Early Language Learning and Teacher Education: International Research and Practice

1Introduction to Early Language Learning and Teacher Education: International Research and Practice

Subhan Zein

The past two decades have witnessed profound changes in the social, economic and political contextualisation of language. In the rapidly changing political, social and globalised economic landscapes of the 21st century, language has become cultural capital – mastery of two or more languages has been closely linked with business prospects, state diplomacy, intellectual pursuits and employment opportunities (Grenfell, 2014; Rhodes, 2014; Woolhouse et al., 2013). A significant educational policy change characterising this tendency is early language learning: the teaching of a foreign or second language to children. Early language learning policies have become a worldwide phenomenon where the second or foreign language is taught as a subject or is used as a medium of instruction (Baldauf et al., 2011; Garton et al., 2011; Rhodes, 2014; Williams et al., 2013). Early language learning policy has even been dubbed as ‘possibly the world’s biggest policy development in education’ (Johnstone, 2009: 33).

This present volume focuses on one major issue resulting from the introduction of early language learning policies worldwide: teacher education. The edited volume specifically deals with the teacher education of early language learning teachers occurring in various forms of teacher professional learning, including, but not limited to teacher collaboration, mentoring and supervision, teacher classroom discourse and pedagogical content knowledge. This introductory chapter provides the background of the volume, identifying its rationale and aim. The chapter also discusses a few themes of the volume, outlines its structure and provides a final word.

Rationale and Aim of the Volume

The implementation of policies on early language learning has posed worldwide concerns over the shortage of adequately trained teachers (Butler, 2015; Copland et al., 2014; Emery, 2012; Enever, 2014; Richards et al., 2013; Rowe et al., 2012; Williams et al., 2013) and the inadequacy of teacher education programmes (Le & Do, 2012; Zein, 2016a). The rapid development in policies do not always work in a parallel manner with the provision of pre-service and in-service teacher education courses for early language learning teachers (Enever & Lindgren, 2016). As Rixon (2017: 82) argued,

even the most carefully planned, widely welcomed and feasibly scoped of policy innovations may still be a complex matter, usually needing substantial material and financial support, but above all requiring fundamental shifts in attitudes, teacher knowledge and teacher skills which are not easily brought about.

This is most evident in the case of early introduction of English. All over the world, primary English education policies have actually created unprecedented challenges for teacher education (e.g. Butler, 2015; Emery, 2012; Enever et al., 2009; Enever, 2014; Zein, 2016a). Wilden and Porsch (2017a) reviewed major studies on primary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education in Europe, and they concluded that despite the clarity as to what constitutes ‘good FL teaching’, teachers struggle to appropriately implement their methodological knowledge and that ‘the evidence on primary FL teachers’ target proficiency is sketchy at best’ (Wilden & Porsch, 2017a: 13). In countries such as Germany, the introduction of English in primary schools and its transition to secondary schools pose challenges to teacher educators in terms of the provision of knowledge about teaching and learning in primary and secondary education (Porsch & Wilden, 2017a: 68). A similar situation is also found in the context of primary EFL in East Asian countries: China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (Butler, 2015). In her review of the East Asian countries, for example, Butler (2015: 309) stated that ‘part of the challenge is that we don’t fully understand what qualifications teachers need to successfully teach FLs to young learners’, highlighting the various issues relating to teachers’ limited language proficiency and limited pedagogical content knowledge. In China in particular, the task to provide instruction to more than 130 million primary school children (Hu & McKay, 2012) means that intensive programmes such as the ITDEQC (Improving Teacher Development and Educational Quality in China) Project will have to be massively expanded (Thomas et al., 2018). In the Southeast Asian context, the issue of designing professional development programmes that can cater for the specific needs of primary school English teachers is a shared concern in Indonesia (Zein, 2017) and Malaysia (Kabilan & Veratharaju, 2013), two countries that are confronted with the urgent task to provide instruction to approximately 26 million and 3 million children, respectively. In Argentina, the shortage of qualified and proficient teachers is one major factor affecting the teaching of English in the country. Focus is now placed on developing training programmes that can help teachers understand about child language acquisition, play-based learning and motivating tasks and activities to foster learning (Education Intelligence, 2015).

