Dialogism as a framework for understanding language teachers’ learning
in multicultural and multilingual settings
Iris Pereira (Institute of Education, University of Minho), Ana Arregi (University of
the Basque Country) & Brenton Doecke (Deakin University)
Key-words: Dialogism; teacher education; knowledge base; multicultural and
multilingual settings; teachers' voices; teachers' writing.
Introduction
In "Writing and the situated construction of teachers’ cognition”, which develops
ideas presented at the 2013 IAIMTE conference held in Paris, Pereira (2014) argues
that the construction of teachers' reflective learning inevitably implies the integration
of different voices in the teachers' own voice. Pereira defends that those other voices
are fundamental for reporting, informing, evaluating and confronting practice and that
written texts (in the case she studied, portfolios) emerge as spaces for pre-service
teachers to perform such reflective professional learning. The article concludes by
putting forward the possibility of understanding the construction of teachers'
specialized discourses from the standpoint of Bahktinian's ideas on language. This
paper is a first approach to that challenge. In this presentation, we re-address the issue
of the construction of teachers' discourses to defend the idea that it entails the
enactment of a complex form of dialogism.
2. Theoretical inquiry: Voice and dialogue in Bakhtin
We found in the following excerpt a strong theoretical support for the idea that
motivated our theoretical turn into Bakhtin and his ideas on language. In here Bahktin
pungently shows social dialogue to be part and parcel of any living utterance, any
concrete discourse:
“As treated by traditional stylistic thought, the Word acknowledges only itself (that
is, only its own context), its own object, its own direct expression and its own unitary
language. It acknowledges another Word, one lying outside its own context, only as
the neutral Word of language, as the Word of no one in particular, as simply the
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potential for speech. The direct Word, as traditional stylistics understands it,
encounters in its orientation toward the object only the resistance of the object itself
(the impossibility of its being exhausted by a Word, the impossibility of saying it all),
but it does not encounter in its path toward the object the fundamental and richly
varied opposition of another’s word. No one hinders this Word, no one argues with it.
But no living Word relates to its object in a singular way: between the Word and its
object, between the Word and the speaking subject, there exits an elastic environment
of other, alien words about the same object, the same theme, and it is an environment
that it is often difficult to penetrate. It is precisely in the process of living interaction
with this specific environment that the Word may be individualized and given stylistic
shape.
Indeed, any concrete discourse (utterance) finds the object at which it was directed
already as it were overlain with qualifications, open to dispute, charged with value,
already enveloped in an obscuring mist - or, on the contrary, by the “light” of alien
words that have already been spoken about it. It is entangled, shot through with
shared thoughts, points of view, alien value judgments and accents. The Word,
directed toward its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled
environment of alien words, value judgments and accents, weaves in and out of
complex interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, intersects with yet
a third group: and all this may crucially shape discourse, may leave a trace in all its
semantic layers, may complicate its expression and influence its entire stylistic
profile.
The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical
moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands
of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given
object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social
dialogue. After all, the utterance arises out of this dialogue as a continuation of it and
as a rejoinder to it – it does not approach the object from the sidelines” (Bakhtin,
1934: 276, all emphases added)
Bakhtin's idea of the word as irremediably dialogic emerges as a suitable theoretical
framework to characterizing the nature of teachers' specialized discourses, and, as a
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consequence, as a promising framework for understanding teachers’ specialized
learning (to become teachers). However, Bakhtin's vivid argumentation does also
suggest that the dialogic process implied in the construction of voices, and of teaches’
voices for that matter, is not an easy one to accomplish. It was this particular idea that
stimulated us to further inquiry into the construction of teachers' voices under the
dialogic view that we report in this paper. The multilingual and multicultural context
of language teachers’ work that will be under discussion in the 2015 10th
IAIMTE/ARLE Conference to be held in Odense stimulated us to look into the
dialogic process implied in the construction of the voices of language teachers that
work in multilingual and multicultural settings.
