Escobar 2010 Preserv CLIL TED
Escobar 2010 Preserv CLIL TED
Escobar 2010 Preserv CLIL TED
Pre-service CLIL Teacher-Education in Catalonia: Expert and novice practitioners teaching and reflecting together In: David Lasagabaster & Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe CLIL in Spain: Implementation, Results and Teacher Training. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 189-218. [FORTHCOMING].
CHAPTER TEN PRE-SERVICE CLIL TEACHER-EDUCATION IN CATALONIA: EXPERT AND NOVICE PRACTITIONERS TEACHING AND REFLECTING TOGETHER CRISTINA ESCOBAR URMENETA
Introduction
This paper aims to present the model of pre-service Teacher-Education for Content and Language Integrated Learning (TED for CLIL, hereafter) developed at the Bellaterra Campus of the Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona (UAB)1 over the last four years. This model is the result of an on-going process of design, experimentation and discussion among all stakeholders: student-teachers, school mentors, university tutors and researchers. The TED for CLIL Component aims at endowing studentteachers (STs, hereafter) with the basic skills needed for subject-matter teaching, while simultaneously developing collaboration strategies between English teachers and content-subject teachers (i.e. Teachers of Science, History, etc.) for the development and implementation of CLIL in inclusive classrooms. Section one of this chapter presents the national and specific sociolinguistic and educational contexts in which the course has been created. Section two outlines the type of collaborative research through university-school partnership projects that has served as a breeding ground for the model. Section three puts forward the theoretical foundations that sustain the proposal. Section four presents the resulting TED for CLIL Component together with data that illustrate and support the claims made and final decisions made as a consequence of the on-going process of
experimentation and discussion. Finally, section five summarizes the main conclusions drawn from the whole process and sketches out areas for further study.
Context
In Catalonia teachers exercise their profession in its completely bilingualised school system, where English is steadily gaining ground as the third language of instruction. A very large proportion of all education implemented in Catalonia is technically considered as CLIL, due to the fact that immersion in the minority language (Catalan) has been one of the major features characterising the Catalan education system since the eighties (Prez-Vidal, 2001). Nonetheless, in this chapter, second language immersion will be left aside and the term CLIL will be used exclusively to refer to education through a foreign language of international use. Until 2009 the requirements for accessing the teaching profession in Spain limited to the possession of a four-year university degree in one single area of specialization plus the completion of a two-month part-time Mickey Mouse teacher training course called CAP2. Nonetheless, in the last ten years some universities have been offering optional one-year TED master courses inspired in curricula produced by the state3. One of them is the 60 ECTS Master Course run since 1998 by the UAB at its Bellaterra Campus which offered courses in the branches of Science, Mathematics, Social Sciences, Catalan, Spanish and English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The course is organized into four modules: 1. Psycho-SocioPedagogy; 2. Subject-Specific Pedagogy4; 3. Practicum; and 4. Master Dissertation. It is within this context that a team of university teachers specialized in the teaching of English, Science, Social Sciences and Mathematics, in collaboration with School Mentors in the aforementioned branches developed a set of TED activities and strategies, the distinctive aim of which is to develop awareness of the specific challenges that CLIL programmes pose for teachers and learners, and to equip STs with the basic skills for competent teaching in those contexts.
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Development Schools (PDS hereafter)5. The role that PDS were to play in the process of design and piloting of the Component is well described by Edwards et al. (2009:5):
Professional Development School is conceived as a site where initial teacher education, professional development of teachers, improvement of teaching and learning and educational research are integrated.
Within this framework, university tutors and school mentors followed their own action-oriented research programme on CLIL and on Pre-service TED for CLIL. The procedure followed the standard cycles of actionresearch (Carr and Kemmis 1986; Strickland, 1988), namely, drafting a plan for TED for CLIL, implementing it, gathering and analyzing qualitative data during the experimentation, drawing conclusions and amending the initial plan, at which point the cycle starts again. The succession of cycles of action and reflection, as will be stated later, is the main pedagogical option in our model of TED for CLIL. Therefore, the introspective approach followed by mentors and tutors mirrors the inquiry approach followed by STs in their learning-to-teach process. The quote In PDS, schools novice teachers learn to teach, university and school teaching staff investigate questions of teaching and learning together (Edwards et al., 2009:5) captures the essence of the process conducted at Bellaterra. The experimentation of the model carried out with volunteer STs began in 2006 and it is still an on-going process. In all cases, STs level of competence in English ranged between the Council of Europes (COE) B2 and C2. The natural qualitative data gathered throughout the cycles of experimentation comprises conversational as well as textual or visual data. Table 10-1 summarizes the variety informants data handled during the process6. The detailed examination of data seeks to help build up an overall portrait of the outcomes of the experience through a process of interpretation, where inferences, implications and conclusions are continually checked against the stakeholders, following the principle of Authenticity in interpretative research (Guba and Lincoln, 1989). The variety of informants and data types, together with the process of continuous triangulation, guarantee that multiple perspectives on the same events are taken into account and weighed up in the final design of the CLIL Component, as well as in the other studies that derive from them7. The data gathered has also allowed for detailed focused studies on particular issues that have proved key to the success of TED for CLIL.
