Plurilingual awareness and intercomprehension in the professional knowledge and identity development of language student teachers

Abstract

The study reported in this article is part of a research project which intended to attain a more comprehensive understanding of the growth and transformations of the professional identity and knowledge of a group of four future language teachers, as they expanded their awareness about plurilingualism and intercomprehension. Based on a central question: Are the student teachers able to develop a different self-image as language teachers based on a plurilingual conception of language teaching? Phase 1 of the research project focused on the language student teachers’ professional discourse. The developing representations about plurilingualism, intercomprehension and themselves as language teachers were analysed. The conclusions helped to conceptualise Phase 2 of the project and reflect upon the Language Didactics curriculum.

Keywords:

• intercomprehension
• plurilingual professional awareness
• professional knowledge
• teacher identity
• teacher cognition
• beginning teachers

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this paper was conducted thanks to a grant (SFRH/BD/5447/2001) from the Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal (POCTI do Quadro Comunitário de Apoio III). The preparation of this paper was made possible by a funding from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Portugal). We would like to show our appreciation to the language student teachers that kindly participated in the research as well as to Professors Gillian Moreira and Isabel Alarcão and the Referees for the valuable comments and revision of the paper.

Notes

1. Proposal text of the Project EMIP/DL – Didáctica de Línguas: um estudo meta-analítico da investigação em Portugal/Language Didactics – a meta-analytic study of the research in Portugal (POCI e PPCDT/CED/59777/2004), submitted to, approved and financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

2. When referring to a practical theory we stress ‘the reflexive relationship between theory and practice – how each can inform each other – and, therefore, reflects an integration of practical and theoretical discourses’ (Barge, 2001, in Barnes & Craig, 2007, pp. 4–5).

3. ILTE (1998–2002) was a project Socrates – Lingua Action A (56290-CP-3-1998-LINGUA-LA) (see www.lett.unipmn.it/ilte). The Portuguese team developed education modules aiming at teachers’ didactic knowledge about intercomprehension.

4. All quotations were translated by the authors, which tried to remain as faithful as possible to the original words of the student teachers. LJ stands for learning journal and INT for interview. # indicates the number of each speech entry in the interview transcript.

5. As researchers, we have no explicit information which could clarify the reasons why this student teacher is still speaking in terms of ‘races’. Yet, our interpretations see it as a sign of conflicting discourses and the difficulties this student teacher may have in abandoning old meta-narratives and reconstructing her own discourse of diversity. This is naturally an item to keep in mind when analysing Phase 2 of the study.