ARMIF 2014-
The aim of this innovation and research project is to introduce the students completing the double degree in infant and primary education to a discourse genre with which they have a great deal of experience, but on which they have rarely reflected: the discourse specific to the classroom, which Bakhtin and others define as a second or referred discourse. We wish to introduce them to this genre bearing in mind two issues: the orientation towards a competency-based vision of the teaching-learning process; and the realisation that it is, at this time, essential to have access to strategies which favour the introduction of other languages, especially English, when teaching content material. The process that we have designed involves the collaboration of degree students, lecturers from the Education Faculty at the University of Barcelona – and from other universities – and infants and primary teachers from a number of schools. The methodology focusses on obtaining data from multimodal reflective texts produced by students studying subjects including languages, science, maths and school organization. The impact of the investigation is directly related to the degree students’ construction of those professional behaviours which will improve the quality of teaching in our country.
We have outlined seven specific objectives for this project, each related to the expectations of students completing the double degree:
- To understand the characteristics of classroom discourses in their various manifestations (productive, receptive and interactive), both in the language of schooling, and in English; and also taking into account the possible presence and influence of other languages.
- To improve the linguistic and communicative competence of students. This is to be achieved through metalinguistic reflection on languages and how they are utilized in different curriculum areas.
- To enable students to make effective use of their communicative abilities in the development, use and evaluation of different activities.
- To develop and strengthen competencies within curriculum content areas, with particular attention directed towards cross-curricular practices and to the cognitive and linguistic abilities required in each area.
- To develop reflective strategies which allow a micro-analysis of classroom activities from an interdisciplinary and plurilinguistic perspective.
- To actively take part in both face-to-face and virtual debates relating to communication in the classroom, in which both classroom teachers and university lecturers participate.
- To consider the importance of sharing knowledge relating to educative discourse and plurilingual competence with the community at large.
We have also identified three objectives that relate specifically to the classroom practice of the double degree students:
- To establish new frameworks of collaboration between university lecturers with an end to developing wider agreement and consistency in proposed classroom activities.
- To have university lecturers and school teachers reflect on the potential offered by utilizing a competency-based approach to teaching.
- To debate and discuss communicative processes in different knowledge areas in order to develop clear criteria relating to the use of curriculum languages when designing tasks.