Despite its worldwide prominence, English is not the only language that early language learners are studying. There are also languages such as French, Hindi, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish, etc. whose introduction in early language learning settings has posed challenges for teacher education. In the context of children learning other languages such as Spanish, Korean and Mandarin in the USA, provision of assistance and bilingual programmes may be available through either government-funded local education agencies or state and locally-funded programmes. Nonetheless, concerns about teacher preparation have been articulated, as the need to produce teachers to meet the enormous growth of multilingual language learners has become more pressing (Bailey & Osipova, 2016: 175–189). In fact, focus on good teachers and quality instruction is a major theme in the review of early language learning in the USA in the past three decades (Rhodes, 2014). In Australia, new policy directions to engage with Asia through its ‘Asia literacy’ and ‘Asia capability’ have been recently set out in Australia in the Asian Century White Paper. However, the shortage of adequately trained teachers of Asian languages such as Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese and Mandarin in primary schools has been voiced, highlighting the urgent need for systematic teacher professional learning to meet the increasing demand for early language learning (Midgley, 2017). In Austria, most primary teachers who teach French and Italian alongside English are not trained as foreign language specialists, so they do not demonstrate good proficiencies in these languages (Jantscher & Landsiedler, 2000). In New Zealand, the requirement for learning languages including French, Hindi and Chinese, has resulted in the increasing demand for the teacher education of new language teachers in primary schools (Kerr et al., 2014).

This background gives the impetus to this edited volume. The volume grew from the editors’ shared concern that teachers in many school contexts worldwide still struggle to meet the demands of early language pedagogy (see, for example, Emery, 2012; Copland et al., 2014; Rowe et al., 2012; Williams et al., 2013; Zein, 2016a, 2017). Even the implementation of various initiatives including the employment of non-specialist classroom teachers to teach languages (Emery, 2012; Rowe et al., 2012), the establishment of teacher preparation programmes for early language learning (Williams et al., 2013) and the reassignment of secondary teachers to teach languages at the primary level (Stelma & Onat-Stelma, 2010), does little to tackle the difficulties associated with teaching languages to early learners. Overall, the common pattern is that teacher education globally now finds itself confronted by multiple, complex challenges and the need to prepare early language teachers and assist them in their professional development has become more apparent.

Moreover, there is a distinct lack of publications delivering insights into this focal area of interest. Research into teacher education of modern foreign languages has been limited and lacking in focus (Grenfell, 2014). According to Grenfell (2014), most research has been small-scale, formative and explorative, leaving an apparently significant gap on theories of language teacher professionalisation. Consequently, progress on the knowledge base of language teacher education remains minimal (Evans & Esch, 2013; Wright, 2010), much less the knowledge base of early language teacher education. This volume responds to this gap – it compiles studies with diverse methodological tenets including case study (Chapter 3), mixed methods (Chapter 11), multivocal ethnography (Chapter 4) and quasi-experimental longitudinal study (Chapter 13) to enhance understanding of teacher education for early language teachers.

The collection is part of the Multilingual Matters’ Early Language Learning in the School Context Series and following the scope of the series, the volume aims to cover early language learning for children aged between 3 and 12 years old who learn second, foreign and additional languages. This means the school contexts covered in the volume comprise of pre-schooling (3 to 5 years old) and primary schooling (6 to 12 years old). These include the school contexts of, for example, French–English immersion classes in the USA (Chapter 13), primary English as a foreign language (EFL) education in Indonesia (Chapter 4), bilingual English as an additional language (EAL) childhood education in Australia (Chapter 12) and bilingual Italian kindergarten in Turkey (Chapter 10). The diverse scope of school contexts represented in this volume reflects the proliferation of early language learning that has reached educational contexts in many countries around the world.

