Call for Papers Language Education and Multilingualism. The Langscape Journal

Issue: Language Teacher Education and Plurilingualism in Digital Learning Environments

https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/handle/18452/19672

 

Technology has both revolutionized the way we teach and learn languages and created a sense of urgency in the need to modernize the initial and ongoing training of foreign language teachers: in a globalized world – which is for instance characterized by an exponential growth in international student mobility (Molinié 2007) and easy access to authentic language input (Whyte 2014) – teachers are led to take on new roles (tutor, mediator, facilitator, etc.); technology has also impacted communication through the proliferation of various media initiatives and communication channels which not only use sound and speech but also a rich variety of other media- which include aesthetic (creative video clips, for example) or non-verbal (virtual reality glasses) means of communication – to convey information, images, thoughts, ideas and feelings.

The advent of the Internet and the growth of digital technologies therefore raise questions about their educational affordances (Gibson 1979) and their potential to transform language teaching practices and student learning (Chun, Smith & Kern 2016), to foster digital literacy, language learning and intercultural dialogue and to contribute to student identity development.

Tandem learning in particular – by bringing together and fostering cooperation between language learners and teachers from different national, cultural and linguistic contexts – has inspired researchers to take a keen interest in different issues relating to plurilingual and pluricultural awareness in language learning and teacher education: for example, learning from each others' experience, engaging multilingual learners, resorting to translanguaging practices (García & Wei 2014) or teaching through various multilingual approaches (Narcy-Combes et al. 2019).

As learning specialists, teachers have both an 'epistemic responsibility' and a responsibility towards students, practitioners and the wider society alike (Narcy-Combes 2005). However, in the digital age, seeking to impart academic skills or methodological strategies no longer meets current needs. That is why it is crucial to support language teacher training by helping teachers gain a greater awareness of their skills, attitudes, beliefs and emotional behaviours and to promote research-informed practice in teacher education. This justifies the need to set up multidimensional professional development programmes that operationalise the concept of mediation in L2 teacher education (Brudermann et al. 2018).

Besides, the current state of empirical research in teaching and learning encourages pre-service teachers to explore their “teaching actions“ (Cicurel, 2011), so as to better understand both their inner selves and their teaching practices and to further make concrete proposals for the effective implementation of initial training schemes based on experiential learning. In this respect, implementing initiatives supporting and promoting teachers’ (continuing) professional development through reflective approaches (Fallell 2016; Korthagen/Hoekstra/Meijer 2014) and the transfer of knowledge from the training to the teachers‘ classroom environments is of paramount importance (Abendroth-Timmer 2017 ; Caspari 2014 ; Schädlich 2014).

To do so, using online collaboration tools to engage (would-be) teachers in teamwork can help them gain critical distance from the particularities of their profession and their prior knowledge. However, as digital education is rapidly transforming teaching and impacting student learning, students and teachers alike are bound to run into barriers of resistance. Support therefore has to be provided to deal with resistance to change (Duclos 2015 ; Burrows & Miras, forthcoming).

All in all, these pedagogical initiatives raise questions about the sustainability of the different research methodologies that have been applied until now to train teachers; they also emphasise the need to pay particular attention to harnessing the digital revolution to collect and process data, with a view to fostering teacher development.

 

Topics

Key thematic strands include: 

 

1.  Epistemological/educational basis in the digital age
How can pluricultural and plurilingual communication, co-construction of knowledge and identity formation in the digital age be described and modelled? Is the construction of models conceivable at all?

 

2. Concepts for foreign language teacher education

Which (experimental and multimodal) educational settings in foreign language teacher education promote collaborative, pluricultural and plurilingual learning processes? How does instructional design need to be intertwined with the professional field? How can these processes be transferred to the learning environments?

 

3. Research practices in foreign language teacher education in the digital age

How do digital learning environments impact the reflection, self-confrontation and the consciousness of teachers? How can the impact on collected data in these environments be described? Do learning environments in the digital age require new research methods?

