Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
TESOL Türkiye 2023, Bartın, Türkiye, 21 Ekim 2023, ss.26
This presentation aims to discuss the key takeaways from an international research
practice partnership conducted within the scope of the U.S. Mission Turkey Grants
Program during the 2022-2023 academic year, spring term at a faculty of education in
Izmir, Türkiye. The 12-week course we co-designed and implemented aimed to equip
pre-service English teachers (n=35) with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills
to support their multilingual and multicultural learners in their future classrooms.
Following a mixed methods needs analysis; we identified the areas for growth for preservice teachers (PSTs) and designed the content of the course accordingly. We developed
the course to foster a dynamic, multimodal mode of pedagogical collaboration,
conveying insights through multilingual narratives. During the course, we addressed
different kinds of linguistic and cultural diversities to be expected in language
classrooms in Türkiye, unpacking the meanings of core concepts through a concrete
set of strategies for leveraging diverse linguistic repertoires. We made use of readings,
multimedia tasks, and podcasts to support PSTs to develop a deeper understanding
of concepts and elicit and leverage the existing linguistic and cultural assets they have
brought into the course. Additionally, PSTs represented their multilingual identities
and unearthed their linguistic and cultural backgrounds through reflective and
narrative tasks. The analysis of PSTs’ reflections, course artifacts, researcher field notes
and discussions indicated that PSTs were able to identify diversity and multilingual
learning issues in TESOL and got acquainted with a host of instructional strategies to
address these issues in their future classes. The findings highlighted the importance of
preparing PSTs to effectively navigate linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms
in Türkiye.