3. Empirical inquiry: dialogue in the construction of the voices of language
teachers in multilingual and multicultural settings
For our preliminary empirical study we picked up a written report that a pre-service
kindergarten teacher accomplished during a practicum period held after her
theoretical learning. This case suited our empirical interests for several reasons:
language education is always at stake in kindergarten educational settings, but this
pedagogical concern becomes particularly prominent when the context is a
multilingual and multilingual one, as was the case reported in this piece of writing.
Last but not least, this report is a full example of a living utterance, having taken
meaning and shape at a particular historical moment in a socially specific
environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads,
woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given object of an utterance; it
cannot fail to become an active participant in social dialogue. After all, the utterance
arises out of this dialogue as a continuation of it and as a rejoinder to it (Bahktin,
1934). We thus considered it to be an idoneous case for our inquiry.
Ainhoa, a pseudonym, intervened as a kindergarten teacher in a Basque kindergarten,
in the Basque Country, a bilingual province in the North of Spain. Basque is the
historical local minority language, which became co-official with Spanish in 1983.
The social use of the Basque language is very unbalanced across the Basque province,
whereas the use of Spanish is omnipresent, which means that the social learning
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conditions for both languages are actually still quite different today. However, Basque
students are expected to be proficient in both languages when they leave school.
Ainhoa's school centre follows a specific model of linguistic immersion, in which the
Basque language is assumed as the language of communication and learning and the
Spanish language assumes the status of a learning subject (from primary grades
onwards only). Such model clearly aims at fully accelerating the learning of Basque
from the early educational stages before formal school begins, and has been reported
to be very successful in attaining the official linguistic aims (). There are two other
models that the Basque educational system offers students: (i) Spanish as the
language of communication and learning and Basque as a learning subject; (ii)
Spanish and Basque having a balanced presence as learning subjects and learning
and communication tools. As Cenoz (2005) puts it:
"Basque educational models are based on the assumption that bilingual
education has important advantages. Apart from being able to communicate
in the two official languages of the community it is assumed that bilingual
education can have a positive effect on cognitive development and
communication ability (see Baker 2001 for a review of research in this area).
It is also considered that there is interdependence between the languages
known by a bilingual person so that linguistic abilities acquired in one
language can be transferred to another one (Cummins 1976, 1981, 1988)"
(Cenoz, 2005: 45).
However it is relevant to mention that it is the first model we referred to above, the
one assumed by Ainhoa's school, that is reported to currently have the highest levels
of enrolment and effectiveness:
In light of the results obtained in the different linguistic models and at
different educational levels, we can ensure that students studying in the D
model [Ainhoa's school centre] obtained equal or better academic scores at
least as other pupils both the primary level, and the secondary and in the
exams that universities define for entering university degrees (Etxebarria,
2013: 104).
In her practical intervention, Ainhoa was therefore expected to promote the learning
of the Basque language in her practical intervention and, in her practicum report,
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Ainhoa was expected to fully detail the practical experience that she designed and
enacted. We scrutinized it in order to answer to the main question that stirred our
inquiry: how did Ainhoa dialogue with relevant voices apropos the construction of the
language education dimension of her practice? Ainhoa had a role to play as far as
language education, and we wanted to know how she managed to play that role.
3.1. Development of the analytical framework
We used Lee S. Shulman's categories of professional knowledge to identify the
relevant voices that our student teacher dialogued with in the construction of her
practice, as represented or, at least, as traceable in her written discourse. The work of
Shulman (1986, 1987) was a breakthrough in the understanding of the "knowledge
base" in teacher professionalization. Shulman (1986) identified seven categories of
knowledge that define such knowledge, in particular: a) content knowledge; b)
general pedagogical knowledge; c) curriculum knowledge; d) pedagogical content
knowledge; e) knowledge of learners and their characteristics; f) knowledge of the
educational context; g) knowledge of educational ends, purposes, and values and their
philosophical and historical grounds (Shulman, 1987:8). Among the various types of
knowledge that Shulman identifies as the knowledge base for teachers, he calls
particular attention to the pedagogical content knowledge (hereinafter PCK), which
concerns the body of knowledge about "how to teach a particular content or topic"
and that, in his opinion, defines the specialized teacher professional knowledge of
each specific area:
Among these categories, pedagogical content knowledge is of special interest
because it identifies the distinctive bodies of knowledge for teaching. It represents
the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular
topics, problems or issues are organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse
interests and abilities of learners, and presented for instruction (Shulman, 1987, p.