Overall, the chapters aim to highlight examples of research into current practice in the professional enhancement of early language learning teachers from around the world, but with an emphasis on the implications for practitioners. In other words, this volume is a publication that describes current research and identifies examples of good practice, following the direction taken in recent publications that underscore the importance of supporting early language learning teachers through research-informed teacher education (Enever & Lindgren, 2017; Wilden & Porsch, 2017b). Such an endeavour is essential in order to better support teachers (Enever & Lindgren, 2016) and inform policy decisions, especially given the central role of policy in pre-service teacher education (Zein, 2016a) and government-based training institutions in the professional development of teachers (Zein, 2016b).

In the following two sections of this chapter, I will identify how globalisation and the inseparable relationship between theory and practice underlie the writing of this edited collection.

From Global to Local, and Local to Global

Globalisation in its most simplistic sense refers to the expansion, acceleration and intensification of global interconnection. While it is not the purpose of this volume to consider globalisation per se, many of the chapters are grounded in the context of globalisation and how it has affected teacher education in early language learning. This is shown by Butler (Chapter 2), Le (Chapter 3), Zein (Chapter 4), Zhang (Chapter 5), Chou (Chapter 7), Kirkgöz (Chapter 8), Boivin (Chapter 9) and Carreira and Shigyo (Chapter 11). In Chapters 2, 5, 9 and 11, respectively, it is shown that the global popularity of English as an international language has become the precursor for introducing the language to young learners. In Chapters 3, 4, 7 and 8, increased proficiency in English for the global world means curricular alterations in primary education, inevitably leading to changes in teacher education. The policy-driven initiatives on early language learning teacher education occurring in the regional or national contexts identified in this volume are more than an economic imperative – they also reveal the impact of globalisation. In other words, they demonstrate the deeply embedded and substantial impact of globalisation on the teacher education of early language learning teachers, highlighting its profound, and arguably positive, effect on worldwide education processes.

The problem with the discourse of teacher education in the context of globalisation is, according to Angus (2007), its sole emphasis on the strong, totalising versions of globalisation theory that merely associates globalisation with neo-liberal features such as managerialism, competition and market arrangements. Such a discourse fails to consider the continuum occurring simultaneously at the local, national and regional levels, and can best describe teacher education practices. The stance taken in this volume, on the other hand, is one that does not see global cultures as fusing into one cultural identity. Following the local variability approach, this volume views teacher education as an international concern with complexities across countries and continents (Spring, 2015). It is also context bound. This context-bound nature of teacher education is reflected in the fact that the volume brings together an international group of scholars based in the four continents of Asia, Australia, Europe and North America to provide international perspectives on research and issues in early language learning teacher education that results from globalisation, drawing from their particular contexts. Thus, the contributions of these researchers constitute a series of extended research-based chapters in a wide range of geographical contexts; for example, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, UK, Vietnam and USA. The inclusion of chapters on teacher education for early language learning in Kazakhstan and Hong Kong in particular is an attempt to promote studies from less documented contexts, as opposed to European contexts (e.g. Enever, 2014; Wilden & Porsch, 2017a) such as Germany (see Deters-Phillip, 2017; Porsch & Wilden, 2017) that have received significant attention in recent years.

Thus, while being framed within globalisation, the chapters in this volume also reflect early language learning teacher education that considers unique localities in their diverse schooling contexts. These include the teaching of modern foreign languages (e.g. French, German and Spanish) at mainstream primary education (Chapter 6), English–Russian primary classrooms in Kazakhstan (Chapter 9), bilingual kindergarten education for Turkish children learning Italian (Chapter 10) and a longitudinal study from kindergarten to Year 3 dual language (French–English) immersion classes (Chapter 13). Even in the context of English language teaching, there are diverse contexts such as EAL and EFL. The former is represented in the focus of bilingual EAL childhood education involving monolingual and bilingual educators in Australia (Chapter 12), while the latter is elucidated by the processes of teacher learning in Japan (Chapter 11) and Vietnam (Chapter 4).

