Читать книгу English in Inclusive Multilingual Preschools - Kirsten Birsak de Jersey - Страница 24

The current state of research on language teacher education for early language learning is disappointing. Publications with a title that suggests early language learning to be relevant for the study presented here often prove to be disappointing as the label young or early language learner does not always refer to the contexts of pre- and primary school children. The recently published handbook article on ‘Teaching Young Language Learners’ by Nikolov and Mihaljevic Djigunovic (2019) is a case in point: they explicitly do not consider the preschool level in their contribution (children below 6 years of age):

By young language learners, we mean that learners fall within the age range between 6 and 14, although we are aware of a growing number of programs for younger children. Lowering the start of English learning to the pre-primary age (below 6 years) is an emerging field of study; however, this age group is beyond the scope of this chapter. (p. 578)

In other words: the field of teaching young language learners is not established but in a state of still emerging. But what research on learning to teach young learners is available?

Wilden and Porsch (2017) reviewed major studies on primary English teacher education in Europe and concluded not very optimistically that

there is a lack of empirical evidence of what constitutes ‘quality’ in teacher education [by referring to the most recent Eurydice report 2012]. … This research gap can be identified in general FL education, but it is especially noteworthy in the area of early FL education as this is a relatively young domain. (p. 7; italics in original)

Wilden and Porsch invited researchers who are currently investigating the professional development of primary English teachers to contribute to this volume. They explicitly say that they “decided to focus on FL education in primary schooling (i.e., approximately from the ages of 6-12 years), rather than the pre-primary sector as well” (p. 7).

The study which will be presented here addresses the area of pre-primary English teacher education which is situated in an inclusive multilingual state preschool with heterogeneous learners. To my knowledge no explicit teacher development studies have been published that educate teachers to teach English for the regular preschool as yet. As has already been critically commented in the previous chapter 4.1, empirical studies that are set in preschool contexts were exclusively conducted in bilingual immersive elementary contexts (Piske et al., 2016; Seifert, 2016). These contexts of practice do not represent learning and working conditions of regular state preschool contexts and therefore do not qualify as contexts of practice that mirror the growing heterogeneity of learners neither as regards their cultural backgrounds nor their home languages (cf. Legutke & Schart, 2016, p. 9). Therefore, the multilingual inclusive state preschool is the focus of the preschool teacher education study that will be presented here. Results from publications that are situated in more privileged preschool contexts (for example in preschools that organise learning in small groups of predominantly monolingual children or in preschools that offer extra language classes by qualified extra staff that parents pay for) can therefore not be directly transferred.

A second recently published volume on early language teacher education (Zein & Garton, 2019) was motivated by the editors’ “shared concern that teachers in many school contexts worldwide still struggle to meet the demands of early language pedagogy” (p. 3). Zein and Garton notice “a distinct lack of publications delivering insights into this focal area of interest. Research into teacher education of modern foreign language has been limited” and consequently “the knowledge base of early language teacher education” remains minimal (p. 4). On closer scrutiny the majority of the studies presented in this volume are also situated in primary language teaching and learning contexts (with the exception of one study that is situated in a bilingual CLIL1 kindergarten, that is, in a preschool that integrates content and language learning and therefore research results are not directly transferable to the preschool study presented here.

With these restrictions in mind, the following findings that have contributed to bringing about change in teachers who participated in projects which aimed to develop a language pedagogy for young learners can be summarized from these studies. As can be seen, there is a large overlap of documented experiences to what has been already reported in chapter 4.1;

 young learners’ “English language teacher education is often inadequate in preparing teachers for the realities of the primary classroom” (Garton, 2019, p. 265). Issues involve are that: “Many teachers are not trained to teach English at primary level”; training often is “very theoretical with little input on how to put it into practice” and “trainers themselves may not have a deep understanding of the approach and especially how it can be used in a YL context” (p. 266). In other words, the specific needs of young learners are not aptly addressed in teacher education;

 “transmissive and prescriptive teaching methods … still seem to be very common in YL language teacher education … leaving teachers ill-equipped for the realities of the 21st century learner-centred and communicative primary classroom. Even where more learner-centred pedagogies are introduced, … teachers still faced difficulties in changing their traditional roles during some phases of their lessons” (Garton, 2019, p. 267, 268);

 a focus of studies presented in Zein and Garton (2019) was research on “a variety of ways in which the gap between theory and practice can be successfully overcome … by introducing a more applied approach, in particular in the form of actual teaching practice. … The opportunity to teach in actual classrooms, enabled a much deeper understanding of learner-centred pedagogies” (Garton, 2019, p. 268);

 apart from classroom-based experience, also “practitioner research is … shown to be successful in bringing about change in teaching practices” for example “through collaborative action research” (Garton, 2019, p. 269);

 almost all of the studies highlight “the importance of collaboration in YL language teacher education research” (Garton, 2019, p. 271) for teacher development projects to be successful. Reported forms of collaboration include peer collaboration or collaboration between trainees and teacher educators;

 primary English teachers struggle to appropriately implement a child-appropriate methodology due to teachers’ limited language proficiency and limited pedagogical content knowledge (Wilden & Porsch, 2017).

From the limited knowledge base on early language teacher development that has been summarized in this chapter, no new insights for the set-up of the teacher development project that will be presented here can be delineated. Available studies largely confirm results from language teacher development programmes that have been presented in chapter 4.1.

In contrast to the not very prolific state of research in the area of early language teacher education there is quite a large body of research that has tried to identify the competences teachers need to gain on how to teach English as a means of communication. This will be summarized in the following two chapters. Competences will distinguish between teachers’ communicative English language competence and their pedagogical content knowledge. This survey will be used as a basis for designing the content of the teacher education project of the study that is presented here.