1. English Language Teaching ,
professional development and teacher
narratives in present day educational
contexts of compulsory schooling
Mg Silvana Barboni
Universidad Nacional de La Plata

2. Ongoing educational debates centre around
PARTICIPATION and SOCIAL JUSTICE
How are we participating in those debates?
From ELT we have traditionally addressed questions of
INTECULTURALITY and how ELT fosters intercultural
dialogue

3. Interculturality
It involves being open to, interested in, curious about and
empathetic towards people from (any) other cultures.
Interculturality is the capacity to experience cultural otherness
and use it to:
-reflect on matters that are usually taken for granted within one’s
own culture and environment;
- evaluate one’s own everyday patterns of perception, thought,
feeling and behaviour in order to develop greater self-knowledge
and self-understanding;
- act as mediators among people of different cultures, to explain
and interpret different perspectives.

4. Ongoing educational debates centre around
PARTICIPATION and SOCIAL JUSTICE
How are we participating in those debates?
INTECULTURALITY
and intercultural dialogue
relationship between
KNOWLEDGE & TECHNOLOGY
And how ELT mediates in that relationship

5. Present day debates are focusing on a deeper
understanding of the relationship between
KNOWLEDGE & TECHNOLOGY
in our knowledge societies
and how this relationship shapes PARTICIPATION and
SOCIAL JUSTICE.

6. Knowledge societies
Those in which different forms of
production (using science and technology)
and distribution (using new communication
technologies) of knowledge have become
fundamental processes in the tapestry of
these societies (Dominguez Rubio and
Baert, 2012).

7. This conceptualisation of the knowledge society creates a
new agenda for the State, current administration and public
policies because of three main aspects of the knowledge
society:
1.knowledge becomes key to understand new forms of
economic accumulation and development.
2.the sociocognitive relationships that are established are
based on new social, cultural and political articulations and
bring about changes in the way relationships are established
at both an interpersonal and institutional levels.
3.by taking advantage of a diversity circulating bulks of
knowledge, new possibilities in the generation of goods and
services are developed, as well as new cultural goods and
learning trajectories.

8. The relationship between knowledge
and technology shapes participation
and social justice in 2 distinct ways

9. 1. DEVELOPMENTO OF THE SOUTH
production and distribution of knowledge have become
central processes in the generation of value in capitalist
economies. “surdesarrollo” in terms of the way
knowledge and technology can help add value to primary
exploitation of natural resources in a region which has
historically been characterised as the source of primary
resources namely from mining and agricultural
exploitation.

10. 2. CITIZENSHIP
the paradox of knowledge and non-knowledge
New knowledge, under the conditions presented by the
knowledge society, brings about uncertainty and risks
requiring citizens´participation before the ethic and
political debates generated by knowledge.
both knowledge intensive as well as uncertainty intensive

11. LITERACY BECOMES CENTRAL

12. The flexible and sustained mastery of
a repertoire of practices through oral,
written or multimedia texts containing
a variety of semiotic systems used for
different purposes in different contexts
(Luke and Freebody, 2000; Anstey
and Bull, 2006).

13. DIGITAL LITERACY
learners need to:
* develop an understanding on how digital content is
created making use of images, text, sound and
languages considering communicative purposes.
* become aware of the collective responsibility for
construction and distribution of knowledge in a connected
world, "the collective intelligence". So, developing digital
literacy at school is not about learning to use software
per se but rather learning to operate with this "collective
intelligence" with discernment and responsibility using
multiliteracies.

14. The multiliterate person can
Interpret, use and produce
Electronic, live and paper texts that employ linguistic,
visual, auditory, gestural and spatial semiotic systems
for
social, cultural, political, civic and economic purposes
in
socially and culturally diverse contexts
(Anstey and Bull, 2006: 41)

15. Translanguaging:
The multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals
engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds.
It is a systematic, strategic, affiliative and sense making
process.
Bilinguals tanslanguage to include and facilitate
communication with others, but also to construct deeper
understandings and make sense of their worlds.

16. Challenge before teachers:
Mediate LITERACY in particular
contexts of compulsory schooling for
PARTICIPATION AND SOCIAL
JUSTICE.

17. Social Justice
“Bilingual teaching combines two or more languages and
cultures. It is thus important for equity between the two
languages and content to be established, and for students of
all linguistic and cultural backgrounds to be recognised as
knowers (Freire, 1970)…. This principle… enables the
creation of a learning context which is not threatening to
students´identities but that builds multiplicities of language
uses and linguistic identities, while maintaining academic
rigour and upholding high expectations.” (García, 2009: 318)
4 dimensions:
•Equity
• Language tolerance
• Expectations and rigor
• Assessment

18. Social practice
“Places learning through an additional language as a result
of collaborative social practices in which students try out
out ideas and actions (Lave and Wenger, 1991), and thus
socially construct their learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Learning
is seen as occurring through doing (Dewey, 1897). Thus,
an action based pedagogy falls within this principle. In the
field of language education, this is often referred to as task
based pedagogy (Ellis, 2003)”. (García, 2009: 323)
4 dimensions:
•Interactions and involvement
• Language
• Collaboration and group work
• Relevance

19. What is the educational context of compulsory education
today?
EXPANSION, APARENT DEMOCRATIZATION AND
LOW QUALITY

20. Early exclusion. 50% students do not finish
secondary school, they drop out or re attend
repeatedly and leave.
Total exclusion 700 thousand young people between
13- 17 are out of school in Argentina
Exclusion due to inclusion with no quality: students
attend school but learn very little or do not learn.