The diverse contexts foreground the notion that quality teaching is unique to the locality where the teaching is carried out. As suggested by Goodwin (2010: 30), learning to teach

does not rest on techno-rational skills or proceed in a linear, predictable fashion. Rather, we know that learning to teach is complex, contextually specific, autobiographically grounded, and informed by sociopolitical realities. This is why quality teaching often looks different in different settings.

The fundamental task of teacher education across the countries represented in this volume may be the same: to prepare early language teachers in knowledge of and skills for teaching, and to orient them to develop certain dispositions to be effective teachers. However, what is needed within individual contexts, the requirements for qualifications in different locales and the cultural and normative practices of teaching will always be locally specific. Clearly, teacher education practices may have similarities with labels such as classroom action research, reflection, practicum and mentoring. Nonetheless, the instantiation of these practices is shaped by the context, settings and politics of countries and communities in which the pedagogy is formulated, developed and implemented (Hamilton & Loughran, 2016). Early language learning teacher education is of no exception.

Overall, it is our commitment in this volume to offer contents that are diverse and insightful while also contextually fitting to the specific countries where the studies were carried out. This makes the volume relevant to early language learning teachers in various local contexts as well as teacher educators and academics within the broader teacher education field.

The Inseparable Relationship between Theory and Practice

Another stance taken in the presentation of this volume is one that views the inseparable relationships between research and practice. We believe in the high value of empirical research to inform practice on the teacher education of early language learning teachers in the global world, and vice versa. Recent publications on early language learning have highlighted this position (e.g. Enever & Lindgren, 2016, 2017; Wilden & Porsch, 2017b) and the breadth of the volume reflects this paradigm.

First, the intention of the chapters is to demonstrate that the work of early language learning teacher education in the global world goes well beyond the transmission of teaching techniques or strategies of teaching (Korthagen, 2016; Loughran et al., 2016). Loughran et al., (2016: 416) stated that teacher education should be ‘an educative process that develops thoughtful, informed and highly able professionals’ who demonstrate ‘willingness to reframe, reconsider, contextualise and problematise their practice rather than seek to mimic or replicate the practices of those they observed through their experiences in teacher education’.

This intention is reflected in the way chapters in this volume attempt to contextualise research to cater for the specific needs of early language learning teachers in teacher education through a redirection towards the early learner domain. This is evident because Jenkins, Duursma and Neilsen-Hewett (Chapter 12), Le (Chapter 3), Zein (Chapter 4) and Griffin, Bailey and Mistry (Chapter 13) all argue for the centrality of teachers to understand young learners and design their pedagogy accordingly. Jenkins, Duursma and Neilsen-Hewett argue that adequate support for children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds requires strong understanding ‘of the unique need of bilingual children in the early education context.’ Similarly, Griffin, Bailey and Mistry postulate that increasing awareness of learners’ bilingual identity requires teachers’ ways of discussing and cultivating the development of bilingual identity with dual-language immersion students. Le shows that teachers’ lack of awareness of the needs and characteristics of young learners adds weight to the complexity of the meaning-making of lived experiences of teachers, especially those novice teachers who are more than likely to find rising tensions between expectations and reality during their first years of teaching. In Zein’s chapter, the central tenet of pedagogy lies in teachers’ ability to develop speech modification strategies following a series of realised process of imagining themselves as a child.