Some of these studies are quoted in this chapter, the main goal of which is to provide an overall view of the outcomes of the project. Table 10-1. Informants and types of data handled. VENUE / - Event SECONDARY CLASSROOM: - CLIL lessons taught by experts and STs. Informants - Secondary students. - Studentteachers. - Mentors. - Observer. Data - Audio and/or video recordings of CLIL lessons taught by STs. - Observers field notes. - Documents (drafts, assignments, tests, etc.) produced by the students. - Photos. - Audio and/or video recordings of mentoring sessions. - Report Cards. - Vignette cards. - Audio and/or video recordings of lessons and tutorials. - Tutors field notes - STs reports. - Journal. - Self-observation reports (SOR) 1 and 2. - Master Dissertation. - Audio recordings of meetings. - Field notes. - Minutes. - Audio recordings
SECONDARY SCHOOL: - Mentoring session. UNIVERSITY: - Lessons, tutorials and course evaluation.
STS STUDY:
- Academic work required from the STs. UNIVERSITY: - Mentors and Tutors meetings. SCHOOLS and UNIVERSITY: - Interview with individual StudentTeachers and experts on content teaching
- Studentteachers.
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Theoretical Framework
This section briefly presents the main theoretical constructs which have served as a framework for the design of TED materials and activities.
satisfactory implementation of the curriculum of any content area within the school. Teachers who belong to a Department often act as a community of practice in their own right, with value systems, and ways of doing things that are common to practitioners in that given content-area. Often these practices are in many ways quite different from the practices legitimized in or by other departments8. CLIL, by proposing the integrated teaching of more than one school subject in a single setting creates the opportunity for the development of a new type of CoP, whose members are about to tackle an innovative enterprise.
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will happen]. However, its immediacy does not allow for deep reflection on the whys and hows of particular classroom episodes. This requires time and distance only allowed by Reflection-on-action or thinking back and exploring how and why she acted that way. This effort will result, it is hypothesized, in the development of a theory of practice which will become useful in future teaching situations. Schns paradigm has received major support from research and has been discussed, further developed or adapted into different models (Esteve and Carandell, 2009; Kortaghen, 2001; Perrenoud, 2004; Shulman, 1987; Smith, 1994). The common traits that all of these proposals share are: (a) the attempt to bring theory and practice together; and (b) the fact that teachers or STs priorities are taken into account. The design of the Bellaterra integrative model draws from the Reflective Practitioner paradigm as well as from other congruent teacher education proposals which advocate that teacher-led inquiry is the key towards genuine teacher development, such as Experiential Learning (Kolb, 1984) or Teacher Empowerment (Bolin, 1989; Short, 1992), and Action Research (Car and Kemmis, 1986; Elliot, 1991; Strickland, 1988). However, in contrast to other models derived from Schns which follow strict protocols of training activities or emphasise participants individual reflective endeavour, the Bellaterra proposal departs from the idea redolent of Vygotsky (1978) that Learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the various conversations of which they are a part (McDermott, in Murphy, 1999:17). Therefore, in our proposal it is through conversations with students, peer-STs, mentors and tutors on CLIL experiences that STs engage in deep intense reflection in and on teaching and learning. Access to relevant literature is viewed as a further step in this conversation, especially valuable once the STs have some background knowledge, questions and data to bring into their reading. It is hoped that all this will lead to the emergence of a STs own voice as professional educators that will, in the long term, continue developing throughout their careers, and, in the short term, crystallize in pieces of individual academic work within the Master Course, such as the self-observation reports or Master dissertations. Summarising, the cornerstones of the designed proposal are the alternation of cycles of action and reflection triggered by inter-area (content and foreign language experts) and inter-level (students, peer-STs, mentors and tutors) conversations, in a double loop of teacher-led enquiry, as shown in figure 10-1.
