Ontario's recently instigated policy enhancing educational outcomes for diverse learners necessitates that pre-service programs provide teacher candidates with explicit instruction in supporting multilingual learners across the curriculum (Ontario College of Teachers, 2014). There is little agreement, however, about how the necessary skills and dispositions should be taught. Using documentary research methods and interviews, this presentation compares interview and website data from Ontario's 16 accredited teacher-education programs to examine how they are interpreting and implementing the policy. Findings exemplify institutions' diverse ways of responding to the policy and their growing but incomplete endeavours to adequately support multilingual learners.
While the Ontario College of Teachers oversees the professionalization of teachers and sets guidelines for teacher education, Faculties of Education retain autonomy in designing and conducting their programs (Faez, 2012; Petrarca & Kitchen, 2017). Ontario's move towards enhancing educational outcomes for diverse learners has necessitated that pre-service programs adopt reforms to ensure that teacher candidates receive explicit instruction about supporting English Learners across the curriculum (Ontario College of Teachers, 2014; Petrarca & Kitchen 2017; McDougall et al., 2017). Research has suggested the knowledge, skills and dispositions that pre-service and in-service teachers of ELs should possess (Feiman-Nemser, 2018; Lucas et al., 2018; de Jong et al., 2018). These include positive beliefs about ELs, subject matter knowledge, knowledge of language acquisition and learning, an understanding of learners and the local environment, a repertoire of curricular, instructional and assessment materials, and the tools to study their own teaching. However, there seems to be little consensus among teacher educators about how these skills should be taught. Using documentary research methods (Bowen, 2009) and interviews, we collected, assessed and compared data from the websites of the 16 accredited teacher-education programs in Ontario's universities, to examine how they are interpreting and implementing the new policy. We determined whether each Supporting English Learners component was explicitly offered through a stand-alone course, infused throughout teacher candidates' training, or integrated into their curriculum by subject-specific experts. Course syllabi, goals, strategies to support ELs, instructional hours and credits awarded upon completion were tabulated and compared. The gaps in these analyses served as the starting point for the interviews with faculty and/or administrators of Ontario's teacher-education programs. Our findings reflect institutions' diverse ways of responding to the policy and identify the growing but incomplete endeavours to adequately support diverse ELs in the classroom.
