Learning to become a CLIL teacher: teaching, reflection and professional development

Abstract

This case study is part of a larger project which aims to determine the usefulness and validity of a model of a pre-service content and language integrated learning (CLIL) teacher education programme inserted in a Master's degree, whose main pedagogical option is to achieve teacher empowerment through cycles of collaborative teaching and shared reflection. More specifically, the two-fold goal of the study is to describe the nature of the student-teacher's main accomplishments on her teaching practice, if any, as well as on the quality of her reflection on that teaching practice; and to identify and characterise key stages in her developmental process throughout. The analysis adopts an ethnographic perspective and explores fragments of videotaped CLIL science lessons in English/L3 and other multimodal data (student-teacher's journal, academic reports and instructor's field notes) collected in a master's degree for secondary teachers in Barcelona, where Catalan and Spanish are co-official. Through Multimodal Conversation Analysis and Ethnographic Content Analysis, the study reconstructs the developmental process undertaken by the informant throughout one academic year. The analysis traces the student-teacher's progress both in the practical handling of the specific challenges of the CLIL lessons and in her progressive understanding of key issues in the domain of Second Language Acquisition (SLA); it also shows how teaching practice and reflection shape and fuel each other. In addition, it illustrates how CLIL teachers may benefit from tools developed in the field of Applied Linguistics in order to improve their professional skills.

Empowering Teachers, Triggering Change: A Case Study of Teacher Training through Action Research

“…However, while it is, quite logically, assumed that engaging in research will achieve these two major learning outcomes, this has not been analysed in any great detail, and, in fact, it is diffi cult to fi nd any study where the actual learning potential of inquiry in teacher-training is analysed (but see Escobar Urmeneta, 2013). This is precisely what the present paper sets out to do.…”

Classroom observation in second language classrooms: bridging the gap between theory and practice for pre-service and in-service teachers of Greek as an L2

“…It aims at providing newly qualified teachers with familiarity with the ideas and practices of their highly experienced co-partners by involving both of them in a fruitful "dialogue" before and after the observational event. This dialogue may offer valuable insights for their professional development, as many studies conducted in different settings so far have attested (Escobar Urmeneta, 2010, 2013Escobar Urmeneta & Evnitskaya, 2013;Lieberman, 2009;Wragg, 1999).…”

La autoeficacia percibida en los futuros docentes de inglés de Educación Primaria

“…A pesar de que existen numerosos estudios sobre creencias entre profesores nativos, es patente la carencia de investigaciones que analicen la percepción de la creencia de autoeficacia de los docentes de Educación Primaria cuya primera lengua no es el inglés (Barrios, 2004(Barrios, y 2006Borg, 2009). Además, se debe incidir en la escasez de investigaciones que estudien este tema dentro de los nuevos planes de estudio adaptados al EEES en nuestro país, por lo que el presente trabajo puede servir como punto de partida; si bien existe un corpus de investigaciones sobre la formación inicial del profesorado en lenguas extranjeras (entre otros, ver Amengual, 2013;Durán-Martínez y Beltrán-Llavador, 2013;Escobar Urmeneta, 2013;Madrid, 2004;Madrid y Madrid, 2014), pocos estudios han abordado la incidencia de las creencias del profesorado en su función docente (Barrios, 2006;Martínez Agudo, 2005), y el constructo de la autoeficacia docente ha sido ampliamente ignorado. Igualmente, hay una escasez evidente de estudios en nuestro país que aborden la evaluación de la propia práctica de los docentes y que examinen las percepciones de los profesores sobre su formación y su competencia metodológica, algo que resulta indispensable en el análisis de la autoeficacia de los docentes.…”