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transmissive teacher-training as the only possible way to cover a packed syllabus in the assigned time span, which enters into flagrant contradiction with the teaching models presented during the course. For this reason, the curriculum in the TED for CLIL Component follows a protocol of cycles of action and reflection, where occasions for learning and development occur, thus enacting the principle stated above that the community [formed in this particular case by peers, Master professors, tutors, mentors and the rest of the school] acts as a living curriculum for the apprentice. Experts on the teaching and learning of foreign languages will easily find resemblances between this organizational structure and the Procedural (task-based) Syllabuses proposed by Breen (1987a and 1987b), for its explicit criticism of syllabi composed of taxonomies of target content presented to students in Cartesian order (Propositional Syllabuses), and its radical stance in favour of learner-led syllabi developed in and through social action. The fact that we have not developed a thorough list of content to be covered in a given order does not imply that the work presented to STs is asystematic or lacking a clear goal. The alternative adopted accepts that in one year it is not possible to cover all the desirable content. Selection will made according two main criteria: (a) give priority to issues raised by STs deriving from their teaching practice; and (b) the formulation of a target profile for the CLIL teacher, which derives from the analysis of the data gathered, mainly from the discussions with mentors and STs. This profile covers four target areas of expertise ( Escobar Urmeneta, 2009) that were identified as vital for the CLIL teacher9, namely: 1. Subject-specific pedagogical competence in their particular area of expertise that will allow student-teachers to identify, plan and implement quality teaching, accepted as that by experts in the teaching of each particular subject. I.E. quality science education or quality maths education. 2. Pedagogical-communicative competence so as to manage efficient academic interaction in CLIL classrooms. This involves a combination of advanced communicative and pedagogical competences to articulate academic discourse in adaptive10 ways (Duffy, 1998), so as to match and strengthen the developing cognitive and communicative abilities of the students. These include being able to construct explanations, clarify, frame, give instructions, elicit, provide feedback, organize, check, discipline, evaluate, encourage, gather and keep learners attention, and the rest of the communicative abilities which are essential in teaching situations. But also, being able to structure tasks and use materials and/or teaching strategies which
facilitate and encourage the students contributions to the lesson, no matter how limited their linguistic repertoire might be. 3. Inter-area collaboration skills: given the high degree of specialization of candidates (see first section) and their low degree of convertibility, collaborative skills and flexibility to discuss, plan and teach in collaboration with peers from different epistemological traditions (Science and English, for example) are also indispensable. 4. Professional skills that will allow the initiation of a sustained process of self-development and innovation through shared reflection on their own teaching practices. However, some strategy is needed to avoid the confusion and insecurity that could derive from an exclusively la carte curriculum and guarantee that the course holds the necessary cohesion, and that basic content need are covered. This is achieved though the cycles of activities that will be presented in section 4.2. All of them aim at the development of STs skills in the four areas presented above, through an adaptive TED approach.
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All the expressed fears are explored and dealt with. Strategies that have proved effective in helping STs gain confidence at this point are: - Careful explanations of the benefits that will derive from the experience. - Provision of examples that make clear that there is a solution for every practical or technical problem they may come across. - Acknowledgement that a certain level of anxiety over being filmed is normal, even for very experienced teachers. Only reckless teachers might not care. - Insist on the non-judgmental nature of the classroom observation sessions that will be held. - Insist it is the STs themselves who will select the fragments to be shared with the rest of the class. STs can ask for advice, but no one will interfere with the final decision. The majority of the STs realise that this has two practical consequences:
If a ST feels that in one part of one lesson s/he was not particularly inspired s/he may decide not to choose this fragment and avoid a potentially face-threatening situation. o The more lessons the ST records, the more possibilities to choose. - Invite STs from previous years to present their own experience with the video recordings. o
Phase 2. Practicum I
STs spend two weeks of November in their Practicum school and become familiarized with it. They observe, teach and collect data that will be fully exploited in phase 3. TED for CLIL activities and strategies include participant observation, teaching, collecting data and feedback conferences. Video-taping lessons STs are encouraged to start filming lessons as soon as possible so that the recordings can be used as starting point for the feedback conferences. A certain level of anxiety in front of the video-recordings is still there (nerves, pressure. STs report 2008), but the first viewings of self, performing the role of teacher, sends the viewer such a different image from the one they expected, that the utility of recording as a tool for selfdevelopment soon becomes clear and resistance melts away. A common complaint at this point is not to have recorded some particular lesson they would have liked to look at and/or share: Unfortunately we often forgot to record ourselves and we lost lots of data (STs report 2009). STs often report practical problems such as tape identification, low quality recordings, low batteries, etc. Feedback Conferences Feedback conferences are key to the proposal. As part of the collaborative project on mentoring, some of these sessions are also videotaped and analysed by mentors and tutors. In all cases, after each formal conference STs fill in a Report Card where the main outcomes of the conference are recorded. Feedback is also made available in less formal contexts and ways, for example, over coffee.
