MULTIK stands for "Multilingualism and Translanguaging in Education with Support from Artificial Intelligence". MULTIK is a research and development project at Leibniz University Hanover that explores how multilingualism and artificial intelligence (AI) can be integrated into teaching and teacher education in ways that are pedagogically sound, reflective, and equitable.

At the center of MULTIK are teachers and pre-service teachers, as well as their:

• attitudes toward multilingualism and AI,
• knowledge of didactic, media-pedagogical, and ethical foundations,
• skills and practices in concrete classroom contexts.

The aim of the project is to empirically investigate and practically test how AI can contribute to:

• making linguistic diversity visible,
• developing the language of education,
• promoting participation and educational equity,

and to prepare teachers for the professional use of AI in educational settings.

The AI Toolbox is a central practical and knowledge-transfer output of the MULTIK project.

It is a digital, modular teaching and learning platform that provides teachers and pre-service teachers with concrete, tested, and critically reflected ways of using AI in multilingualism-sensitive teaching.

The AI Toolbox includes, among other features:

• didactically designed teaching examples involving AI
• multilingual task formats (e.g., language comparison, language mediation, scaffolding)
• reflection prompts addressing AI outputs, bias, language, and power
• guidelines for the responsible and privacy-sensitive use of AI.

The focus is not on the tool itself, but on its educational value.

AI is understood as a tool for support, reflection, and learning - not as a substitute for learning, teaching, or critical thinking.

Ulrich Stitzinger has been working in the Department of Speech-Language Therapy and Inclusive Education at Leibniz University Hannover since 2012, initially as a research associate and, since October 2022, as the Head of the Department. He studied social work, visual communication, and special education, completing both the first and second state examinations. After his teacher training program, he worked as a special education teacher for several years. Concurrently, he served as a lecturer for speech-language support at the Teacher Training Seminar Hannover for Special Education and at the Institute of Special Education at Leibniz University Hannover.

For several years, he has coordinated the training program for educational professionals in ECEC institutions in Hannover, focusing on speech-language support. He also serves as the federal and state representative for university affairs and professional development within the German Society for Speech-Language Therapy and Education.

From 2020 to 2022, he held interim professorships in inclusion with a focus on language and communication at the University of Paderborn, and in inclusive education with a focus on language at the University of Bremen.

In addition to directing the master’s program for special education teachers specializing in speech and language, his current research focuses on multilingualism and translanguaging supported by artificial intelligence, as well as the influence of personal and educational contextual factors on child language acquisition.

In the field of school inclusion, he also investigates linguistic and communicative support measures for children and adolescents and examines interprofessional collaboration among teachers. Furthermore, he is involved in developing diagnostic procedures to assess the (written) language skills of children in preschool and primary education.

Gianni Triantis is a teacher of English, computer science, and Spanish, as well as an author and trainer specialising in foreign language education, multilingualism, and digital learning.

For many years, he has developed practice-oriented teaching concepts that treat linguistic diversity as a resource and integrate digital and AI-supported tools in a pedagogically reflective way.

As an author, he publishes articles and teaching materials on multilingual-sensitive foreign language teaching, language awareness, digitally supported task formats, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence in the classroom.

In addition, he works as a trainer with teachers from various school types and designs workshops, in-school training programmes, and professional development formats on topics such as multilingualism, digitalisation, AI in the classroom, and contemporary foreign language teaching.

Within the MULTIK project - Multilingualism and Translanguaging in Education with the Support of Artificial Intelligence - Gianni Triantis serves as a technical advisor on behalf of Department 24 of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs. In this role, he contributes to the development of multilingualism-promoting and AI-supported teaching concepts for schools in Lower Saxony and supports the transfer between classroom practice and educational policy.