 

4. Plurilingualism/pluriculturalism as practice and/or aim in the digital age

How can interactions between plurilingual learners in plurilingual/pluricultural digital learning environments be described? Which translanguaging practices (García & Wie, 2014) can be observed? Plurilingualism as a precondition or aim of language learning and teaching in the digital age?

 

References

Abendroth-Timmer, D. (2017). Reflexive Lehrerbildung und Lehrerforschung in der Fremdsprachendidaktik: Ein Modell zur Definition und Rahmung von Reflexion. Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung. 28 (1), 101-126.

Brudermann, C., Aguilar, J., Miras, G., Abendroth-Timmer, D., Schneider, R. & Xue, L. (2018). Caractériser la notion de médiation en didactique des langues à l’ère du numérique: apports d’une réflexion plurielle en ingénierie(s). Recherches en didactique des langues et des cultures: Les Cahiers de l’Acedle, 15 (3).

Burrow, A. & Miras, G. (2019, à paraître). Pratiques numériques en langues : prendre en compte les préoccupations pour envisager un accompagnement des enseignants. Alsic.

Caspari, D. (2014). Was in den Köpfen von Fremdsprachenlehrer(inne)n vorgeht, und wie wir versuchen, es herauszufinden. Eine Übersicht über Forschungsarbeiten zu subjektiven Sichtweisen von Fremdsprachenlehrkräften (2000-2013). Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen, 43 (1), 20-35.

Cicurel, F. (2011). Les interactions dans l’enseignement des langues: Agir professoral et pratiques de classe interlangues. Paris: Didier.

Chun, D., Smith, B. & Kern, R. (2016). Technology in language use, language teaching, and language learning. The Modern Language Journal, 100, 64-80.

Duclos, A. M. (2015). La résistance au changement: un concept désuet et inapproprié en éducation. Psychologie & Éducation, 2015-1, 33-45.

Farrell, Thomas S.C. (2016). Anniversary article. The practices of encouraging TESOL teachers to engage in reflective practice: An appraisal of recent research contributions. Language Teaching Research 20 (2), 223-247.

García, Ofelia/Wei, Li (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism, and Education: Basingstroke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to virtual perception. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Korthagen, F. A. J.; Hoekstra, A. & Meijer, P. C. (2014). Promoting Presence in Professional Practice: A Core Reflection Approach for Moving through the U. In. Gunnlaugson, Olen; Baron, Charles & Cayer, Mario (Hrsg.) (2014). Perspectives on Theory U - Insights from the Field. Hershley, PA: Business science, 77-96.

Molinié, M. (2007). Mobilité internationale et activité formatrice du sujet plurilingue . Revue de la Société japonaise de didactique du français (SJDF), 2007, Etudes didactiques, 2 (2).

Schädlich, B. (2014). The Language Teacher. In Fäcke, Christiane (ed.). Manual of Language Acquisition. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 274-290.

Narcy-Combes, J.-P. (2005). Didactique des langues et TIC: vers une recherche-action responsable. Paris: Ophrys.

Narcy-Combes, M.-F., Narcy-Combes, J.-P., MacAllister, J., Leclerc M., Miras, G. (2019). Language Learning and Teaching in a Multilingual World. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Whyte, S. (2014). Contextes pour l’enseignement-apprentissage des langues: le domaine la tâche et les technologies. Linguistique. Université du Havre.

 

Editorial staff

Prof. Dr. Dagmar Abendroth-Timmer (Universität Siegen),
Dr. José Ignacio Aguilar Río (MCF, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle),
Dr. Cédric Brudermann (MCF, Sorbonne Université – faculté des sciences et d’ingénierie),
Dr. Grégory Miras (MCF, Université de Rouen Normandie),
Ramona Schneider (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

 

Publication Schedule

July 15, 2019: Submission deadline for abstracts (perz@romanistik.uni-siegen.de)

October 31, 2019: Submission deadline for first drafts of manuscripts spring/summer 2020: Publication of special issue *