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Mentors comment that after their very first performances STs sometimes fall into a state of temporary hopelessness, as if they were mourning the loss of the perfect lesson they had envisaged while planning. Feedback Report cards confirm this point:
The activity , according to my mentor, did not go as badly as I thought. () I learnt that it is often the case that you spend a lot of time and effort to prepare an activity, which does not interest the students. This may be disappointing but this does not imply that the activity is wrong as it may be more successful with another group of students (Source: STs Report Card).
Keeping high demands on the STs plus providing them with technical and emotional support are the strategies that mentors combine to help trainees to make progress (see conferences below). STs reports also show that the aspects prioritized by mentors vary to a large extent from ST to ST. In the majority of cases, basic survival teaching skills take up a large proportion of the time that mentors devote to feedback: the STs position in front of the classroom, the quality of explanations, rhythm, individualized attention to secondary students or classroom management. At this point, a minority of STs also receive feedback on activity or materials design. Using STs words: It would have been a good idea to prepare some comprehension questions to round up the activity. Ill prepare them just in case I have time after CLIL activity two (Source: STs report card). The previous entry also shows how mentors succeed in attaching a proactive purpose to their feedback, which is more focused on how to tackle one similar problem next day, than on conducting a detailed analysis of the lesson taught. In this respect, very specific on-line telegraphic feedback provided while teaching (for example, while the students proceed with their tasks) has proved to be a very useful strategy, as it gives the ST the possibility to readdress her teaching strategy on the spot, to observe the results of this change and to end the lesson with a feeling of success ( Escobar Urmeneta, Evnitskaya and Horrillo, 2009). Mentors are very aware that STs need to finish phase 2 with a feeling of global accomplishment and provide the necessary support so this is so. Face is a major issue throughout the whole process of feedback, especially when some criticism is needed or when peers are involved in the provision of feedback. This is consistent with the findings of Greenwalt (2008).
The item Why I chose this vignette did not prove to be clear enough so as to elicit the type of feedback STs expect from peers and tutor (figure 10-2). It is interesting to notice that whereas STs used the sample cards provided in phase 1 so as to guide themselves in the other rubrics, for 75% of the cards this did not happen with this last item. Our interpretation is that, in spite of all the efforts made in phase 1 to present the task as an opportunity for self-development, the STs tackle it as an academic assignment to be assessed for a mark. Probably, their previous academic experience is conditioning their perception of the task: the learner is never in control; the teacher is. Self-directed teacher development needs more time and action to have a profound effect. As a consequence of this observation, several improvements were introduced in the Card, as can be observed in figure 10-3. The development of STS self-confidence can be traced in the fact that the proportion of STs that chose lessons which show a situation
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categorised by the presenter as problematic ranges from 25% to 45% of all vignettes. Vignette presentation A large part of the eight weeks in phase 3 are devoted to STs presentation and analysis of their teaching experiences. For STs there is a feeling of pride in showing what they have been able to accomplish in such a short time. On the other hand, the encouraging utterances and gestures from peers are frequent during the presentations, and help to build up the necessary levels of comradeship so as to turn a potentially facethreatening situation into an enjoyable experience. STs attach a great value to these sessions, not only for the feedback they receive on their teaching, but also for the possibility to discuss other STs performances: I think I learned a lot from my self-observations, and also from those from my fellow students when we discussed them during the lessons (STs report, 2008), although they also resent from the difficulties of providing feedback to their peers: I felt politically incorrect (STs report, 2009). During experimentation, several attempts to conduct 100% nonjudgemental discussions were conducted, but the results were poor as too much emphasis on not judging straitjacketed the discussion. The alternative format presented here has proved effective to promote descriptive, articulated explanations. The point of departure for discussion is the viewing of vignettes. STs own personal teaching-experience [experience is used here as in shopping-experience] shown in the video becomes objectified and therefore de-emotionalized to a large extent. The agenda for a two-hour session of this sort consists of four sevenminute-long consecutive presentations followed by open debate. During each presentation, the task for STs in the audience is to take notes and decide on a question to ask each presenter, one remarkable feature observed in the vignette and one piece of advice that might have contributed to improving the lesson. In this way, talking about good and bad teaching [= what I liked or hated in the lesson] is not banned, only postponed until all the questions asked by the audience have been answered. At that point, gut reactions have lost part of their vehemence and have become more elaborated and much more serene and cautious; therefore, much more useful for the addressee, but also for the author.
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Sessions are usually lively, and the degree of involvement on the part of all the students is very high. As expected, a variety of issues emerge from the vignettes: some of them vary greatly from edition to edition whereas others remain constant. Some are raised by the ST in charge of the presentation, but many others that go unnoticed by the presenters are brought up by their peers or tutor. The role of the tutor at this point is to help STs make progress from intuitions and unstructured ideas to more structured ones; to highlight contradictions, prejudices and clichs and to draw attention to important details that have gone unnoticed and may well explain one particular event12. Technical terms are offered when needed, theoretical issues are introduced if relevant to the argument and relevant readings, recommended. As sessions go on, discussions progressively grow more focused and informed and the tutor becomes more demanding.