21. National and international assessments
show:
•Low levels of attainment (in particular
when analysing reading skills).
• Dispersion of results, inequality in
distribution of learning achievement
depending on the socioeconomic level of
students.

26. Challenge before teachers:
Mediate LITERACY in particular contexts of
compulsory schooling for PARTICIPATION AND
SOCIAL JUSTICE in contexts of EXPANSION,
APARENT DEMOCRATIZATION AND LOW
QUALITY
The REAL trajectories of students in contrast to
the THEORETICAL ones.

27. “Las injusticias que el sistema educativo reproduce, las
que legitima y sobre todo las que origina pueden ser
consideradas “injusticias reparables”, tal como las
denomina Sen, que son las que nos mueven a la
discusión crítica y a la investigación (Sen, 2011). Este
movimiento hacia la reflexión es crucial para la
producción de conocimiento, en tanto la percepción de
las injusticias y los fuertes sentimientos que éstas
pueden desencadenar sirven de estímulos para la
acción, aunque son insuficientes para la comprensión
del problema. Comprender requiere razonar, examinar,
buscar explicaciones que puedan sostenerse con
evidencias.”
(Claudia Romero, Gabriela J. Krichesky y Natalia Zacarías, 2012)

28. Construction of an inquisitive teacher identity to
look for answers and to introduce innovations
informed before the present challenges.
• Development of an interpretive
perspective of the teacher before their
own practices, classes and institution.
• Development of a space for systematic
research practices in teacher practice to
feed teaching.

29. A never ending process of investigating and
experimenting, reflecting and analysing what
one does in the classroom and school,
formulating one´s own personal professional
theories and using these theories to guide
future practice, and deciding what and how to
teach based on one´s best professional
judgement. (Loughan, 2010)
What is teaching ?

30. ITE and INSET need to
address that challenge

31. A growing body of research has fostered
the popularity of a variety of school-based,
practitioner-driven, collaborative, inquiry-
based approaches to professional
development

32. Fundamental concept of Inquiry based teacher learning:
Participation and context
essential to teacher learning

33. A common goal of inquiry-based
approaches to professional
development is to replace the
traditional theory/practice dichotomy
with the more fluid construct of:
praxis

34. How does teacher education account for that?

35. Jubileo
La historia grande, se hace de historias chicas? o es otra cosa? Una vida es
un conjunto de momentos o es algo más? Este momento largo que finaliza, es
una historia que termina? , un peldaño?, una vuelta?, una trayecto? un
sentido? antes y después es como atrás y adelante o todo es siempre?
reflexiones de jubilada? ja! no sé bien....
Como cada vez que cambia algo uno se asoma como a un sino
desconocido, elige, proyecta, se juega, se sorprende, vive, sufre, disfruta,
siempre con otros, con algunos que terminan siendo como uno mismo y
entonces cuando uno se quiere despedir no puede, con historias chicas que
terminan siendo nuestra historia grande, con momentos que no terminan
porque uno los siente o son como el sentido de ser uno acá.
Ahora es una bisagra, doy la vuelta, quizá encuentre alguna respuesta o solo
mas preguntas...
Una cosa sí, este trabajo que hoy dejo tiene muchos componentes
que son para siempre , que creo no dejaré nunca: la pasión por hacer un otro
mejor de alguien y de uno mismo y de hacerlo con los demás que creen más o
menos en las mismas cosas y terminan siendo como socios de una tarea
infinita.
Gracias a todos esos socios en la tarea, por todo.
Claudia

36. A sociocultural perspective argues
that human cognitive “development
can be understood only in light of the
cultural practices and circumstances
of their communities—which also
change”

37. Learning to teach, from a sociocultural perspective,
is based on the assumption that knowing, thinking,
and understanding come from participating in the
social practices of learning and teaching in specific
classroom and school situations.
Teacher learning and the activities of teaching are
understood as growing out of participation in the
social practices in classrooms; and what teachers
know and how they use that knowledge in
classrooms is highly interpretative and contingent on
knowledge of self, setting, students, curriculum, and
community.

38. •Continuous Professional Development
•Personal agency
• A community of practice
• Code of Ethics

39. Teacher authored accounts of professional development
Retrospectively interpretative
They selectively infuse meaning to those interpretations
They actively seek to bring meaning.

40. “educative mentoring”
mentoring that is aimed at teacher growth by
enabling teachers at all levels of experience and
expertise to respect, challenge, and support one
another as they collectively seek to reach standards
of excellence in their work

41. Teachers as learners of teaching

42. We can trace teacher learning from a
sociocultural perspective by
looking at the progressive movement
from externally, socially mediated
activities to internal mediation controlled
by the individual teacher.

43. This means the process through which a
person’s activity is initially mediated by other
people or cultural artifacts but later comes to be
controlled by him/herself as he or she
appropriates and reconstructs resources to
regulate his or her own activities. Three types of
tools which humans use to mediate their
activities are cultural artifacts and activities,
concepts, and social relations.

44. All three will help teachers walk through
the “zone of proximal development”
(ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978), that is, the
distance between what a person can do
on his/her own and what a person can
achieve with the support of a cultural
artifact or someone else.

45. The models of inquiry-based professional
development described here seek to:
1.create alternative structural arrangements
that support sustained dialogic mediation
between and among teachers and teacher
educators
2.provide assisted performance as teachers
struggle through issues that are directly
relevant to their professional development and
classroom lives.