This TDA Research and Development Award (R&DA) investigated the provision of training for modern foreign language teaching in primary schools. This is of interest because of the aim to offer KS2 children MFL by 2010.
At the time of this study, ITT courses for primary MFL were varied in the extent to which they emphasised linguistic competence, cultural enrichment and language awareness. This study examined the extent to which trainees became confident in these different aspects as well as investigating the content and structure of current PMFL ITT courses.
Findings are based on:
Two questionnaires to tutors(18 of 25 and 12 of 18 returned);
- Two questionnaires to all trainees following an MFL Primary specialism (230 and 140 trainee responses respectively from 18 and 11 of the 25 providing institutions)
- six interviews with course tutors;
six focus groups with trainees.
The researchers found:
- Qualifications and previous experience: 92% of the trainees had an “A” level qualification. However 47% had a linguistic qualification lower than a degree.
The amount of time a trainee spent abroad prior to embarking on a PGCE was a stronger predictor of their confidence than was their linguistic qualification and this was still true at the end of their PGCE course. - Tutors and trainees considered the most important purpose of PMFLs to be that of increasing children’s motivation for future language learning but beyond that there were differences between tutors and students.
- PGCE course tutors noted a bias towards promoting linguistic competence in ITT as opposed to cultural awareness, but this did not correlate with the majority of tutors’ own opinions.
- Trainees’ confidence in linguistic competence went up from an average of 5.8 to 7.4 (out of 10) and for cultural understanding it rose from 6.7 to 8.1 during their period of school based training abroad.
The ambition to offer all primary school children an entitlement to study MFL throughout Key Stage 2 by 2010 has implications for teacher training. These findings, based on work across all institutions currently providing MFL training for primary teaching in England, are worth reading in their own right and are of interest to ITT providers and trainers. Work on MFL training for primary teaching in England would benefit from consolidation.
This work was supported by a TDA Research and Development Award. These awards were designed to contribute to the knowledge base in ITT
Keywords
modern foreign language teaching, primary mfl, pmfl, teacher training, mentoring, mentors
Authors :
Alexandra Woodgate-Jones, University of Southampton, acwj@soton.ac.uk
Publisher :
TDA
Article Id :
12006
Date Posted:
17/6/2005