Figure 10-4. Source: Kolb (1984: 219).
Kolbs (1984) model of Experiential Learning in figure 10-4 accounts for the way in which practice, reflection and theory building relate to one another throughout this period (circled arrow) and explains how the model attempts to overcome the gap between theory and practice. The scrutiny of field-notes shows which theoretical issues have emerged in vignette presentations in two or more editions: code-switching, interaction vs. speaking, IRF13 sequences of teacher-class interaction, comprehensible input, negotiation of meaning, scaffolding, self/other
repair, teachers waiting-time, elicitation techniques, authentic/display questions, student-student interaction, cooperative work, learner ontask/off-task, or teacher assertiveness. Some of the issues that emerged from the presentations in only one edition are: learners attention-span, focus-on-form, computer-mediated communication, pre-reading activities, task-based learning, class-alert, problem-solving learning, lesson openings and closings and portfolio assessment. In all cases, the emergence of these issues takes place in the form of quite unfocused, impressionistic comments coming from the STs, an occasion which is taken advantage of by the tutor for a formal presentation of the concept, either to gain a better understanding of the sequence being presented, or to elicit ideas for possible future improvement in similar circumstances. Issues such as codeswitching, teacher-class interaction, scaffolding and repair tend to appear repeatedly throughout the sessions, which allows for progressive depth in the treatment of the concepts and the assignment of relevant readings. Problems related to classroom management are always there. These, together with the pervasive complaint about the students lack of motivation, may hinder more in-depth understanding about what is going on in the classroom. It is the job of the tutor to help STs notice the observable clues that may assist understanding the students possible low degree of investment in the lesson. The discussion ends with the identification of one particular area for further analysis for each ST, which will result in an academic paper labelled Self-Observation Report 1 (SOR1) to be handed in before Phase 3 ends. Planning for CLIL Vignette presentation discussions run parallel with other sessions devoted to the planning of a CLIL teaching sequence to be implemented in Phase 4. Planning is a very challenging task for novice teachers, and it was predicted that CLIL would add extra difficulties, which would demand extra support from mentors and tutor and careful monitoring. This needs analysis led to lessons at university which devoted more time to examining ways of scaffolding learning tasks and providing support for comprehension and production, as well as to materials analysis and adaptation. STs were also encouraged to pay weekly visits to their practicum schools and make appointments with the subject mentor and the English mentor to obtain feedback on the feasibility and adequacy of the proposal in process. Although far from being smooth, discussions involving experts on language
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and content produced complementary and convergent advice highly valued by trainees. Nevertheless, it turned out that the difficulties were much higher than foreseen: students seemed to be unable to cope with so many requirements at a time and the process of designing CLIL tasks and materials is, when compared to those students planning standard lessons, slower and full of obstacles. STs seem to be unable to apply to their planning the pedagogical principles pertinent to the content-subject, and simultaneously take into account the communicative constraints that the foreign language poses for classroom communication. The different drafts STs produce are underprovided for in one or the other way. STs may feel somewhat frustrated when, after working hard on a learning task, the feedback they obtain is that the activity is not within reach because of the high linguistic demands that the task poses on learners, or because in the process of simplification the task has lost its main pedagogical qualities. The tandems of STs with different profiles working together on one common unit might be a useful strategy to sort out this problem. Due to organizational constraints this strategy has not yet been implemented. The Planning for CLIL sessions at university takes advantage of and recycles the concepts that have been discussed in the Vignette presentation sessions, and when necessary also present strategies consistent with learner-centred approaches that may have not appeared in those sessions.