Secondly, the chapters in this volume all point to the pedagogy of teacher education that develops alignment between practice and theory, emphasises reflection and focuses on depth rather than breadth of curriculum (Kitchen & Petrarca, 2016; Korthagen, 2016). In this volume, the development of such a pedagogy for early language learning teacher education is made manifest through the provision of a variety of learning experiences that stimulate introspection, collaboration, awareness-raising and learning from experiences. In other words, the shared principle underpinning these chapters is to encourage teachers to find the linkage between the intangible concepts and principles examined in the literature and the context of their classroom through cooperative participation (Kitchen & Petrarca, 2016; Korthagen, 2016). A rigorous collective participation in which teachers are encouraged to engage in activities that foster reflective enquiry through discussions, collaborative planning and individual and/or group practice is most evident in Chapter 4 (Zein) that analyses teachers’ way of imagining themselves as a child to promote scaffolded instruction and Chapter 5 (Zhang), which discusses learning study. In the cases of Chou (Chapter 7), Kirkgöz (Chapter 8) and Boivin (Chapter 9), this process is built upon the paradigm of enquiry that allows input from experts when appropriate and to provide support as required (through coaching or mentoring). Furthermore, clinical experiences where teachers observe learning situations and witness how effective teacher educators and teachers assist them in the process of student learning are at the core of a number of chapters.

Various authors highlight the practical orientation in relation to the need to prepare prospective teachers to develop abilities to imagine themselves as young leaners (Chapter 4), to develop understanding of new orthographies in teaching foreign languages (Chapter 6), to work collaboratively in action research projects (Chapter 8) and to develop and evaluate syllabus in cross-curricular projects (Chapter 11). Chapters 7 to 9 all highlight the integral role of mentoring and supervision in teacher education. They show how teacher professional learning can be made manifest through professional learning communities that create a continuum from the voices of teachers and teacher educators and the collaborative work between them. Furthermore, problem-based learning that stems from the everyday reality of teacher professional learning forms the core tenet of teacher preparation to resolve the theory–practice divide through critical reflection. In Chapter 4, this appears through reflection on teachers’ discourse and how activities in speech modification can help improve teacher pedagogy. Similarly, collaborative learning that promotes critical reflection has been suggested by Macrory in Chapter 6 in order to overcome the challenges occurring due to the introduction of new orthographies in primary classroom.

The inseparable relationship between research and practice demonstrated in all the chapters in this volume sets the tone for congruency between teacher education content and teachers’ needs. Content congruency is the single determining factor in the transformation of teachers’ professional knowledge and skills, increased understanding of their professional roles and improved teaching efficacy (Flores, 2016; Kitchen & Petrarca, 2016; Korthagen, 2010, 2016; Rollnick & Mavhunga, 2016). This is the underpinning principle upon which specific pedagogical approaches for effective teacher education must be built (Flores, 2016; Korthagen, 2010, 2016) amid the complexity of early language learning. This assertion is fitting, given the little emphasis on the learner domain in the research context of language teacher education. Ellis (2010: 95) argued that the overall goal of a language teacher education that utilises second language acquisition (SLA) research is ‘to contribute to teacher-learning by assisting teachers to develop/modify their own theory of how learners learn an L2 in an instructional setting.’ This assertion is further supported by the occurrence of waves of criticisms against current teacher education programmes worldwide that provide no references to the specific needs of early language learning teachers (e.g. Le & Do, 2012; Emery, 2012; Enever, 2014; Rhodes, 2014; Rowe et al., 2012; Zein, 2016a, 2016b, 2017).

Thus, all chapters in this volume underscore the inseparable relationship between research and practice by aiming to produce reflective teachers through the provision of a variety of learning experiences that stimulate introspection, collaboration, awareness-raising and learning from experiences. While on the one hand this is indicative of the eagerness of the authors to capture the demanding and challenging process of teacher learning, on the other hand, it is also parallel to their overarching aim to conceive teacher education as beyond the process of training to deliver. This would prove useful as a point of departure for the development of more dynamic and integrative approach to thinking and implementing teacher education (Gray, 2010).

The Structure of the Volume

The volume is divided into four parts. Part 1 deals with the complexity of teacher learning, encompassing Chapters 3 to 6. Part 2 focuses on innovations in mentoring and teacher supervision. It consists of Chapters 7 to 9. Part 3 discusses strategies in programme development. This part consists of Chapters 10 and 11. Part 4 consists of two chapters: Chapters 12 and 13. These chapters emphasise perceptions, knowledge and assessment in early language learning teacher education.

