This presentation reports on the experiences of nine Irish-medium secondary immersion teachers as they engaged in the instructional integration of language and content during a two year-long PD programme. Teachers reconfigured their professional identities revealing three stages of development – teacher as subject specialist, teacher as learner, teacher as leader.
The crux of effective immersion teaching is content and language integration, yet teaching with a dual focus on content and language is challenging for myriad reasons ( Lyster, 2011). An important step in moving towards a balanced curriculum that integrates both language and content is a need for immersion teachers to fundamentally reconstruct their identities (Cammarata & Tedick, 2012). Although there is a growing body of research on immersion pedagogy, there is a dearth of research on professional development (PD) experiences which enable immersion teachers to reconfigure their teaching identities. Research on PD experiences which enable secondary immersion teachers’ to transform their professional identities is even less scant. Qualitative in nature, this study seeks to understand and observe how secondary immersion teachers live through, experience and perceive professional development aimed at improving their craft. This presentation reports on the experiences of nine Irish-medium secondary immersion teachers as they engaged in the instructional integration of language and content during a two year-long PD programme. The study focuses on teachers’ learning and experiences as they worked to conceptualize language and content integration and to plan and implement instructional sequences. Data were collected from an extensive online questionnaire, individual interviews, reflections, lesson plans, online discussion fora, and focus groups. Findings suggest that teachers constructed new professional identities as immersion teachers as they engaged in the PD programme. Three stages of development were revealed – teacher as subject specialist, teacher as learner, teacher as leader. This research illustrates the discursive and evolving practices that shape what secondary immersion teachers think, know and do as they move toward that critical balance of language and content integration in instruction. The presentation will conclude with a discussion on implications for designing meaningful and effective immersion PD experiences.