Phase 4. Practicum II
Over seven weeks from February to April, STs, accompanied by their mentors and peers, take on the responsibilities and duties that correspond to a normal teacher: planning, teaching, attending meetings, organizing and attending special events and of-school-grounds activities, etc. They teach CLIL lessons which are regularly video-taped, as well as standard lessons. STs are also encouraged to keep a learning log. Activities and TED strategies include: Planning for CLIL Difficulties in planning only begin to melt away when STs are fulltime in their practicum schools, observing first hand the responses their proposals get from the students. Until this happens, STs do not seem able to integrate the roughly and finely tuned advice they get from tutors and mentors. Actual teaching practice helps them to redefine goals, tasks and materials, to become more realistic about what can be expected from
students, and to introduce more and more varied support to comprehension and production. The guiding and supporting role of the mentor has been essential here, as the possibilities to get lost or frustrated are huge. Teaching practice STs quickly gain familiarity in the school milieu and their identities as teachers in charge begin to emerge, especially when they begin the implementation of the teaching sequence they have designed. With few exceptions, mentors also start to view STs as personnel who can provide help, rather than create extra-work and a more one-to-one relationship develops, although they report that STs often experience difficulties due to the accumulation of tasks and their lack of ability to cope with various obligations at the same time. All the same, STs progressively show higher levels of self-confidence and a greater ability to organize group activities which require complex classroom management skills. However, mentors By the end of phase 4, a common report coming from the STs is that they are exhausted, but happy. On the whole, STs find this is the most fruitful and rewarding phase in the course; but also that it is the most demanding one. Video-taping lessons Practical problems of tape identification, low quality recordings, etc. are always there, but the fear of the camera has by now disappeared in the vast majority of the cases. The recordings may play an important role in the formal feedback conferences and will later make up the main source of data for the STs Master Dissertation. Feedback conferences Short, informal feedback conferences are held on a daily basis, where immediate feedback is provided. Longer, more formal and analytical conferences are held at least once a week. As for the content of the discussions, theres so much to do at this point that the hustle and bustle of school life catches up with mentors and STs alike, and conferences progressively replace their analytical and/or reassuring character with an almost standard teachers-meeting style, where very definite short-term goals prevail and the rationale for decision making is not always made explicit. In this way, immediate problems are dealt with efficiently, so that one more step can be taken. In these sessions, pro-active counselling
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mingles with the examination of past events, and the proposals made by STs interact with those made by tutors. Tutor visit The university tutor visits each practicum school at least once during Practicum II. During the visit, the tutor attends lessons taught by ST and holds a conference where mentors content and languageSTs and tutor examine the course of events and discuss problems encountered during the implementation of the teaching sequence. Although the primary goal of the conference is to provide feedback to the STs, the analysis of the transcripts of a selection of these conferences reveals that the official purpose of the meeting is often exceeded by the interest of mentors and tutor in discussing CLIL: its advantages and drawbacks, the fundamental issues and practical problems that CLIL raises in schools, and the feasibility or convenience of pedagogical options under discussion. The transcripts, as the excerpt below illustrates, show the mentors awareness about the relevance of the discussion undertaken and the process of mentoring as an opportunity for self-development. Excerpt from a feedback conference during a mentors visit April 2008. MEN = Mentor; TUT = Tutor; Marta = Student-Teacher. XXX = incomprehensible fragment.
190. MEN: (...) el que fa la Marta s que ens treu del ritme ordinari nostre i ens fa ser una mica ms, millors docents i canviem la metodologia (...) per qu? Explicam aix. Per qu XXX? (...) (...) em sento que mhe de treure la pols, no? (...) A vegades dic no, s que ho de fer millor, jo, no? (...) s la mateixa activitat per jo s que la puc fer de moltes maneres o si no la faig tan dirigida, la faig xxx, la faig ms participativa, canvio (...) () what Marta does is that she brings us out our regular pace and makes us be a little bit better teachers and we change our methodology. (...) why? Explain this. Why XXX? (...) ()I feel I have to dust myself, dont I? Sometimes I say no, I have to do it better, dont I? () its the same activity but I know that I can do it in many ways or if I do it less teachercentred, I do it XXX, I do it more participative, I change (...)
Regular mentors-tutors meetings are held regularly during the course. Table 10-2 summarizes the main TED for CLIL events throughout the process.
Conclusions
The policies designed by the majority of educational authorities in highly decentralized Spain demonstrate an enormous effort to generalize the offer of CLIL programmes in their respective Autonomous Communities, as is the case of Catalonia. Regardless of this general concern for the generalization of the CLIL offer, TED for CLIL was not made explicit in the TED courses designed over the past fifteen years, nor in the Ministerial Order which regulates the mandatory TED Master Course starting in September 2009. Aware that the challenges posed by CLIL are not limited to raising teachers competence levels in foreign languages, The UAB--in partnership with secondary schools--has developed a TED for CLIL
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Component through a process of collaborative action-research, which is integrated into the ordinary TED activities that all STs carry out. Table 10-2. Summary of main TED for CLIL events.
Phase / Schedule 1. October Length in Weeks 7 TED for CLIL in-built activities [Venue] Preparation for Practicum I. Discussion on videotaped lessons taught by unknown teachers. [University] Self-recording of teaching practice. Sequences a-b-c. [School]. Oral presentation of one vignette and discussion. Self-Observation Report 1 [written]. Preparation for Practicum II. CLIL unit design. Visits to schools if needed. [University] Rounding up of CLIL unit. CLIL unit implementation. Self-recording of teaching practice. Sequences d-e-f. [School]. Self-Observation report 2. Practicum Portfolio (includes CLIL teaching sequence). Master Dissertation. [STs study; University] Mentors and Tutors joint work [Venue] 1. Planning meeting [University].
