Enhancing teacher development by implementing pluralistic approaches

Rebecca Dahm (1)

1 CLLE-ERSS - Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie

This paper aims at examining ways to help teachers review their EFL teaching strategies by implementing pluralistic approaches. “The term ‘pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures’ refers to didactic approaches which use teaching /learning activities involving several (i.e. more than one) varieties of languages or cultures” (Candelier et al., 2008). A previous study led by Dahm (in print) showed the results of making pupils reflect upon unknown languages in a systematic way: not only did they enhance their learning strategies, they also developed their metalinguistic skills. However, these cognitive advantages were not automatically transferred to the L2 they are studying (English) because both teachers and learners compartmentalized the learning situations. It is thus hypothesized that by making teachers reflect upon the didactical transposition (Chevallard, 1985) required by pluralistic approaches, they become more aware of the advantages of setting up meaningful problem-solving and decision-making tasks (Ellis, 2003) and will thus be able to embed them in their daily language teaching. However, to be able to do so, they need to change their perceptions of the students’ abilities. Preconceived ideas about students’ abilities do not only hinder them when setting up the lesson plan but do also play a part on the way they implement the course (Clark & Peterson, 1986). These variables will be studied by analysing the video-recorded meetings of the action-research group, the qualitative data drawn from the teacher questionnaires and the recordings of the learning interactions. This presentation will therefore first address the concepts of both didactical transposition and reference didactics since knowledge cannot be purely conceptual but also needs to be socially embedded. Then we will approach the methodology used before exploring the relationships between the knowledge taught (derived from unknown languages), the teacher and the pupil with the help of the triangular model (Houssaye, 1988).

Domaines: Sciences cognitives; Linguistique

Rebecca Dahm. Enhancing teacher development by implementing pluralistic approaches. AILA World Congress - One world, many languages, Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée, Aug 2014, Brisbane, Australia. ⟨hal-01915724⟩