8).
Working with Shulman, Grossman (1990) re-elaborated this categorical list by
redefining and structuring the PCK into four ‘discrete’ categories of knowledge
initially defined by Shulman (knowledge of the purposes for teaching, knowledge of
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understanding of students, curriculum knowledge and knowledge of instructional
strategies) and by interrelating those with the other categories of knowledge, which,
altogether with the PCK, are involved in the construction of teacher's knowledge base,
as schematized in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Model of the teacher's knowledge structure (Grossman, 1990, adapted)
Shulman's codification of the "complex fundamentals" of the construction of
professional knowledge stood up as the most suitable basis for the development of our
analytical tool aimed to categorize the voices that Ainhoa dialogued with, thus
emerging as a powerful theoretical complement to Bahktin's ideas on dialogism.
Whereas Bahktin points to the inevitability of the dialogue, Shulman points to
relevant areas of knowledge with which to have such dialogue. Besides, he also
crucially points to the need that teachers are aware of these areas of knowledge which
dialogue so that their practice can be "the exercise of reasoned judgment rather than
the display of correct behaviour" (1986, p. 12). As Shulman says, this knowledge
allows teachers the conscious control of practice, that is to say, reflective practice:
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The vision I hold of teaching and teacher education is a vision of professionals who
are capable not only of acting, but of enacting – of acting in a manner that is selfconscious with respect to what their act is a case of, or to what their act entails (idem,
p. 13).
It is relevant to refer that for Shulman (1987) the academic and research
results are two of the four sources of knowledge for teaching, the other being the
knowledge of the context and materials & the practice itself and the knowledge that is
produced by using that knowledge in practice and consciously judging it. As he says,
"comprehension alone is not sufficient. The usefulness of such knowledge lies in its
value for judgment and action" (1987, p. 19). Thus, Shulman also realizes that his
notion of "knowledge base" should not be taken as a synonym of the whole practical
knowledge of teachers, which is a by-product "reflected experience" (Schön, 1983).
Shulman's theory thus sustained the setting of the following sub-questions, the
answers to which we hoped to find in our interpretative scrutiny of Ainhoa's written
discourse.
1. What does the teacher know about the object of learning that she has to promote
among the students, that is, about Basque?
2. What does the teacher know about pre-school education?
3. What does the teacher know about the linguistic context/community from which
children come?
4 PCK:
4.1. What does the teacher know about language curriculum for (Basque) pre-school
education?
4.2. What does the teacher know about the aims for language education (Basque) in
the pre-school?
4.3. What does the teacher know about the children's competence in the Basque
language?
4.4. What does the teacher know about specific strategies to enact language (Basque)
education in pre-school settings?
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5. Which voices does the teacher evoke about these areas of specialized knowledge?
3.2. Relevant findings
The analysis helped us to identify a set of different voices with which Ainhoa
dialogued in the construction of language education in the multilingual and
multicultural context in which she intervened. However, it also revealed that her
dialogue was more difficult with some voices (areas of knowledge) than with others
and that her professional dialoguing about language education was implicitly done in
most cases.
1. What does the teacher know about the object of learning that she has to promote
among the students, that is, about Basque?
Basque is Ainhoa's mother tongue, which she speaks and writes competently. When
in her report Ainhoa describes the centre where she did her practicum she tells its
recent history and also refers the change in the name of the school. Then she says:
"Simultaneously with the renaming of the centre, they also changed the language
model, and from 1998 to the present the model D is the only model offered by the
centre." By saying this, she is conveying that Basque is the only language to be used
and learned in her kindergarten classroom.
2. What does she know about education in pre-school years?
Ainhoa gives many clues that she knows a lot about the general pedagogical
framework concerning language education in the pre-school. We perceive that in the
references that she makes to the daily routine of the pre-school, to the aims and
objectives of such work and to the practice of the teacher with whom she was doing
her practicum (which she is able to critically analyse), as well as in the description of
her own practice about “tighten the shoelaces" and in the considerations that she
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makes about her theoretical learning at university. She puts a strong emphasis in the
practical and affective dimension of the learning environment for pre-schoolers:
"The methodology used is the centre is ‘teaching units’ and this is so also in the preschool classrooms and more specifically in the classroom of fives. The class is
organized in different corners: plastic corner, maths corner, language corner and
kitchen. In addition to the various corners there is room for students to do what is
called a circle or assembly. The day is quite similar and the dynamics are quite similar
but different issues arise every day or unforeseen things happen. To start the morning,
there is the circle to which the teacher dedicates 30 to 45 minutes. Then the children
are divided into groups and each of them works at one of the corners or does an
exercise sheet corresponding to the teaching unit. After recess, students continue with
the work of the teaching unit, although in some days they have music or English.
The circle or assembly is destined to enable children to speak or express what worries
them, but I must say that some preset routines do not allow time precisely for that for
which it is intended. Moreover, as we must finish with the theme that is being worked
in the teaching unit and the teacher usually runs out of time to work it properly, then it
occurs that the circle or assembly is actually used to finish the teaching unit.
Therefore we can say that the relationships arising in the classroom and the role of the
teacher are the result of the methodology. As mentioned above, the dominant aim is to
finalize the proposed theme, and other aspects are left behind, and the teacher
continues this provision, even though it entails disagreement with herself".
3. What does the teacher know about the linguistic context/community from which
children come?
Ainhoa offers a good characterization of the linguistic context of the children in her
class. It helps us understand that the Basque language was the second language (L2)
for some students who spoke Spanish at home, and that it actually was the third
language (L3) for many others who were immigrants and whose mother tongue was
different from the Spanish, which they also spoke with their friends. Ainhoa does not
identify these other L1s that were present in her classroom:
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As I explained when analyzing the school context, this is a centre where there is a
majority of immigrant students. A high percentage of the students are immigrants, and
likewise, as imagined, my group shared these characteristics.
In the group there were 18 children, 9 girls and 9 boys, some of them arrived last year
and others a little earlier. I had no chance to meet the 18 children because one of
them, of Nigerian origin, had travelled to Nigeria one day before I started practice and
did not return until late March, when I had already completed my practicum period.
Therefore, the group that I met had 17 children. They were all 5 years old, but of very
different origins. We must also mention that because the parents of some pupils that
were born in here were immigrants themselves, the mother tongue of many of these
children is neither Basque nor Spanish, but we must speak of a third language.
Moreover, there are also students whose parents were born in the Basque Country and
whose native language is Spanish. These students do not speak Basque either.
4. PCK
4.1. What does the teacher know about language curriculum for (Basque) pre-school
education?
In the Basque educational system, there is only one curriculum for pre-school
education for the three models of education, which is enacted in different languages
according to the model that is followed in each school centre. In that legal text, we
find reference to the purposes as well as to the social and pedagogical conditions for
language learning. For instance, it establishes as purposes for language education,
from two year-old children onwards, the "enabling the students in the skills of
comprehension and expression, oral and written, in both languages, so that they can
be used as languages of relationship and use in all kinds of personal, social and
academic spheres" (Decreto curricular del País Vasco. Educación Infantil, BOPV,
viernes 30 de enero de 2009). It also pays attention to the sociolinguistic context and
to the difficulties arising from it by referring that "the process of acquisition and
development of both languages is affected by the different linguistic backgrounds of
the children, by the degree of acquisition of the home language and the sociolinguistic
context in which they are immersed" (idem). The legal framework also states that
"languages are acquired and developed through use in interaction with the people,
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through processes of negotiation of meaning that are similar in all languages and
contribute to strengthening the linguistic competence" (idem). The curriculum
specifies listening, speaking and talking as general contents for children to acquire.
