training often is “very theoretical with little input on how to put it into practice” and “trainers themselves may not have a deep understanding of the approach and especially how it can be used in a YL context” (p. 266). In other words, the specific needs of young learners are not aptly addressed in teacher education;
“transmissive and prescriptive teaching methods … still seem to be very common in YL language teacher education … leaving teachers ill-equipped for the realities of the 21st century learner-centred and communicative primary classroom. Even where more learner-centred pedagogies are introduced, … teachers still faced difficulties in changing their traditional roles during some phases of their lessons” (Garton, 2019, p. 267, 268);
a focus of studies presented in Zein and Garton (2019) was research on “a variety of ways in which the gap between theory and practice can be successfully overcome … by introducing a more applied approach, in particular in the form of actual teaching practice. … The opportunity to teach in actual classrooms, enabled a much deeper understanding of learner-centred pedagogies” (Garton, 2019, p. 268);
apart from classroom-based experience, also “practitioner research is … shown to be successful in bringing about change in teaching practices” for example “through collaborative action research” (Garton, 2019, p. 269);
almost all of the studies highlight “the importance of collaboration in YL language teacher education research” (Garton, 2019, p. 271) for teacher development projects to be successful. Reported forms of collaboration include peer collaboration or collaboration between trainees and teacher educators;
primary English teachers struggle to appropriately implement a child-appropriate methodology due to teachers’ limited language proficiency and limited pedagogical content knowledge (Wilden & Porsch, 2017).
From the limited knowledge base on early language teacher development that has been summarized in this chapter, no new insights for the set-up of the teacher development project that will be presented here can be delineated. Available studies largely confirm results from language teacher development programmes that have been presented in chapter 4.1.
In contrast to the not very prolific state of research in the area of early language teacher education there is quite a large body of research that has tried to identify the competences teachers need to gain on how to teach English as a means of communication. This will be summarized in the following two chapters. Competences will distinguish between teachers’ communicative English language competence and their pedagogical content knowledge. This survey will be used as a basis for designing the content of the teacher education project of the study that is presented here.
4.3 Competences required for teaching English in preschool
It has meanwhile become an acknowledged perspective in second language acquisition research that learning a language is aptly understood as a complex communicative, social event that may not be appropriately described if you consider just on one isolated variable – for example, a feature of the grammar of a language – alone. But the procedure of isolating individual variables of the target language in order to understand language learning processes in quantitative research designs had been the prevailing research tradition in language acquisition research until about a decade ago. It was at an international conference for teachers and researchers of English in 2008 (the biannual TESOL Convention in New York) that Johannes Eckerth, a language acquisition researcher from King’s College London, challenged this hitherto prevalent approach. He recommended a new research paradigm instead that would be able to capture the complex process of language learning understood as a complex, communicative and social event in more inclusive ways. He argued as follows:
A task is always more or less adequate for a certain group of learners. Tasks are carried out by individuals with different dispositions in different settings. What individual learners do when confronted by task X is likely to be co-determined by a host of other variables. In other words, tasks, patterns of interaction, cognitive processes, and learning outcomes may not be directly related. We may therefore conclude that a generic understanding of task-based interaction and learning should be complemented by an inquiry into local settings, curricular purposes, and individual dispositions (Eckerth 2008, conference handout, n.p.; as cited in Müller-Hartmann & Schocker, 2018a, p. 99).
An awareness of the crucial role of ‘local settings’ or ‘contexts’ has since then become a major factor that researchers increasingly consider in their studies on language learning. As the research presented in this work is also set in a particular language learning context, I will need to describe the specific competences teachers need to develop so that they will be able to address their particular learners’ needs appropriately.
These competences have been identified by research that subscribes to the above mentioned contextually situated research paradigm. It has meanwhile addressed a number of different language learning contexts, ranging from primary to adult language learning. This has resulted in a generally agreed on approach to teach languages, the task approach or Task-based language teaching (TBLT) (see summaries in Müller-Hartmann et al., 2013; Müller-Hartmann & Schocker 2016a; 2018b). Even though the general principles of the task approach are established, teachers will still need to clarify what kind of tasks qualify as appropriate for their particular group of learners – in this case: preschool children – so that they have the potential to develop their communicative English language competence in a way that suits their language learning needs. Developing appropriate tasks for their particular groups of children is therefore a basic competence which preschool teachers need to develop. This is demanding. I have therefore illustrated the general task principles that research has identified by designing preschool tasks as a model, which I will use in my teacher education programme to make it more accessible for the preschool teachers who participate in my study (→ chapter 5.8).
A further competence that teachers need to develop is a solid communicative English language competence, which enables them to use the foreign language in a confident, flexible way so that they can appropriately mediate the foreign language to their groups of children (→ chapter 4.3.1).
A third important competence results from the fact that the contexts we prepare our teachers for are extremely complex: learners’ needs and teachers’ experiences are heterogeneous, depending on their individual biographies, and learning is a highly unpredictable event. Teachers therefore need to be able to reflect on what they do and relate it to the effects that their teaching has on the quality of the learning opportunities they provide for the learners. This process of reflecting practice is a substantial part of a teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge – a competence they need to develop as a constituent part of their professional competence. This is described in chapter 4.3.2.
4.3.1 Communicative English language competence
One of the reasons why task-based language teaching is demanding on teachers is the complex communicative English language competence it requires. Teachers need to stimulate discourse and use the language spontaneously in unplanned situations that are either created to promote language learning or are part of the classroom management (which includes classroom routines or opportunities offered by incidental learning situations, for example). English is taught through communication rather than as a subject of study, in other words: you learn a language while you are using it. This is what Cameron addresses in her methodology for teaching English to young learners when she says: “A teacher who uses a foreign language only for content of a lesson, and not for other purposes, reinforces the idea that the foreign language is a ‘subject of study’ rather than a means of communication” (Cameron, 2001, p. 203).
Wilden and Porsch (2019) in their review of studies on the professional development of primary foreign language teachers highlight a teacher’s “language proficiency” to be a basic competence along with their “knowledge about FL teaching methodology appropriate for young learners” (p. 9; italics in original). What they summarize by referring to existing studies in primary foreign language teacher development also applies to preschool teachers: