Interest In Language Education Research Articles

Creating early language education affordances in two pre-primary education classrooms

Recently, interest in language education in the early childhood education context has increased in research, curricula, and practice. This study contributes to this field by examining what kind of early language education (ELE) affordances are provided in Finland in two pre-primary classrooms, with two teachers, one using English and one using Swedish as a target language in the classroom. The data consist of video recordings of teaching, observation notes, and interviews with the teachers. The analysis using qualitative reflexive thematic analysis is informed by van Lier’s (2004) and Aronin and Singleton’s (2012) theorisation of affordances. The findings suggest that material affordances included using songs, stories, and pictures. Pedagogically, the teachers combined other curriculum contents with ELE and both shared the objective of implementing playful and action-based ELE, although neither teacher actively collaborated with their team of educators in planning or implementing ELE in practice. The social affordances provided for children by the teachers included promoting a positive atmosphere, pedagogical translanguaging through the teachers’ own use of languages, and creating opportunities for the children to become familiar with and learn the target language. The teachers also enabled social affordances produced by the children in form of their active participation, sharing ideas, and inventing novel ways to approach language education and peer collaboration. The findings offer insights into practices in ELE, the importance of varying ELE affordances for children’s learning and the value of integrating pedagogical translanguaging with whole-day pedagogy.

Creating Social Justice Instructional Templates: Frameworks, Process, and Lessons Learned

Although social justice and related critical pedagogies are rapidly growing areas of interest in language education, instructional materials for use across languages and levels and published as free and adaptable Open Educational Resources (OERs) are lacking. The purpose of this article is to describe the frameworks, process, and lessons learned related to the creation of three instructional planning templates that support social justice in language education and scaffold implementation of multiliteracies and social justice pedagogies. After defining social justice, the article summarizes the frameworks that inform the instructional templates, describes the process of creating, piloting, and revising the templates, and identifies the affordances and constraints discovered through this process.

English primary teacher agency in implementing teaching methods in response to language policy reform: a Vietnamese case study

ABSTRACT Teacher agency has become a growing research interest in language education, especially at the critical juncture of widespread globalisation, when many nations including Vietnam, the context of the study, have promulgated a new language policy to respond to this transformation. However, teacher agency remains under-examined despite a small number of recent studies. In response to the paucity in the current LP literature, this qualitative case study, grounded in positioning theory, aims to explore how English teachers exercise their agency in response to the policy under prescribed contextual conditions. Data were collected from multiple sources including in-depth interviews, classroom observations, and documents. The findings showed that teachers were positioned (by the policy and their institutions) as ‘mere’ policy implementers who were expected to strictly follow the mandates and instructions transferred to them. Their implementation was regularly supervised and inspected by their stakeholders (including Department of Education and Training, Bureau of Education and Training, and school leaders). However, in the classroom context, the teachers attempted to adapt the policy mandates according to their interpretations, preferences, choices, and current teaching conditions. The study also proposes implications for policy makers, educational managers and school leaders to facilitate teachers’ active roles in reform implementation.

Struggling for Change in Chilean EFL Teacher Education

We here report on the processes of designing and trying to implement curriculum innovations in English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher education in Chile. This curriculum innovation project involved academics from six universities where problems such as a divorce between training in English linguistics and education, lack of language achievement standards and students’ low scores in international exams were found to be common to all six EFL teacher education programs. All of this amidst a general opinion (shared by parents, teachers, politicians, etc.) that Chile is immersed in an educational crisis without any easy solution. In this context an urgent need arises for an innovative and very creative design to change the curricula at universities so that the country can raise the quality in foreign language education. The aim is for language education to have a real impact in the school communities. Having Critical Pedagogy as one of the main supporting models, this design we report on is based on the idea that the traditional curriculum is a pedagogy that transmits inflexible social truths; consequently, this proposal incorporates participatory and reflective instructional activities, such as situated and transformed practice and critical framing. This innovative curriculum also includes on-going education, inviting classroom teachers to be part of Methodology classes, Reflection Workshops, early Teaching Practice, and Mentoring as a key practice in creating and consolidating communities of interest in language education.

K–12 Language Teacher Preparation: Problems and Possibilities

The article discusses the training of language teachers who work in grades K-12 in the U.S. It is noted that there is growing interest in language education at these grade levels as a result of globalization and competitiveness. The degree requirements and courses that college students are expected to take are explained in terms of the education methodology and language classes they must take to become language teachers. Other topics include teachers wishing to get an English as a second language (ESL) teacher certification, the pedagogical content of teacher education programs, teaching methods, and language and culture.