This featured talk will examine challenges associated with teacher training for content-based instruction. I will discuss three studies across contexts: Canadian French immersion, subject teacher training in France, and bilingual education in China. I will also highlight the central importance of content-language awareness as a cross-context teaching competency.
Lack of adequate teacher training has been named one of the most pressing issues across content-based contexts. For instance, researchers have called for training to support EMI teachers’ language proficiency (Macaro et al., 2018), to improve immersion teachers’ ability to integrate content and language (Lyster & Tedick, 2014), and to unify teachers’ perspectives on CLIL pedagogy (van Kampen et al., 2017). In this featured talk, I will examine challenges associated with teacher training for these contexts, and I will discuss content-based teacher-training studies using teachers’ content-language awareness as a guiding construct. Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) (Andrews, 2003) has frequently been used as a construct for L2 teacher cognition. It examines teachers’ use of, knowledge about, and ability to select pedagogical methods to instruct the target language. Some studies have adapted TLA for contexts in which teachers must integrate content and language instruction goals (He & Lin, 2018; Lindahl, Baecher & Tomas, 2013). In line with this research, I will outline three cross-context studies using content-language TLA as a guiding construct and framework of analysis. In Study 1, I collaborated with experienced Grade 1 and 2 Canadian French immersion teachers (N = 3) to develop and implement language awareness strategy instruction. Through this process, teachers’ own content-language TLA underwent change. In Study 2, novice secondary-level subject teachers (N = 30) in France participated in workshops targeting the creation of content and language objectives. Their content-language TLA was measured before, during, and after the workshops. Finally, in Study 3, teachers in a Chinese-English bilingual school in China (N = 20) videorecorded three of their own science lessons over one year, audiorecording reflections on their ability to integrate content and language. Combined findings indicate the need to develop content-based teachers’ content-language awareness as an essential competency for a range of content-based settings.