Prior to embarking on the four parts of the book, it is necessary to gain an overview of teacher education and early language learning. A systematic synthesis of recent research on the education of teachers of English for young learners (EYL) in Southeast and East Asian contexts is provided by Butler in Chapter 2, focusing on countries, namely China, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Butler thoroughly reviews empirical studies on the teacher education of EYL teachers, particularly: (1) teachers’ qualifications; (2) native-English speaking (NS) teachers and non-native-English speaking (NNS) teachers; (3) teacher mentoring and professional development; and (4) classroom research. Given its focus on Southeast and East Asian context, generalisations cannot be drawn from this chapter; however, many aspects discussed in the chapter are relevant to other contexts.

Part 1 focuses on the complexity of teacher learning. This issue of complexity in consideration of how children learn languages and what teachers do in the classroom has been recently acknowledged in teacher education (see Enever & Lindgren, 2017). In this volume, the complexity of building a thorough understanding of young learners means that having relevant training qualifications does not suffice. As one of Carbonara’s participants in Chapter 10 stated:

I studied Applied Linguistics and I used to teach to adult learners, thus I was focusing on language learning process. But working with children, I feel that my teaching method should be more child-centred. (T8)

The complexity of early language learning teacher education builds upon teacher knowledge, draws on local context and experience, is grounded in enquiry and encourages the ability to solve problems. The four chapters in this part attempt to capture such complexity while increasing sensitivity to context. This is first started by Le Van Canh in Chapter 3. Using narrative enquiry, Le explores the professional learning of a teacher who had graduated from a pre-service teacher education and taught at a primary school in Hanoi, Vietnam. Le shows that teacher learning is dynamic and complex, affected by multiple factors that are directly to the individual teacher such as cognitions and emotions, as well as professional ecology including salaries, teaching workload and availability of professional development activities. Similarly, I write Chapter 4 to explain the complexity of classroom discourse in primary English classroom. In the chapter, I am interested in analysing teachers’ speech modification features. The findings of the study suggest that imagining one’s self as a child could help teachers develop flexibility in modifying their speech. Suggestions for teacher education are drawn from the study that employed multivocal ethnography to collect data, cultivating the critical discussions of teachers and teacher educators. In Chapter 5, Yuefeng Zhang writes about the complex experiences of six pre-service English language teachers in Hong Kong in implementing learning study as a means of professional enhancement. Utilising qualitative research methods including focus groups discussions, classroom observations and analysis of documents, Zhang explores the potential of learning study in empowering teachers to transform their teacher-dominated approach into a learner-centred one while allowing them to develop continuous reflection of their practice. Similar complex considerations are also found in Chapter 6 where approaches to foreign language orthographies for young learners become the concern of its author, Gee Macrory. Against the backdrop of the recent nationwide introduction of modern foreign languages such as French and German in the UK, Macrory reports on a project involving 55 student teachers within an Initial Teacher Education system at a UK-based university. She investigates the literacy approaches used by teachers and the training offered to student teachers, pointing to the need for ‘a model of teacher education that promotes collaborative learning, one that can serve to promote a more effective pedagogy irrespective of the writing system or orthography involved.’ The complexity of teacher learning works against the simplistic views that prospective teachers should receive all the training that prepares them for teaching and that they can carry for the remaining of their career (Loughran et al., 2016). In the various topics that they covered, the four chapters in Part 1 demonstrate such a complexity, highlighting a cohesive whole of understanding of the pedagogy of teacher education that makes teaching more effective to influence student learning (Korthagen, 2016).

