FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

POLICY IN ARGENTINA

Leonor Corradi, M. Sc.

TOUR OF THE PRESENTATION

• Background

• FLT in Argentina at present: changes and

challenges

• A look to the future

POLICY

TEACHER EDUCATION

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL

POLICY

EDUCATION

TEACHER EDUCATION

MANDATORY

EDUCATION

CURRICULUM

DEVELOPMENT

TEACHER EDUCATION

TEACHING

•Definition of teaching

•A job and a profession

TEACHING: TWO MODELS

TECHNOLOGICAL

• The technocrat

• Technical control

• Pedagogical function

• Reforms: technical

aspects – focus on

teaching

• Technical identity

HOLISTIC/ECOLOGICAL

• The holistic professional

• Autonomy, responsibility

• Social function

• Reforms: technical and

social aspects – focus on

learning

• Social identity

EDUCATION ACT

• LEN, art 71

• Professional

• Concepts and values

• Personal development

• Construction of society

TEACHER EDUCATION

• A practice of cultural, reflective and critical

mediation

• Institutionalised profession

• Constructed pedagogical practice

• Practice focused on teaching

TEACHING PRACTICE

• Teachers should:

• have a deep knowledge of the discipline and

should be updated

• organize situated learning experiences

• guide and accompany students’ learning

• work collaboratively and cooperatively with

other teachers and create shared institutional

projects.

ELT

•Communicative period

•Instrumental aspect

•Post communicative period

•Formative aspect

• Construction of citizenship

• Social practice of language

• Linguistic socialization

TEACHER EDUCATION TODAY

• Deep understanding of the situation

• National plan of teacher education:

• Institutional level

• Curricular level

• Professional level

INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL

Teacher education

• Fragmentation

• Diversity and

inequality

• Norm approach

English teacher education

• Heterogeneity =

inequality

• Non context sensitive

offer

CURRICULAR LEVEL

Teacher education

• Bureaucratic updating

of curricula

• Traditional

approaches

• No investigation

English teacher

education

• Fragmentation of areas of knowledge

• Distance between curriculum and classrooms

• New adolescence

• Diversity

PROFESSIONAL LEVEL

Teacher education

• Life-long process

• Fragmentation of

offer

• Low impact

English teacher

education

• Little response

• Fragmented and

fragmenting

• English in primary

schools

• Non graduates

• Short term and low

impact

FL TEACHING

• Instrumental aspect

•Focus on grammar

•Vocabulary lists

•Long term objectives

CHANGES

Action

• One common

curriculum for

each province

• 20% institution

based

Action

• Common national

core

REFORM

• Improvement on teacher education

• Re-thinking teacher education:

• Autonomous professional

• Concepts and values

• Commitment

• Responsibility

COMMON CORE

• What does a teacher need to really

understand about teaching English?

• How can we and they know that they are

building what is needed for them to teach?

DOCUMENT ORGANISATION

•the big areas or strands (backbone of teacher education in the field of FLT)

•attainment targets and experiences students have to go through

•possible performances and learning experiences proposed to achieve the targets

•a grid with assessment criteria and descriptors which help identify progress.

THE AREAS

• Learning

• Citizenship

• Interculturality

• Discursive practices

LEARNING

• The complexity of learning a foreign

language

• A teacher’s role in language learning

• The learning processes

• Learning, the context and intervention

• Basic principles

LEARNING

Attainment target

The future teacher

identifies and analyses

critically the relationship

between different activities

and the theories of

language learning on which

the activities are based.

Experiences

Writes reports describing, explaining and interpreting different aspects of language learning.

Participates in debates (including on line debates) on topics related to language learning.

CITIZENSHIP

• Linguistic policy

• Literacy practices

• The foreign language teacher’s pedagogical

and political role and responsibility

CITIZENSHIP

Attainment targets

Understands that the access to literacy is a key element in the exercise of citizenship.

Is aware of the political role that the language teacher has in the defence of rights and of linguistic cultural identities associated with the language taught.

Experiences

Engages in role plays, creates or participates in blogs or any other means of communication to explore different ways of making his/her voice heard.

Participates in debates using different discursive strategies, showing a position in favour or against a topic, among other activities related to the exercise of citizenship.

INTERCULTURALITY

• Interculturality as a new teaching approach

• Mediating agents

• Otherness

• Cultural manifestations

• Intercultural and multilingual competence

• Why is interculturality key in language teaching?

INTERCULTURALITY

Attainment targets

Identifies different

conceptions of culture that

underlie teaching models

and what is to be taught.

Experiences

Assesses and confronts

different curricula taking into

account the context in which

they have been developed and

designs activities and teaching

sequences in keeping with

them.

Compares different cultural

sources and analyses cultural

marks

DISCURSIVE PRACTICES

• Mediation

• Enunciation

• Heterogeneity and effects of meaning

• Interpretation

• Linguistic realization

• Contexts of use and linguistic paradigms

• Oracy skills

DISCURSIVE PRACTICES

Attainment targets

Understands different

linguistic varieties of

the foreign language

and their social status.

Understands the

cultural traits of the FL

in its use.

Experiences

Recognises different social, regional and group varieties in a corpus of written and oral texts, and the value that different communities attach to them.

Using a corpus of written texts or technology mediated interaction in the L1 and L2, identifies and explains misunderstandings and interpersonal conflicts that can spring from culturally marked discursive practices

DESCRIPTORS

• Attainment targets

• Level I performance

• Level II performance

• Level III performance

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

• Traditions

• The context

• Long term goals at all levels

• Dialogue (schools, curriculum, teacher education)

• Bottom up and top down process

• Involvement of all parts

• Accompaniment

TEACHER EDUCATION

• Identification of context

• Identification of needs

• Long term aims

• Identification of common core areas

• Plan

TEACHER EDUCATION

• Plan:

• Path

• Stages of implementation

• Short, mid and long term objectives

• Built-in assessment and feedback

THANK YOU! leonor.corradi@gmail.com