In a wider context of societal and professional change, it is common knowledge that the quality of the pedagogy depends, amongst other aspects, on its curriculum and contribution to the development of another kind of knowledge and skills that should enable the individual teacher to act and learn in a pluralistic, complex and uncertain world (see, for example, Byram, 1997, savoir, savoir-faire/apprendre, savoir être, savoir s’engager, savoir comprendre, or Day, 2000, about professional versatility). According to some authors (Boud, 2004; Guskey & Huberman, 1995) the emergence of new professional knowledge, its continuing development in a dialogue with the societal and educational demands, requires teachers more engaged in redefining their didactic knowledge and professional identities in a life-long learning process. In this perspective, language teachers’ professional reconfiguration over time is very much related with the different approaches of language teaching and learning (cf. Galisson, 1980, Puren, 1999), which corresponds to different discourses and conceptions of language but also changes in the pedagogical relation between teacher, learner and knowledge. In recent years, influenced by the European language policy, this evolving framework of Language Didactics has valued what has been termed as “plural approaches” (Candelier, 2005; Coste, 2001). In a teacher education context, these approaches stress the need to educate language teachers to another kind of linguistic and didactic practices, guided by principles such as plurilingualism and interculturality, the valuing of the linguistic and cultural diversity, and consequently of the individuals’ plural repertoire. These perspectives, which emphasize an education for communication and intercomprehension, point out the change in the role of the language teacher (seen as a mediator and tutor) and require language teachers with a strong professional maturity and learning awareness. In our institutional context, particularly in LALE (Open Laboratory for Foreign Language Learning, Research line “Conception and analysis of teacher education programmes”, see www2.dte.ua.pt/lale), a structure of CIDTFF (Research Centre in Didactics and Technology in Teacher Education), this panorama has led to a reflection about the Language Didactics’ curriculum as a way of rethinking our intervention and research focus, in order to develop education programmes genuinely educative. In this presentation we talk about a study (Pinho, 2008) whose aim was to understand how Language Didactics could educate future language teachers to a plurilingual education, which poses linguistic, educational and professional challenges. To attain this praxeological aim, the study elected the concept of “intercomprehension” as an organising concept of a teacher education programme, so that we could realize the concept’s educative and professional potential, namely as regards the student teachers’ images of languages, didactic knowledge and professional identity.

Methodologically, the study adopted a qualitative and mixed-methods approach in order to obtain a more insightful grasp of the situation (Bogdan and Biklen, 1994). It drew on multiple sources of date such as (i) interviews, (ii) awareness sessions, planning meetings and classroom observation (whose verbal interactions were audio and/or video-taped and later verbatim transcribed), (iii) reflective journals, (iv) lesson plans and teaching materials, (v) individual and group reports and assignments. The selected methods granted semantic validity, internal consistency and triangulation (Atkinson, 1998; Bauer, 2000). Since we were more interested in grasping the process of becoming a teacher and wanted to have access to the student teachers’ voice, the study followed a narrative approach (Punch, 1998) and “a discursive notion of the teaching ‘self’”(Beijaard et al., 2004). Conscious of the discursive alterity (Eckert-Hoff, 2003b) we looked for clues and evidence, piecing them together (Alasuutari, 1998; Ginzburg, 1989) in order to feature the student teachers’ plurilingual and intercomprehensive awareness process.

Although the research analysis was multi-dimensional, in the context of this presentation we will draw our attention particularly to one aspect of the student teachers’ development process – their professional learning awareness. In view of a changing professional knowledge base and a more complex and holistic perspective of language education, the student teachers recognised the importance of adopting a life-long learning perspective in order to sustain their professional development and identity as language teachers engaged with plurilingualism and intercomprehension. They also understood that the evolving open-ended nature of knowledge and of language teaching aims has implications for their professional methodologies and epistemologies. Moreover, this professional awareness rested on a more comprehensive self-awareness, particularly of their images about languages and their didactic knowledge, of their growth as teachers to be and their own possibilities as plurilingual teachers and individuals. They also became more conscious of the personal, interpersonal and contextual potential and constraints of such perspective of language education, in particular of the concept of intercomprehension. To conclude, these results will be the starting point to a reflection upon their implications mainly at two levels: (i) the didactic education of future language teachers, in particular regarding new educative environments and experiences; and (ii) the epistemological field of Language Didactics and its relation with teacher education. This reflection will be based on the idea that a shift from teaching to learning would correspond to a stronger responsibility of the individual (both teacher and student), and a turn to a critical reflection about the features of the Language Didactics’ curriculum development.