Lack of support for teachers in view of:
- motivation
-
time
- technical support
- funding
- lack of understanding
from the authorities
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Complementing the ECML publication European Portfolio for Student
Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL), a set of tools is available to facilitate the implementation of the
EPOSTL in teacher education, including the challenges faced and ways of
overcoming them. In the first
video, David Newby presents these tools, which can be found on the
EPOSTL2 website.
An Irish participant in
CEF-ESTIM (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages - level
estimation grid for teachers) revealed that the main challenges included teachers' attitudes
towards the CEFR in an exam dominated system which is not yet aligned to
the CEFR, and lack of collaboration between teacher educators from
different universities.
These had been addressed through the following:
(1) developing contacts between language teacher educators through
the new national forum for languages (One Voice for languages)
(2) emphasising the advantages of the CEFR "can do" approach as
complementary to the new national curricular emphasis on 'key
skills'.
What is CEF-ESTIM? See here for a short
video description.
Challenges in implementing
DOTS (Developing Online Teaching Skills) in Bosnia-Herzegovina include:
• Low level of ICT knowledge;
• Lack of technical support (rooms,
materials and skilled people, e.g. ICT technicians).
Suggestions made to address the problems:
• Involving ICT teachers in the
project;
• Convincing the principals about
the usefulness of the projects for the whole school;
• Presenting to the principals an
effective way of how to equip the school;
• Convincing the financing authority
about the benefits of the project.
Some of the
materials
available on the website can support these actions.
The challenges of using
EPOSTL (Using the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages) in a teacher education programme in the Czech Republic can be found
here (page 19).
Sometimes teachers are interested in developing a project in a context
where they are the only ones convinced of its value. Here is an example
of one such teacher of English in a school that was interested in
developing portfolio approaches across the curriculum but was not using
the ELP on a whole-school basis. The teacher interviewed was
herself using the ELP, but she was an exception. She used „I can‟
checklists to make comparisons between English and German in classes
where pupils were learning both languages. She identified a number of
problems in the school’s use of portfolios, including lack of
coordination and lack of training/support for teachers. She also
mentioned that some of the older pupils could see no point in working
with a portfolio because it had no official status and thus could not be
used to support their progress from one educational level to the next.
This ELP-WSU (The European Language Portfolio in whole-school use) case study
from the Czech Republic showed how she managed to use part of the ELP
whilst also raising some awareness of it in the school.
One challenge is shortage of funds, but this does not mean that nothing
can be achieved; it may be that changes need to be more gradual, with
small steps and over a longer period, and that partial success needs to
be appreciated. In this case study from Iceland, the school’s
application for funding to support its whole-school ELP project was
rejected. It made sense to proceed on a voluntary basis, however,
because there is a close connection between the ELP and the new
curriculum. Also, teachers who had already worked with the ELP were keen
to promote its use across the school. Using selected parts of the
Icelandic ELP for learners in upper secondary education, the project had
two principal aims: (i) to introduce the ELP to teachers who had not
already worked with it, and (ii) to encourage teachers who were already
familiar with the ELP to use it more extensively. In both cases the
intention was to take small steps that over time would lead to full
implementation of the ELP. Two teachers sought their students’ opinions
on working with the ELP. Although a few students were unenthusiastic,
most of them acknowledged the advantages of peer and self-assessment
based on the ELP checklists. At the end of the reporting period the
co-ordinator judged that the project had been a modest success and was
confident that use of the ELP would continue. See Icelandic
ELP-WSU (The European Language Portfolio in whole-school use) case study.
A similar challenge with regard to official funding was faced in this
ELP-WSU (The European Language Portfolio in whole-school use) case study in
Lithuania. Here alternative sources of funding were obtained. The
project originally hoped to develop and pilot a version of the ELP for
use in Lithuanian primary schools, involving teachers of English, German
and French. When lack of funding made this impossible, the Lithuanian
Association of Teachers of English (LAKMA) agreed to support the project in developing and piloting ELP-related
approaches to the teaching of English at primary level. Project events
were supported by Vilnius Pedagogical University. The project had three
principal pedagogical aims: to foster the development of learner
autonomy, to make learners aware of their plurilingual repertoires, and
to explore the intercultural dimension of language learning. By the end
of the reporting period the project had produced and piloted a range of
portfolio activities for Grades 2–4, some hints for teachers, and an
inventory of ‘I can’ descriptors. Project meetings allowed participating
teachers to share their experience and discuss some of the practical
questions posed by portfolio learning. See Lithuanian
case study.
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