapidly Changing World’, Prof Filippi explained that multilingualism supports flexible thinking and attentiveness, meaning that, in a school environment, it can increase students’ sense of participation, wellbeing, achievement, and belonging.
“The real-life implications of being raised in a multilingual environment concern learning, because children have more efficient attention control,” said Prof Filippi. “Multilingualism can have a long-lasting effect on our cognition. The benefits can be not only linguistic, but also non-linguistic.
“Multilingualism is not an exception; it is the norm everywhere in the world.”
However, Prof Filippi explained that potentially harmful misconceptions about multilingualism persist, saying: “Parents can be discouraged to raise their children as multilingual on the assumption that it can confuse the brain and delay development.
“These misconceptions don’t just have a negative impact on education; they have a negative impact on culture, identity, confidence, family bonds, communication within the extended family, and future career development. Multilingualism is not a risk; it’s an investment.”
In a session titled ‘Languages Matter: Guidance and Insights from the Gulf States Report on Multilingual Education’, Farida Aboudan, head of education at Unesco’s Regional Office for the Gulf States, outlined findings that examine the Gulf region’s unique linguistic landscape, and policies and practices that can help to meet the dual challenge of safeguarding the Arabic language as a cultural cornerstone while ensuring students also have proficiency in other languages.
“Despite the world being home to nearly 7,000 spoken and signed languages, around 260mn students are still learning in a language they do not understand,” said Aboudan. “Only a very limited number of languages are used as languages of instruction globally, meaning that less than 10% of the world’s linguistic diversity is reflected in our education systems."
The conference also saw representatives from QF’s BilAraby initiative – which promotes and perpetuates the Arabic language by amplifying the global reach of ideas and stories from across the Arabic-speaking world – lead a session on the theme of ‘Rooted Identity, Evolving Education’, which opened by addressing the question of how contemporary education can draw on its cultural, linguistic, and human roots to shape an identity that preserves collective memory without confining it to a static past.
Dr Said Ismail, professor of genomics at QF’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University, said: “Some have neglected history and heritage, blaming those who remain stuck in the past. This is what I mean by ‘unfair correction.’
“Do not live in the past and forget the present, nor neglect history or blame those who glorify it. Every tree has roots that it cannot sever and without which it cannot live. Therefore, we must always remember what we did in our past.”
Fidaa al-Din Yahya, a Yemeni social media influencer, highlighted the importance of identity in early childhood by saying: “A child discovers their identity and answers the question ‘Who am I?’ during their early years. A person who doesn’t have an answer to this question is easily given an answer from the outside.”