2.November
3.November -February
12
4.FebruaryMarch
4. Tutor visit. Classroom observation: Joint feedback tutorial (STs, mentors and tutors). [School]. 5. Assessment meeting. [University]
5.AprilJune
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The central strategy of this Component, which is optional for STs, is the systematic video recording of STs teaching practice, and the use of the video-recordings selected by the STs themselves as the basis for discussion on practical and theoretical issues related to subject-matter teaching through the means of a foreign language. We do not claim that this particular option is original in teacher education (see section 3.3.), nor that it is exclusive of the training CLIL teachers: in our experience nonCLIL lessons were also recorded and discussed in the vignette presentation sessions. But the fact is that this particular strategy was selected and developed precisely in response to the varied and highly demanding requirements of teaching a subject through a foreign language at a point in time when basic teaching strategies and standard Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Shulman, 1987) are not yet developed. Video recording allows for an integrative approach to the analysis of the problems than the CLIL ST faces. Access to video-recorded excerpts also allows for discussion among STs who opted for the CLIL track and those who did not. These non-CLIL STs are presented with the opportunity of gaining understanding of the CLIL approach and therefore becoming better equipped to work in CLIL schools, even if not directly involved in them. The dynamics generated by the viewing of the vignettes selected by the STs and the heated discussions over the data available to everyoneCLIL lessons taught by themchanged the nature of university lessons entirely, as discussions on how to teach and how learning takes place emerged without the need for long explanations, complex materials or contrived activities related to mandatory readings. The exhaustive monitoring of the process of design and implementation of the TED for CLIL Component clearly shows that this approach allowed for the presentation of theoretical issues central to CLIL by demonstrating in a straightforward manner how the concept presented is relevant for a teachers work. It also allowed for the emergence of stereotypes and contradictions which could be checked against data, defining areas for future observation. The second pillar of the proposal is the planning and piloting of CLIL teaching sequences and materials under the supervision of content and language teaching experts at university and schools. The difficulties experienced by STs in planning for CLIL lessons evidence the high level of complexity that this assignment involves. Clearly more work is needed to develop user-friendly precise guidelines and a safer base structure for CLIL lesson planning. The specificities and teaching traditions of the different subjects makes this a knotty task, but a necessary one if CLIL is to succeed in inclusive schools. We intend to endeavour this path in the
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near future, where the collaboration of content and language teaching experts will be crucial. Indeed, getting experts on different fields to talk on one common set of teaching materials has proved to create a range of potentially rich spaces for the newcomers, but also for pedagogical improvement and professional development on the part of those old-timers involved in the discussion. In all cases, in spite of the important communication gaps among experts on different disciplines identified in the discussions (Horrillo, forthcoming), inter-area collaboration encouraged positive interdependence among those professionals, who learned to learn together (Canet, forthcoming; Corredera and Ruiz, 2008; Pallars and Petit, 2009). However, organizing tandems of students from two different branches in one single school has not been implemented due to organizational constraints. Without a doubt, this has been up to now one of the unsuccessful outcomes of the experimentation. The generalization in 2009 of the compulsory TED Master Course and that of the PDS model for practicum schools are likely to have a positive influence in this regard. The proposal is also consistent with an empowering approach to teacher education (Bolin, 1989; Short, 1992), which flees from patronizing moulds and places teachers at the front of their professional development, by acknowledging their capacity to identify priorities and goals, select readings, take risks, experiment with ideas and evaluate the outcomes of their actions in the current high-stakes school life. The empowering effect of the TED for CLIL Component has been crowned in a few cases with the presentation of papers at conferences or with publications in specialized journals. This approach also sets a model for continuing self-directed Teacher Education. Whether it will have a long term effect on the STs future teaching practice and on their adoption of a reflective approach to selfdirected, life-long teacher education is a matter for subsequent studies. In this type of model, the teacher-educator role changes from lecturer or workshop leader to special discussant, facilitator and moderator. In a way, these lessons needed little preparation from the tutor as STs involvement in the discussions was guaranteed. On the other hand, the new role requires good listening skills [understanding where STs want to go] and an adaptive approach towards problems prioritized by the STs [helping them to get there and opening new doors and new paths]. Clearly more focused research is needed on defining successful strategies for adaptive teacher-educators. The data also revealed that quality CLIL education is only possible departing from learner-centred pedagogical approaches to subject-matter