By reading Ainhoa's report we infer that she is acquainted with this legal framework
for language education in the pre-school years and that her practice was generally
intended to implicitly enact it (as perhaps will be better shown below).
4.2. What does the teacher know about the aims for language education (Basque) in
the pre-school?
Ainhoa is very clear about the learning objectives that she pursued with her
intervention, which were the learning of concepts related to binding and loosing,
which she clearly situated the content area that was being worked with children.
However, she does not set clear purposes for children’s language learning in the
context of her intervention. From what she says about the task she prepared, we infer
that she wants to promote the learning of related language in Basque (more precisely,
about shoelace tying): the task offers children the opportunity to learn language
through the learning of such contents:
"The theme I chose for the teaching unit was learning to tie shoelaces. I had not
previously thought about the issue and neither had prepared it, it occurred to me at the
time and according to the situation. When I started the practicum period, children
were working an issue that had to do with buildings: building types, different jobs, etc
... At the end of the unit, there were some activities related to the tasks of binding and
loosing. When I saw that, I thought I could relate the task of tying shoelaces with
other types of work done in buildings. Thus, I presented the issue as a task that they
had to learn how to do, and thought of how to explain the importance of knowing how
to tie one’s shoes. (…) So I thought that they would relate the theme to the song
"Zapatak" ("shoes"). In the song the importance of tying shoes is explained, because
if you cannot tie shoelaces you can fall.
4.3. What does the teacher know about the children's competence in the Basque
language?
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In her discourse she does help us understand that the children did not have any
competence in the Basque language at all: she refers to "the problems with the
language (Basque) and its absence from the classroom". Against what would be
expected due to the education model that is assumed in the school, Spanish is the
dominant language in the school, and she acknowledges that: “As a result of all of
[children’s contexts of provenience], the language that is continuously heard in the
classroom is Spanish”. Ainhoa also does not make any reference to 'relevant linguistic
knowledge' children might have about the contents she was going to work with them.
4.4. What does the teacher know about specific strategies to enact language
education (Basque) in pre-school settings?
In her report, Ainhoa reveals to be aware of her role as the teacher (of Basque) in a
multicultural and multilingual setting in which Basque is actually not used at all in
children's interventions. In her text, Ainhoa gives some details about the educational
intervention that she enacted in this context.
Because the curriculum establishes that Basque is the language of communication and
leaning, she decided to use it in her interventions and interactions with children. As a
result, we learn that children were immersed in Basque by listening to a song that was
related to the content area they were studying, that there was an active and
collaborative moment of tying and untying shoes and that a worksheet was done:
"After hearing the song, we analyzed it altogether, and then we got down to tasks: I
found some wooden templates and cords and I explained how the knots were made,
and then I gave everyone a chance to try. After that, I distributed them in their work
places and finished my practice with a worksheet that appeared in the teaching unit, in
which children had to make holes in boots, put cords and do the knots. The fact that I
enacted the teaching unit this way obeyed a reason. I did not want it to be an activity
unrelated to what children had been doing before, something they did today and
forget tomorrow. I wanted them to relate to what they had been doing, based on the
same subject but by learning something different".
