Session Information
Paper Session
Contribution
Multiculturalism is changing the origins of instructional arrangements within the Finnish comprehensive school. The aims of language education in the new national curricula (NBE2014) are encouraging teacher co-operation amongst peers. Aims, such as developing multiliteracy abilities, enhancing pupils’ language awareness, and understanding multilinguality and -culturality are promoting cooperative working between (language) teachers. Furthermore, the contents of heritage language instruction are partly the same as contents of national and foreign languages. For example such literacy practices as information retrieval and the composition of various kinds of genres exist in the syllabuses of all languages. Therefore, in order to design rich literacy instruction arrangements amongst teachers, there is a definite need for co-operation and co-education.
According to Simon (2013), teachers realize the education policy through instruction, therefore it is essential to engage teachers in learning communities in which their pedagogical thinking is promoted and enriched. For this reason, since 2013 the concept of partly virtual, partly face-to-face in-service teacher education for language teachers has been executed in the City of Jyväskylä Finland. The heritage language teachers have taken part in the program since it began. The program centres on the collaborative development and assessment of learning material through exercises found in the Active Library database (https://peda.net/oppimateriaalit/kirja-arkku/actlib-in-english). Furthermore, there are workshops related to the database material which are organized regularly to allow for sharing of teaching experiences and to encourage teachers to build up a virtual library not only by themselves, but with their pupils. The overall purpose of this project is to enrich language education through various methods of arts such as drama, visual working methods and literature (Donahue & Stuart 2010). Through this kind of collaborative work, the language teachers are able to update the textual spaces of learning via artful teaching (Miller 2010). The teachers further gain experiences in regards to co-education, when they share pedagogical innovations in collaborative working teams with colleagues. Through co-operative acts, a space has been created for teachers to rethink and renew their values, beliefs and practices regarding language education. Working in a teachers’ community is demanding due to the conflicting plans and expectations for collaboration (Llewellyn-Jones, Agombar & Deane 2011), however, despite that, the crisis can be crucial towards the perspective of enhancing professionalism, if reflection is included (Mezirow 2009, 94), similar to this education system.
Teachers’ professionalism is strongly developed through various processes of socialization (Flores & Day 2006). Further, it has been found that the professional development of a language teacher is connected to his pedagogical thinking and in one’s own teaching beliefs. The development grows during the pre-service and in-service education, and according to Nyman (2009, 6–12) it is based on four levels: 1) development of language and cultural awareness (substance knowledge), 2) development of being an expert, 3) collaborative learning e.g. learning from colleagues and 4) professional commitment. Furthermore, how the teachers feel towards the profession can be seen as an important part of professional development; their feelings towards pupils, parents and teaching impact their personal agency and the professional attitudes which could be viewed as restrictive, distant or even empowering (Ruohotie-Lyhty 2009, 812).
It should be pointed out that in the researches of Nyman and Ruohotie-Lyhty all teachers were qualified and pre-educated. Heritage language teachers instead are mostly non-qualified and have been employed mainly due to their native language. Therefore, in this paper we investigate the possibilities of heritage language teachers’ enhancement of their professionalism within the community of multicultural in-service teacher education. The research question is: What kind of professionalism does the heritage language teachers acquire by acting in the teachers’ learning environment?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Donahue, D. M. & Stuart, J. 2010. Introduction: Five best questions about arts integration: What to ask before you start. In D. M. Donahue & J. Stuart (eds.) Artful teaching. Integrating the arts for understanding across the curriculum, K-8. New York: Teachers College Press, 1–16. Flores, A. & Day, C. 2006. Contexts which shape and reshape new teachers’ identities: A multi-perspective study. Teaching and Teacher Education 22 (2), 219–232. Kosnik, C., Rowsell, J. & Simon, R. 2013. The shifting landscape of literacy teacher education: Working with integrity, commitment, skill, and vision. In C. Kosnik, J. Rowsell, P. Williamson, R. Simon & C. Beck (eds.) Literacy teacher educators: Preparing teachers for a changing world. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 191–204. Kumaravadivelu, B. 2014. Afterword: Rethinking global perspectives and local initiatives in language teaching. In S. Ben Said & L. Jun Zhang (eds.) Language teachers and teaching. Global perspectives, local initiatives. London: Routledge, 317–324. Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. 2004. A handbook for teacher research. From design to implementation. London: Open University Press. Llewellyn-Jones, C., Agombar, M. & Deane, M. 2011. Writing in the disciplines and learning technologists: Towards effective collaboration. In M. Deane & P. O’Neill (eds.) Writing in the disciplines. New York: Palgrave, 237–249. Mezirow, J. 2009. An overview on transformative learning In K. Illeris (Ed.) Contemporary Theories of learning. Learning theorists ... in their own words. London: Routledge, 90–105. Miller, S. M. 2010. Towards a multimodal literacy pedagogy: Digital video composing as 21 st century literacy. Literacies, Art, and Multimodality. Urbana-Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 254–281. Nyman, T. 2009. The development of pedagogical thinking and professional expertise of newly qualified language teachers. University of Jyväskylä. Ruohotie-Lyhty, Maria. 2011. First steps on the path of teacherhood. Newly qualified foreign language teachers’ agency and professional development. University of Jyväskylä. Rogers, R. 2013. Cultivating diversity through critical literacy in teacher education. In C. Kosnik, J. Rowsell, P. Williamson, R. Simon & C. Beck (eds.) Literacy teacher educators: Preparing teachers for a changing world. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 7–20. Simon, R. 2013. Literacy teacher education as critical inquiry. In C. Kosnik, J. Rowsell, P. Williamson, R. Simon & C. Beck (eds.) Literacy teacher educators: Preparing teachers for a changing world. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 121–134. Su, Y.-H. 2011. The constitution of agency in developing lifelong learning ability: the 'being' mode. Higher Education 62, 399–412.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.