What Works 10: Teacher Education and Languages
What Works 10 provides a compelling case for action to address major issues in languages teacher education in Australia. It includes a snapshot of languages teacher education in Australia in 2015 and analyses key trends since 2007.
What Works 10 identifies six key issues concerning languages teacher education in Australia. Urgent, collaborative effort is required by Australian governments, universities and teacher education stakeholders to address :
- Continued shrinking of languages teacher education offerings
- Lack of language differentiation in teacher education
- Lack of concurrency of language and methodology studies
- Lack of nationally consistent and standardised assessments in languages teacher education
- The long road to Languages specialisation
- Nationally consistent licensing for languages teachers
It is not easy for pre-service teachers to access in-depth languages methodology training to develop their capacity as languages teachers. The ways in which languages teacher education has been set up in Australia suggests that becoming an expert languages teacher involves many years of initial teacher training and further specialist training. While this may address the issue of quality languages teaching, it may also act as a disincentive for teachers to specialise in languages.