In another moment in her report, we find references to other aspects of the specific
pedagogy of a second language. We learn that the children also sang the song, thus
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adding an important (productive) dimension to the immersive moment created, and
that the teacher tried to be a model of the language for the children in order to forge
interaction in the target language:
"After making the interventions, my attitude towards children changed. I felt more
fulfilled and they also continually thanked me for what we had done, coming close
and singing the song, and when they tight the shoelaces and said "Ainhoa, ikusi"
("look, Ainhoa") and made the knot. Furthermore, considering the diversity and given
the absence of Basque in the classroom, I realised that there was progress in the use of
language from the day I began the practice until the day that I finished. If at first no
one spoke to me in Basque, in the end they knew that if they tried to speak to me in
another language that was not Basque I would not pay attention to them and that
would play the deaf. For that reason, if they wanted to be heard at least they knew
they had to strive to do so in Basque. And as I saw the recordings I realized that while
it was single words they spoke at least there was an effort to do so, where there was
not even an attempt to use Basque when I began. This filled me with joy"
Despite this, in her report Ainhoa tells that she barely had the time for children to
express themselves, to use their voices (we suppose) in Basque (just like what she
critically observed in the teachers' practice). Another way put, she was critical about
the fact that children had no time to practice, and she seems to be aware that the
reason for that was external to her:
As we walked pretty fair of time and the exercises were more than one, I cut out much
time to talk, so I think that did not leave them time to express their views and talk
about what they knew about it and express themselves. Although what I wanted to do
was interesting, it is often more interesting and enriching to hear what children think
and say…
From what she says, we can infer that Ainhoa knows about the centrality of the
Interactive pedagogy principle as formulated by Cummings (1979) in the learning of
L2 and as assumed in the curriculum for pre-school education in the Basque country.
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Yet we get few details about what she specifically did or about the specific
pedagogical strategies she used to enact this principle.
5. Which voices does she evoke about the areas of specialized knowledge?
Although we unveil the words of others in Ainhoa's own words when referring to the
construction of her practice (for instance, Ausubel’s theory of significant learning,
Bruner scaffolding, Wells' dialogic inquiry, Skinner's positive reinforcement, the
communicative competence of the teacher, the pre-school education curriculum,
children's and the teacher's voices), Ainhoa does not quote any voice and does not
refer to any specific author but Vygostky, whom she refers to when she assesses the
experience and generally relating what she observed in her practice to what she
learned in her classes at university:
When I was with the children I remembered many things that I worked at the
university and this is the first time that this has happened to me. Issues such as
positive reinforcement studied in psychology, the zone of proximal development of
Vygotsky, communicative competence of the teacher, scaffolding, learning based on
previous knowledge... all these theories came to mind again and again during my
practicum, and when I finished the practicum I left with this feeling: ‘What I'm
studying is worthwhile’”.
Discussion
Three main ideas emerge from this analysis that are related to our intentions.
1. The dialogic nature of the process of construction of Ainhoa's practice for
language education in multilingual settings
We found that Ainhoa's voice is full of semantic threads that connect her thought and
practice to many other voices that were meaningful in her context of her intervention.
Hers is a situated utterance that is filled with alive dialogic answers to the words that
surround her and make up that context. As such, her discourse echoes Bahktin's
thoughts on dialogism, as quoted at the beginning of our paper:
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“The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular historical
moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush up against thousands
of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological consciousness around the given
object of an utterance; it cannot fail to become an active participant in social
dialogue. After all, the utterance arises out of this dialogue as a continuation of it and
as a rejoinder to it –it does not approach the object from the sidelines”.
2. The embryonic knowledge of Ainhoa's specific pedagogical strategies for
constructing L2 education
We also found that Ainhoa does dialogue with voices from all the relevant areas that
Shulman identified for teachers professionalism, although it was evident that some
areas were more difficult for her to dialogue with. In particular, she does not show to
have been able to dialogue with specialised voices that talk about specific didactic
strategies for the construction of language education in multilingual and multicultural
settings. That was evident in the way that she gave so little detail about the way that
she actually enacted her plan but also in the fact that she did not refer to any relevant
voice apropos language education.
