Kirsten Birsak de Jersey - English in Inclusive Multilingual Preschools

This differs from the relationship of a teacher educator and a student-teacher. Preschool teachers are to keep their role as expert preschool teachers, in which “the context is very much an integral part of their teaching act” (Tsui, 2003, pp. 30-31), rather than having them lapse into the role of novice teachers, for whom the “context is very often taken as something external and ignored” (pp. 30-31). By working together, collegially an authentic equality can develop between the teacher educator and the preschool teachers, despite preschool teachers’ inexperience in the field of teaching English. This collegial relationship helps to contribute to an environment that is conducive for the preschool teachers to operate as experts as they take part and teach English with the teacher educator in the same lessons and continue during the week. In Tsui’s study on exploring the concept of expertise in teaching she clarifies this distinction between the different roles of novice preservice teachers and experienced in-service teachers as follows: “Novice teachers tend to act according to rules and guidelines laid down by people with authority, whereas expert teachers rely on their own judgment and exercise autonomy when planning” (Tsui, 2003, p. 25). This role description of teachers in-service and teacher educator resembles the characterization of language learners’ roles as independent learners in a classroom:

Learner roles in an instructional system are closely linked to the teacher’s status and function. … Some methods are totally dependent on the teacher as a source of knowledge and direction; others see the teacher’s role as catalyst, consultant, guide, and model for learning. (Richards & Rogers, 2001, p. 28)

With these general considerations on the role relationship between the teacher educator and participating preschool teachers in mind, the following two chapters will describe in detail the required competences of the teacher educator so that the aforementioned non-hierarchical relationship of working cooperatively with the children and teachers’ developing through this process will be supported. This is done by describing the components that have been integrated in the teacher education model.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.