Using multilingual approaches - moving from theory to practice

A resource book of strategies, activities and projects for the classroom.

Authors: Kathleen Heugh, Mei French, Janet Armitage, Kerry Taylor-Leech, Necia Billinghurst and Sue Ollerhead (University of South Australia)

This book aims to introduce important evidence relating to language learning in multilingual contexts and develop the practice of using multilingual approaches in the classroom. It has been especially designed to support teachers who teach English as a subject and for teachers who use English as the medium of instruction (EMI) in classrooms with students in linguistically diverse and often resource-poor communities. The resource has three main parts:

  1. A guide that explains relevant research evidence
  2. Strategies, activities and projects that teachers can use in their classrooms
  3. An abridged list of resources for multilingual education for further exploration

Drawing on the authors’ decades of experience, the practical ideas covered here are underpinned by research and evidence from around the world. They have also been piloted with teachers in India, who in turn have tested them in their classrooms and provided useful feedback and ideas. 

Watch the short film below about how and why this resource was developed.

Youtube Video

Comments

Submitted by Gulshan Ara on Thu, 03/26/2020 - 03:45

Quality education can be defined as education that is meaningful, relevant and responsive to the needs of individuals and the society as a whole. According to the “Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2005 - The Quality Imperative (EFA: GMR)”, two principles characterize how quality education is defined: the first identifies learners' cognitive development as the major explicit objective of all education systems; the second emphasizes education's role in promoting the values and attitudes of responsible citizenship and in nurturing creative and emotional development. Now we need to see whether these basic Elements of Quality of Education were the part of Continuous Professional Development or not, and whether these all important elements were being focused by District Teacher Educators in their relevant CPD Activities or not. To answer these both questions we need to have look at District Teacher Educators CPD Activities and their school visits purposes. The responsibility of a District Teacher Educator (DTE) is to promote the quality of student learning by providing on-site and on-going professional support to his/her fellow primary school teachers. The tasks to be performed by a DTE can be divided into three major areas i.e., Training, Mentoring, and Coordination. The present study is concerned with role of DTEs in respect of teachers training.

According to DSD Lahore (2006) the DTEs has to perform following tasks as a teacher trainer:

  1. To assess and identify professional development needs of primary school teachers within the cluster;
  2. To organize in-service training courses for the teachers as per identified needs within the overall CPD framework;
  3. To work with the head teachers to plan and organize school-based in-service training (INSET) and other professional development activities. 

Continuous Professional Development (CPD) has been receiving high priority at in Pakistan for some time (Govt. of Pakistan, 2001; 2007; & 2009) and there is a growing awareness among teachers also for the importance of continuous professional development. There are currently three main providers: education colleges run by provincial and municipal educational authorities; tertiary teacher education and other institutions of higher learning; and overseas institutions and organizations. The programme was based on the premise ‘that professional learning is more likely to improve student learning outcomes if it increases teachers’ understanding of the content they teach, how students learn that content and how to represent and convey that content in meaningful ways.

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