Spanish Teacher Education Programs and Community Engagement

Abstract

Theories of situated knowledge support that knowledge involves experience of practices rather than just accumulated information. While an important segment of foreign language teacher education programs focuses on the theoretical component of second/foreign language acquisition theories and relevant methodological concerns, it is mainly through practice that novice teachers construct their new professional identities. Consequently, typical teacher preparation programs require a number of classroom practice hours, which is not easily carried out in the educational context where there is a limited number of target language courses; such is the case of Spanish language instruction in Serbia. This study presents examples of two service-learning programs aimed at providing teaching practice for pre-service Spanish teachers in Serbia, while answering to the needs and interests of specific communities. The theoretical and practical implications of this investigation may help outline a model of foreign language teacher education programs for social and educational contexts that lack a large-scale target language audience. Issues of future foreign language teachers’ identity and cognition regarding the language education policy creation and the teaching process itself are also addressed.

A Model for Understanding the Processes, Characteristics, and the Community-valued Development Outcomes of Community-University Partnerships

“…Important tangible benefits noted by many studies were access to the university and its resources, such as student-volunteers (Oberg De La Garza & Moreno Kuri, 2014;Schaffer, Hargate, & Marong, 2015;Valaitis et al, 2016). Similarly, many case studies reported that their CSL/CUP increased the assets of community members or the organization, such as participant health benefits, skill development, organizational capacity, and social integration (Apatu, Slawson, & Gonzalez, 2013;Bucher, 2012;Costandius et al, 2014;Jovanović & Filipović, 2013;Wilson, 2016). Tangible costs associated with CSL/ CUP outcomes include draining community and organizational resources for student training and supervision (Blouin & Perry, 2009).…”

Informaciono-komunikacione tehnologije u nastavi stranih jezika pre i tokom pandemije virusa COVID-19: pregled istraživanja na univerzitetskom nivou

“…Prema istraživanjima u našoj zemlji, profesori jezika i dalje primenjuju tradicionalne metode u praksi, iako sve više pribegavaju novim pristupima, usklađujući svoju uobičajenu praksu sa novim nastavnim tendencijama (Pejović/ Jovanović, 2012;Đukić Mirzayantz, 2017;Pejović/Andrijević, 2017). U tom smislu, u učionici se koriste metodi zasnovani na komunikativnim zadacima i metodi aktivno orijentisane nastave (Jovanović/Filipović, 2013).…”

Affordances, complexities, and challenges of intercultural citizenship for foreign language teachers

“…For example, in the 2013 Hispania special issue The Scholarship of Community Engagement: Advancing Partnerships in Spanish and Portuguese (not reporting any study on Portuguese, however), Barreneche and Ramos‐Flores (), Carney (), Ebacher (), Hartfield‐Méndez (), and other authors published in the journal beyond that special issue (e.g., Pellettieri, ) departed from the guest editors’ premise, shared with intercultural citizenship theory, that “it is an advantage as well as a challenge trying to teach the utilitarian aspects of languages while also connecting them to other more humanistic goals” (Hellebrandt & Jorge, 2013, p. 209). While Hartfield‐Méndez () addressed internationalization needs explicitly, Bugel (); Lear and Sánchez (); Tijunelis, Satterfield, and Benkí (2013); and Petrov (), among others, fell within the “within one country” option together with Tacelosky () and Jovanović and Filipović ()—the only two cases outside the United States (Mexico and Serbia, respectively). J. García, Pierce, and Zambrano () described a study abroad option in which American college students collaborated with Ecuadorian adolescents to produce short films.…”