Lesley Harbon

Broadening our sights: internationalizing teacher education for a global arena

This article represents the collaborative efforts of two college faculty, one in the USA and one in Australia, exploring notions of internationalization of colleges of education and research on multilingualism and teacher education. First, the paper presents experiences of interactions with international researchers in Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Italy, Finland and Australia. Second, it presents research of three overseas immersion language teaching and learning experiences pursued with teacher candidates from Australia in Indonesia, Korea and China. The article focuses on two questions: in what ways can teacher educators enhance their expertise to prepare teachers for multicultural teaching in a global context? How can teacher educators and institutions create contexts and experiences where teachers and prospective teachers develop their knowledge, skills and dispositions to teach from an international and multicultural perspective? In essence, how can faculty prepare teachers to internationalize curricula and effectively teach students, not only from different ethnic groups and cultures but also different nations and languages?

Reading for meaning: Problematizing inclusion in Indonesian civic education

This paper reports on the use of the Index for Inclusion in five socioeconomically different primary school contexts in Indonesia. The research was designed and developed through Australian and Indonesian teachers and teacher educators collaborative efforts over a year. The work took place during the post‐Suharto reform period and focuses on the field of Civics education. The research examines what the ethic of inclusion means to teachers participating in political and educational democratization as they attempt to embrace and develop citizenship classroom practices that feature respect for difference. The theoretical interest is in both citizenship theory and inclusion; showing how the civic cultures of school and nation intersect; and the implications of that intersection for inclusion theory and cross‐cultural theorizing of inclusion more broadly.

Chinese Students in a ‘Sea’ of Change: One Teacher's Discoveries about Chinese Students’ Learning and Emotions Through Use of Song

Abstract The research examines one teachers perceptions of the value of offering a song which allowed her to teach not only the ‘content’ of her unit of study, but which has also become the focus of her ‘process’ and ‘pedagogy’ in the unit. The study also examines the teachers reactions to the deep level to which (she maintains) the Chinese learners engaged with her teaching of the song. The study has taken place over the past three years, and data have been sourced through the reflective journalling strategies of the Australian university teacher/researcher as she routinely reflects on noteworthy aspects of her teaching in an offshore postgraduate education programme in China. Her reflections imply that the Chinese learners not only saw the surface meaning of the song lyrics, but also due to the material being offered in song genre, were touched emotionally to engage with the meaning of the song lyrics for their own lives and their further understanding of their Chinese heritage beliefs.

Preparing teachers through international experience:: A collaborative critical analysis of four Australian programs

In an increasingly internationalized, interconnected and globalized world, characterized in many school education contexts by diverse classrooms and varied student needs, the importance for teachers to develop an intercultural competence has become urgent. International experiences, embedded within teacher education, are seen as one means to enhance this capability. In this Australian study, coordinators of international professional experiences from four NSW universities discuss and interrogate the strengths and weaknesses of their own and each other’s programs, guided by an established evaluation framework for such programs. Findings indicate that, while support for such programs is strong in the lead-up to and during such international experiences, subsequent evaluation of these programs and reflection remain underdeveloped. Implications for international professional experience programs are discussed.

Creating an Ecology of Affordances to Allow Australian Pre-service Teachers to Get to Know and Make Sense of China

This chapter reports the reflections of two Australian teacher educators, captured through their planning emails, as they accompanied a group of Australian pre-service teachers on a short-term international experience (STIE) in China in June 2014. The ten pre-service teachers would, among other things, encounter culturally embedded (many of them ‘linguistic’) differences as they ‘got to know’ and ‘made sense of’ China. The two teacher educators capture their own conceptualisation of pre-service teachers’ processes of learning-to-know for framing of such student mobility programs in the future.

The Innovation and Challenge of a Content and Language Integrated Learning Approach to CFL in One Australian Primary School

This chapter offers an alternative lens through which to examine the teaching of Chinese language and culture in an Australian school. At this particular primary school in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, three subjects (Music, Science, Human Society and Its Environment) are taught through Chinese. Offering a languages program within a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) program is relatively new in Australian schooling, thus the researchers were interested in examining implementation and related issues. In this chapter the CLIL teacher’s means of planning, designing, and implementing her teaching of Chinese is explored through her beliefs about teaching as well as her beliefs about languages. Examining the Chinese CLIL primary school model through teachers’ beliefs is not a common way of understanding how languages are taught. This research has found that at the core of the teacher’s core beliefs is an assumption that humans can cope with more than one language at a time, and that high expectations, from parents and teachers, should surround such programs. A CLIL languages program is a pedagogically sound program offering that can make a difference to students’ learning outcomes, with advantages over traditional Chinese-as-a-Foreign-Language practice where language content may not be linked to the child’s learning in other curriculum areas. The research is framed and analysed through the 4Cs (content, communication, cognition, culture) lens, allowing a detailed analysis of what language and culture are taught, who participates and how they participate, as well as how the teacher makes decisions and plans.

The Art of Unpacking: using flexible delivery materials for teachers preparing to learn in overseas contexts

Abstract Teachers with direct experiences of other education systems are valuable resources and it is increasingly common for pre-service and in-service teacher education programs to provide overseas learning experiences for students (Hill et al, 1997). When involved in an overseas school experience or language and culture study, participating teachers are able to compare curriculum and pedagogical issues. Their beliefs on teaching and learning and the influence of cultural context can and do impact on curriculum implementation. This comparison can adequately be undertaken by critical reflection processes: teachers reflecting on their classroom experiences; exploring teaching and learning practices, to eventually be able to change or reframe their understandings of why they do what they do (Brookfield, 1995). Our challenge was how best to maximise such a learning experience for both undergraduate and postgraduate teachers undertaking the in-country school experience in West Sumatra during January 2001. In conjunction with a decision to provide overseas offerings in undergraduate and postgraduate programs in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania, the researchers developed and implemented a CD-ROM resource package for students involved in the Indonesian in-country units of study. This package, comprising a pre-departure learning package of guided readings and webbased interaction, became a learning scaffold for the students and allowed them to maximise the in-country experience as well as organise their reflective practices. Evaluation of the planning and design stages of the project is reported, as well as issues arising from the pilot implementation of the package.

An Interactive, Co-constructed Approach to the Development of Intercultural Understanding in Pre-service Language Teachers

In our responsibilities for language teacher education, we have critiqued in recent years the sometimes limited success of intercultural learning activities, and become dissatisfied that the intercultural concept has been diminished to static and essentialized comparisons of culture, in some language classrooms. This has led us to explore an experiential collaborative approach to the development of intercultural understandings in pre-service language teachers, where an intercultural dynamic can be seen operating in co-construction between themselves and their peers. The researchers introduced two groups of pre-service language teachers to discourse analysis, and recognition of classroom discourse patterns, such as Initiation–Response–Evaluation. The pre-service teachers, in small groups, discussed a number of transcripts from school language classrooms that were endeavouring to ‘be intercultural’. The chapter reports the unexpected additional learning that emerged from this task. The discussion offered the pre-service teachers an opportunity to critically examine cultural assumptions, both in the classroom lesson transcripts, and among themselves. Within their small group interactions, the pre-service teachers constructed a zone where they could voice diverse perspectives, notice, explore and respect the complexity of the interaction. Structured social interaction enables some of them to transform their thinking, and take away the beginning of their own personal and dynamic understanding. It appears to represent a useful task to support critical reflection, in requiring pre-service teachers to move beyond the acquisition of knowledge about ‘intercultural’, into active questioning of their perspectives, complexity, and assumptions.