We perceive that she constructed a situated practice, a significant meaning making
context with potential for implicit learning of the new language through interaction,
but we know very little about this (linguistic) dimension of such practice in her own
voice. A song was sung in Basque. We perceive the teacher's concern with being
the model of the Basque language use when she says that she negotiated with the
children that she only spoke (in Basque) to them when they spoke in Basque to her (in
itself, a very demanding (non supportive) attitude towards learners themselves). We
also learn that children developed some language abilities with her intervention: nonspecified words and expressions of pragmatic value, which also shows how aware she
is of the importance of children expressing in Basque for their own learning. She
relates children's achievements to their efforts as well.
Nevertheless, we are left with many unanswered questions about how she made it,
how it was constructed. She gives no clue about how she managed to make herself
understood by children in Basque nor to how she supported-scaffolded them to make
any meanings out of the song... or learn words ... or sounds... nothing is said about
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that, something which otherwise we would expect to be a likely area of her attention,
as Cummings emphatically pointed out. From what we learn form her report, she
refers to an intense interaction with children about shoes, and we are lead to guess
that such interaction must have happened in Spanish among children themselves and
that the teacher must have recurred to translanguaging (Garcia & Wei, 2014) to make
herself understood, but she doesn't say a word about that.
Of all the knowledge categories we used in our inquiry, specific pedagogic knowledge
for second language education, precisely the one Shulman detached as the most
important knowledge for teachers, was the one Ainhoa apparently had a major
difficulty in dialoguing with. We are led to hypothesize that she did not have the
educational opportunity to dialogue deeply with such sources of knowledge as she did
with theories concerning the education of pre-school children in general or with the
curriculum itself. Maybe her silence concerning these relevant voices reduces to the
fact that she herself was not supported to dialogue with them, which makes us think
about the potential of the dialogic framework as used in our theoretical inquiry for the
conception of curricula for second language teachers' education. The fact that her
intervention was focused on shoes would not mean that a disregard to the stretgies for
the other learning that was happening, namely language.
Also, a word is due to Ainhoa's disregard for many children's L1. In her class, the
voice of immigrant children is never heard or used to make meanings; their L1 is
silenced (Hornenberg, 2006). Ainhoa does not seem to know of any pedagogical
strategy for dealing with the L1 of such children, although she is sensitive to their
situation when she complains about how the accomplishment of the centre's
scheduled work forced her to put affective care and closeness to a second plan:
"The teacher, at least where I worked, knows the reality, knows children quite well
and she knows that the situations that students are living at home are absolutely
crucial in the development of each of them. She values a lot to get to know each child
and their families and to respect their customs and traditions, but often, due to the
school methodology involved, it is impossible to attend to these aspects. The effort it
takes to carry out the teaching unit and to end it in accordance with the deadlines
relegates affectivity to a second place. Because of this, the teacher often feels a kind
of impotence, a 'want but cannot’. Despite making a great effort to have individual
interactions with each of the children, in order to know them better, to know what
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concerns them, their fears and feelings, her intentions are often blurred. The real time
devoted to each of the children is not enough to know what each of them feels and
thinks, and less when you consider how 5 year olds are: all they ask is that someone is
with them that loves them and that love is essential for them to move on. But I think
with the methodology imposed by the work of the teaching units, to achieve all this is
very difficult, or at least that is what I have seen and I have come to conclude. A
methodology whose objectives are focused on the acquisition of knowledge, through
the carrying out of worksheets, to prepare students for the following year (primary
education), leaves little room for the emotions".
3. Ainhoa's implicit way of dialoguing
Finally, we also found out that in her report Ainhoa centres on her practice and not on
the 'dialogue' that happened 'in her head' to be able to construct it. She is not explicit
about that nor does she seem to be aware of it except in the evaluative moment in
which she remotely remembered the theory that she learned at the university.
