Session Information
31 SES 13 A, Teachers' Beliefs about Multilingualism in Schools
Symposium
Contribution
Teaching multilingual students is a growing challenge for most teachers in a world that is “on the move” (Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Sattin-Bajaj, 2010, p. 535). With global migration, schools face the reality of a growing student population that is linguistically and culturally diverse.
Actual large scale assessments like TIMSS, PISA, and PIRLS empirically show that successful support of multilingual learners in diverse classrooms is one of the central challenges in schools today (Lucas & Villegas, 2011). Accordingly, international researchers call for systematic language facilitation integrated into subject teaching by teachers who are able to support multilingual learners’ academic language development in reference to subject-specific requirements (Schleppegrell, 2007). There is, ergo, a need for the development of teachers’ competencies to be implemented in regular teacher education (de Jong & Harper, 2005) and in in-service teachers’ professional development.
Professional teacher competencies are wildly discussed in higher education. The model by Blömeke, Gustafsson, and Shavelson (2015) describes competency as a continuum that ranges from disposition to performance has been broadly accepted in the field. In their model dispositions are described as cognition and affect-motivation. Affect-motivation, also understood as the attitudes or beliefs that a person holds towards a specific topic, is seen as important for teachers’ professional development since they influence their practice. It is therefore of great importance that teachers have an ‘ideological clarity’ (Bartolomé, 2004), meaning that they need to understand how their beliefs impact their perception of students and how that might influence their practice. Especially in the field of teacher preparation with regard to teaching multilingual students the research base is still scarce.
However, teacher education still lacks uniform approaches for preparing future teachers to teach multilingual learners in most countries. Even in the USA, where a large population of K-12 students has a home language other than English (referred to as English Language Learners-ELL), only three states require pre-service preparation of mainstream classroom teachers for working with Second Language (L2) learners (Lucas & Villegas, 2011). Also in Germany the absence of elaborated standards prevails even though reforms in teacher training acts in several German federal states stipulate that pre-service teachers of all subject areas acquire competencies in teaching students with another home language than German (referred to as German as a Second Language Learners) in addition to their disciplinary expertise (Becker-Mrotzek et al. 2012). In Finland, the new Finnish core curriculum requires all teachers to be aware of the students’ linguistic and cultural diversity (National Agency for Education, 2014). Still, teachers are under-prepared to deal with the new requirements.
In the symposium the four paper presentations focus on pre- and in-service teachers’ beliefs toward multilingualism and linguistically responsive teaching. The first presentation focuses on the relation between in-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism in schools and threaded discussions on an online learning platform. The second presentation reports on Finnish in-service teachers’ beliefs about linguistically responsive practices in relation to their reported needs for professional development. The third presentation shows results from a survey used with Finnish pre-service teachers and compares different study subjects (e.g., natural science vs. Finnish language). The fourth presentation demonstrates teachers’ beliefs towards multilingualism in schools in comparison between Germany and the US. The symposium with its topic being highly relevant in most European countries and beyond, presents the opportunity to learn from each other to further develop teacher education programs with regard to teachers’ beliefs and to highlight how instruments can be shared across nations.
After the presentations, the discussant from Canada will provide her view on the different approaches, add her perspective, identify common themes, major differences, challenges and opportunities.
References
Bartolomé, L. I. (2004). Critical pedagogy and teacher education: radicalizing prospective teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(1), 97–122. Becker-Mrotzek, M., Hentschel, B., Hippmann, K., & Linnemann, M. (2012). Sprachförderung in deutschen Schulen – die Sicht der Lehrerinnen und Lehrer. Ergebnisse einer Umfrage unter Lehrerinnen und Lehrern. Durchgeführt von IPSOS (Hamburg) im Auftrag des Mercator-Instituts für Sprachförderung und Deutsch als Zweitsprache. Universität zu Köln. Blömeke, S., Gustafsson, J. -E. & Shavelson, R. J. (2015). Beyond dichotomies: Competence viewed as a continuum. Zeitschrift Für Psychologie, 223(1), 3-13. de Jong, E. J., & Harper, C. A. (2005). Preparing Mainstream Teachers for English-Language Learners: Is Being a Good Teacher Good Enough ? Teacher Education Quarterly, 32(2), 101 – 124. Lucas, T., & Villegas, A. M. (2011). A framework for preparing linguistically responsive teachers. In T. Lucas (Ed.), Teacher preparation for linguistically diverse classrooms: A resource for teacher educators (pp. 55-72). New York, NY: Routledge. National Agency of Education (2014). Finnish Core Curriculum. http://www.oph.fi/saadokset_ja_ohjeet/opetussuunnitelmien_ja_tutkintojen_perusteet/perusopetus Schleppegrell, M. J. (2007). The Linguistic Challenges of Mathematics. Teaching and Learning: a Research Review. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 23, 139 – 159. Suárez-Orozco, M. M., Suárez-Orozco, C., & Sattin-Bajaj, C. (2010). Making migration work. Peabody Journal of Education, 85(4), 535-551. doi:10.1080/0161956X.2010.518053
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