teaching. It could be reasonably argued that a learner-centred approach is not exclusive to CLIL. Nonetheless, all successful CLIL-specific techniques and teaching strategies for inclusive classrooms identified in the process of experimentation depart from conceptions of classwork far from the dominant approach to subject-matter teaching consisting of long, abstract explanations followed by exercises from the coursebook. Indeed, the CLIL classrooms observed during the experimentation seem to be an exception to this well documented fact16. Our interpretation is that the initiation of a CLIL programme entails for the teacher a significant alteration in her teaching milieu, which challenges her everyday ways and makes her reach the crisis point needed to readdress her global approach to teaching. The effort made by teachers to overcome the communication constraints set by the use of a foreign language in academic contexts obliges them to rethink priorities and increase the amount and the quality of the support that is provided to students (Bazoco et al., 2008; Corredera, 2009; Evnitskaya and Aceros, 2008; Jimnez and Bazoco, 2009; Pallars 2009; Tpias, 2009). This finding itself justifies the offer of a TED for CLIL Component in pre-service TED. It is also clear that teachers, at this point, need specialised support which is offered in adaptive ways. To conclude, our work initiated with the objective of designing and piloting a CLIL Component for pre-service TED, and led us to a model which, in addition to its initial goal, incorporated the benefits of in-service teacher education through university-school partnership programmes based on collaborative research. All members in the learning community benefited from the process: STs, mentors, tutors, and secondary students. In this sense, the project managed to satisfy the necessity for research to improve the quality of social life in the institutions participating in the research (Tobin, 2008: 160). Since 2005, specialists in English, Mathematics, Science, Social Sciences and Attention to Diversity in nine different schools took part in the process of design and experimentation of the Component described above. September 2009 supposes the transformation of the previously optional pre-service TED Master Course into a compulsory one, which will necessarily bring about a notable increase in the number of students who enrol in it. One important question will have to be answered in the near future: whether or not, or to what extent, the generalization of the model is possible when demand from STs interested in CLIL grows much larger. But two things remain clear: without a learner-centred approach to subject-matter teaching the democratization of CLIL is not viable. But change can only be brought about as a result of educational action co-
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Notes
1 This action-research programme was conducted within the research projects 2004ARIE00058 and 2005ARIE10056 Avaluaci de tasques collaboratives i assoliment d'objectius d'aprenentatge en aules AICLE de Cincies en Llengua Estrangera, and 2006ARIE100011 and 2007ARIE00011 Disseny i experimentaci d'un model de formaci del professorat per a aules de semi-immersi en llengua estrangera, funded by the AGAUR (Generalitat de Catalunya). 2 CAP stands for Certificado de Aptitud Pedaggica. 3 These courses were regulated by the Organic Law 1/1990, and the Royal Decree 118/2004. 4 The original term is Didctica Especfica. In many European languages term Didctica or its equivalent translations are used to refer to professional knowledge on teaching and learning specific school subjects. 5 In this particular research, the schools in the CLIL-SI (http://www.clil-si.org) collaborative team acted de facto as PDS. Nevertheless, Practicum schools only gained this official status in 2009 after the Order EDU/122/2009, published in DOGC 5347. 6 When the process of interpretation of this natural data was inconclusive, clarification of specific points was sought by means of semi-structured interviews with specific informants. 7 Over the past three years, this modus operandi has allowed us to sketch out the target profile for a CLIL teacher, to identify priorities in a pre-service TED course, to develop TED tasks, instruments and materials and to add, suppress or reformulate demands placed on STs through the course. 8 The traditional Spanish pre-service teacher education system, with its exclusive focus on content-matter specialization and its disregard for professional training, may well explain this impermeability. 9 Advanced competences in the subject-matter and the foreign language are considered a pre-requisite to enter the CLIL track, and therefore are taken for granted here. 10 Duffys (1998) Adaptive Approach to Teaching calls for a shift from technical to adaptive expertise, or ability to modify and adjust instructional techniques in order to meet the needs of diverse students. 11 The official bilingual status of Catalonia accounts for the high levels of sensitivity towards language in education. 12 On one occasion a ST expressed her frustration because the students didnt pay much attention to her while she was explaining ancient cultures using carefully selected diagrams and other visual aids. Due to the lay-out of the classroom, 50% of the students couldnt see the visuals, nor establish eye-contact with the teacher. The camera could, so nobody had noticed [Tutorial session, 2008]. 13 IRF stands for Initiation, Response, Feedback (Sincalir and Coulthard 1975).
In this period, STs also develop a small-scale piece of research, the Master Dissertation, which focuses on one particular issue in their teaching practice. 15 On the other hand, the empirical data available has contributed to the reconstruction of the individual paths of two STs. The examination of these data has been tackled through case studies (Escobar 2009; Escobar, Evnitskaya, and Horrillo, 2009). 16 Conversely the reports from STs rarely, if at all, make explicit mention of the CLIL circumstances in their accounts, if not directly questioned on the matter.
14
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