Review written by Dr. Jane Jones, Senior Lecturer in Education and Head of MFL Teacher Education, Department of Education, Communication and Society, King’s College London.
Book published by Peter Lang.
Book written by Dr. Patrick Farren, Lecturer emeritus, School of Education, NUI Galway.
The creation of the narrative in this book has been likened by the author, Patrick Farren, to a journey. As can be seen from his career history that he shares with readers in the introductory pages, this particular venture is just part of his longer trajectory in teaching and teacher education spanning many years and several continents. Patrick Farren expresses a deep belief in teacher education as a moral endeavour, in the pursuit of social justice and equalising opportunity. This is a morality that has nothing to do with imposed strictures but all to do with the belief in each individual’s dignity and the huge impact teachers have on young individuals in their care. Language education (in this book sometimes referred to as MFL for Modern Foreign Languages for terminological historic reasons) is understood as a subject that can transform an individual through linguistic and intercultural expansion. Indeed, transformation, unsurprisingly, is a key theme of this book. The book has important implications for education in general.
Following a reflection on practitioner research formats and a scholarly consideration of language acquisition and learning theories to provide a framework for the book, we move to rich studies of partnerships and dialogue in three distinguished institutions in three countries, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland, King’s College London in the UK, and Boston College in Massachusetts, USA, where teacher education is considered as a critically reflective and transformative project. As Farren details in graphic detail, these studies of what are arguably first class teacher education programmes, required considerable physical travel, across the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, to universities in major cities and schools in urban settings and in country areas. As a teacher educator for all seasons, Farren intersperses his accounts with detail of the settings, for example, driving along Galway Bay to NUI Galway, April sunlight in an office at King’s College London overlooking Waterloo Bridge, a trudge through snow one November on the way to a Boston school. Readers will find clear outlines of the different contexts and deep analyses of data. For example, in the NUI Galway study, there are excellent descriptions of Irish post-primary school programmes and assessment processes. These are followed by detailed analysis and interpretation of the impact of uses made by student teachers and pupils of the ‘’European Language Portfolio’’ as a process tool that mediates the ‘’Common European Framework of Reference: Learning, teaching, assessment’’ (Council of Europe, 2001). The account is illuminating and had important implications for language teacher education and language education into the future. The account offers much potential for how senior cycle language education could be reimagined and reconstructed. Each of the studies unfolds like stories before switching to incisive, questioning but always warm description and analysis of the whole process of the initial teacher education period in each study.
Driven by Farren’s fervent belief in the moral purpose of teacher education, the respective three narratives provide deeply satisfying, engaging and challenging pictures of initial teacher education and the exceptionally good educational work being undertaken in the three university institutions and their partnership schools. The work is, of course, a shared commitment of a wider community of practice that includes teachers, the pupils, parents and others involved in the community. It is noticeable that central voice is given to the participants in the teacher education studies be they academics, teacher educators, mentors in school, and especially to the student teachers. The accounts of all the participants provide mirror reflections of the important themes raised in the first part of the book such as collaborative learning, knowledge construction, expressing meanings that come from within, formative assessment, socio-cultural and intercultural awareness, critical literacy, and leadership and moral consciousness.
Each study stands on its own as a case of situated teacher education, providing a series of joined- up pedagogical dialogues about language teaching, learning and assessment. Each has its unique learning points, for example:
NUI Galway: its innovative and successfully embedded use of portfolio processes that support student teachers and pupils, its collaborative work with schools, its language pedagogy that supports student-teachers in making use of the target language and in creating conditions that support pupils in developing the capacity to express their meanings, i.e. meanings that come from within, in the target language.
King’s College London: its acclaimed work with Assessment for Learning (Assessment in the Classroom) and the development of a teacher education culture that enables student teachers to develop highly nuanced assessment skills and self- regulated ways of learning in the classroom
Boston College: against a rather under-privileging of MFL in the curriculum in the region, Boston College’s coordinated languages policy, inclusive of TELL (Teaching English to Language Learners) and Secondary English, powers a strong belief in language teaching as inquiry, relating to the area’s curriculum strand of critical disposition, and is strongly imbued with a social and moral purpose.
There is much to learn from each teacher educator, for example, about collaborative projects rather than fragmented learning, about embedding assessment in teaching and learning, and about the usefulness of a whole school language policy. However, it is apparent that all three studies show a unity of cause in spite of their different cultural contexts that Farren asserts gives a powerful message about the importance of student teachers being enabled to develop their praxis, their teacher personalities and their personal constructs of moral purpose. Furthermore, mandated change from government in all cases is shown to be readily integrated whereby changes become owned by student teachers, educators, and schools, and, as such, are shaped not be external agencies but by teacher agency.
This book is not an investigation into what can be an arid field of the technicalities and competencies of teacher training although national statutory instruments are, of course, important for the contexts of such studies and undeniably part of teachers’ duties. Rather, construing student teachers as creators and not just deliverers of knowledge, the book is a liberating account of what happens when student teachers and teacher educators not only understand the moral purpose of teaching but inhabit a space to in which conditions are created for a new pedagogical model, referred to as ‘’transformative pedagogy,’’ to flourish. Such a space enables student teachers to develop and assume agency, to have the courage of their convictions, to challenge the status quo and construct their teacher identity. It is a space, as Farren writes, that is most effectively shared by student teachers with teacher educators, colleagues in school and the students themselves.
It is interesting to note that the study arose as a result of some concerns of Farren about the external motivators of language learning and teacher education, about the political misappropriation of certain debates, and the evident under-valuing of languages in the curriculum at all stages. Many in the MFL community of practice will identify with these concerns. It has, for a long time, been, and still is, a Sisyphian challenge to give MFL their rightful place against a barrage of monolingual rhetoric. The participants in these studies know better. In teaching languages and in educating new teachers to induct them into the languages teaching profession, arguably a role needing a very special skills-set, the book demonstrates a commitment to the value of all of humankind without barriers –‘langues sans frontières’. The hallmark of this endeavour is, to bring the journey metaphor full circle, the ongoing travelling mindset, both physical and metaphysical, that Farren shows so very well in this book, both from his own perspective and experience and those of the many excellent practitioners we meet along the journey.
Colleagues in my institution are among those practitioners. I am pleased that Farren chose my institution as a case study. I was an insider to an extent in this study, having contributed an interview, helped negotiate access to key players and ensured a supply of pencils. I was an outsider in not seeing the full picture until the completion of the work. I liked what I read about this stage of the journey and felt proud. I was inspired by the other stages of the journey. I am sure readers will find this book stimulating and an informative journey for themselves.