The focus of this talk is on two case studies with relatively novice teachers, who participated in a multiliteracies-oriented OER project. Based on their experiences, it is argued that OER can serve a valuable role in the conceptual development of language educators by facilitating reflexivity.
This contribution describes the Foreign Languages and the Literary in the Everyday (FLLITE) Project, a joint initiative of two national foreign language resource centers (US Department of Education). The project seeks to provide tools and professional development resources for foreign language teachers to learn how to create their own OER, which incorporates literary language, i.e., playful and creative instances of language use. The project has two major, interconnecting goals: 1) the creation of a professional learning community whose members (university-level faculty, language program directors, and graduate students of language, literary, and/or cultural studies) create literacy-based materials peadgogical materials in the form of open lessons for copyrighted or open texts (written, oral, visual); and 2) the development of an ecology of professional learning based on the OER Life Cycle (WikiEducator). The focus of the presentation will be two case studies with FLLITE participants, who were relatively novice instructors at the onset of their collaborations with the project. Based on the experiences of these individuals, it is argued that the creation of OER exposes teachers to new ways of thinking about language and leads them to reflect on how they conceptualize language learning and teaching. Based on these examples, the talk argues that OER can serve a valuable role as a means of conceptual and professional learning for language educators.