According to what Shulman defends (and many others who discuss reflective learning
in teacher education; see Pereira, 2014), according to which teachers' reflectiveness
about their practice is built upon specialised knowledge, we would expect her to
underline such dialogue as a sign of her professionalism. Shulman says:
The vision I hold of teaching and teacher education is a vision of professionals who
are capable not only of acting, but of enacting – of acting in a manner that is selfconscious with respect to what their act is a case of, or to what their act entails (idem,
p. 13).
However, the dialogue that sustained Ainhoa 's practice seems to have happened in a
silent mode, almost inaudible for us and perhaps very much so for herself. Simply put,
Ainhoa constructs a story about a practice, which she however scarcely informs
(Pereira, 2014). She also confronts her practice in a superficial manner because she
would need a conscious knowledge to do so. But again this is perhaps only an
expected consequence of the complexity that is involved in language education in
multilingual and multicultural pre-school settings as the Basque one.
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4. Dialogism as a framework for understanding teacher's professional knowledge
about language education: some relevant conclusions
Our theoretical and empirical inquiry led us to conclude about the potential adequacy
of our initial assumption concerning dialogism as a suitable framework for
researching (second language) teacher learning.
By revisiting Bahktin’s ideas, we easily concluded about the possibility of conceiving
language teacher learning as a process of intense dialogue. By invoking Shulman's
theory we think to have come to a promising framework for understanding teacher
learning as resulting from a necessary conscious dialogue with different and relevant
voices.
Our empirical analysis enhanced such theoretical position. We scrutinized a case of
language education in multilingual settings by making use of such dialogical
theoretical framework, and came to see how it in effect implies, from the part of the
teacher, a dialogic process with different, necessary voices. Besides, our empirical
inquiry allowed us to acknowledge how difficult and complex that conscious dialogue
can be for pre-service teachers. The voices of children who speak other languages, the
official educational voices and, particularly, the voices that theorise multilingual
pedagogy seem to be very difficult to dialogue with and answer to, in consonance
with Hornenberg's (2006) statement that “the implementation of multilingual
language policies through multilingual education brings with it choices, dilemmas and
even contradictions in educational practice”.
5. Emergent questions:
It is our conviction that our theoretical and empirical inquiries enhanced the adequacy
of the dialogic hypothesis for understanding teachers' learning, which now needs
expanding and application in more contexts of research.
Also, our inquiries raised the following questions, also in need of further specific
research:
- Is the dialogization the basic feature of education?
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- Is the dialogization the basic feature of the report (written genre) in teachers'
professional learning settings?
6. References
Bakhtin, M. (1934) "Discourse in the novel" in The dialogic imagination. Tr. by C.
Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1981
Cenoz, J. (2005) “English in bilingual programs in the Basque Country. International
Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2005, 171, 41–56
Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of
bilingual children. Review of Educational research. 49, 222-252.
Etxebarria, M.: (2013). Lenguas en contacto y enseñanza bilingüe en el País Vasco. In
Joaquim Dolz &Itziar Idiazabal (Eds). Enseñar (lenguas) en contextos
multilingües [Teaching (languages) in multilinguagal contexts]. Leioa:
Universidad del País Vasco.
Garcia, O. & Wei, Li (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and
Education. Palgrave Macmillan.
Grossman, P. (1990). The making of a teacher: teacher knowledge and teacher
education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Hornberger, N. H. (2006) Voice and biliteracy in indigenous language revitalization:
Contentious educational practices in Quechua, Guarani, and Maori contexts.
Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 5(4), 277-292.
Pereira, I. S. P. (2914). Writing and the situated construction of teachers’ cognition.
Language and Education, 28:6, 521-538.
Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. New
York: Basic books.
Shulman, l S. (1986). Those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching.
Educational Researcher, v. 15, n. 4, p. 4-14.
Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: foundations of a new reform.
Harvard Educational Review, v. 57, n. 1, p. 1-22.
Legal text:
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Decreto curricular del País Vasco. Educación Infantil, BOPV [Curricular Decree of
the Basque Country. Pre-school education. BOPV], Friday 30th January 2009.
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