Part 2 focuses on innovations on mentoring and supervision for early language learning teachers. The three chapters in this part (Chapters 7 to 9) demonstrate a focus on the descriptions and interpretations of mentors’ or supervisors’ thinking processes and identity formation, and how these are juxtaposed with evidence on prospective teachers’ performance and teaching behaviour. This reiterates the interconnections between the internal processes of reasoning and the contextual factors affecting the pedagogy of teachers and teacher educators (Orland-Barak, 2014, 2016) as well as the alignment between technical aspects of the practice and the social environment in which the practice is understood and enacted (Glazer, 2008). In Chapter 7, this is accomplished through a clinical model of supervision, as Chiou-Hui Chou is motivated to provide authentic opportunities for primary EFL teacher candidates to gain understanding of the professional practice of teaching in today’s diverse classrooms. Gathering data from a wide range of data collection methods involving prospective primary EFL teachers in Taiwan, Chou explores some guiding TESOL principles to assist teachers develop the 21st century classroom practices for young learners. The clinical model of supervision that is utilised in her study could serve as a tool to open our understanding of prospective primary EFL teachers’ development. Supporting teachers to deal with the daily issues emerging in the first critical years of their profession is the focus of Yasemin Kirkgöz’s work in Chapter 8. The study was part of a collaborative action research (CAR) where Kirkgöz supervised the teachers to evaluate their teaching practice and identify a research focus. While highlighting the importance of CAR under the mentorship of teacher educator(s), in the chapter Kirkgöz also emphasises the vital need for a collaborative process between teacher educators/researchers and teachers. The promotion of action-oriented practice in the chapter adds an entirely new dimension to the scheme of mentoring for young learner English teachers. Though not stated explicitly, a collaborative mentoring process is also integral in Nettie Boivin’s work in Chapter 9, which focuses on multiliteracies involving four Kazakh and Russian-medium primary schools whose students learn English in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Boivin investigates the practice of the teachers who utilised ethnic Kazakh and or Russian oral stories in English as a narrative learning framework to embed multiliteracies for early language learning. The intensive interactions between course lecturer and prospective teachers is what makes the mentoring process evident in the chapter. Boivin also argues for new approaches being developed for teachers in multilingual settings to prepare students for the 21st century through professional development that places its core at the co-constructed, multimodal and collaborative nature of teacher education.

Part 3 consists of two chapters that focus on strategies on programme development for two languages (Italian and English) in two entirely different contexts: Turkey and Japan. In response to the increasing demand of teaching Italian in Turkey, Valentina Carbonara’s work (Chapter 10) is in the context of teaching Italian language in a bilingual kindergarten. Carbonara utilises the already successfully implemented framework in an Italian–Turkish kindergarten in Istanbul, Turkey. As she outlines the framework, which consists of three main indicators: language proficiency, personal qualities and professional competences, Carbonara demonstrates how the framework could be used as a guideline to inform professional development of Italian bilingual teachers working at kindergarten level. Programme development is also the central tenet of Chapter 11, written by Junko Matsuzaki Carreira and Tomoko Shigyo. The data for their study were collected from 34 pre-service teachers attending a primary teacher-training programme at a university in Japan where English instruction, called foreign language activities, has been made available to children since 2011. With English being taught using a cross-curricular approach, Carreira and Shigyo’s study investigated its implementation and how it could be incorporated into a pre-service syllabus. The central role of theory, practice and reflection as the fundamentals of teacher education (Kitchen & Petrarca, 2016) is what underpins the programme development component in the two chapters. In doing so, the authors have demonstrated the need ‘to move beyond the surface structural features of teacher education programmes in order to understand the key elements of programme effectiveness’ (Zeichner & Conklin, 2008: 271). The programme development in the two chapters also shows parallelism with recent tendency in the pedagogy of teacher education that identifies more integral focus on skills, knowledge, attitudes and experience of teachers (Korthagen, 2016).

The final part of the volume (Part 4) emphasises perceptions, knowledge and assessment in teacher professional learning in bilingual early language learning contexts in Australia and the USA. In Chapter 12, Larissa Jenkins, Elisabeth Duursma and Catherine Neilsen-Hewett write about perceptions and knowledge of bilingualism and relationships with children among early childhood educators (or teachers) in Australia. Employing a mixed-methods approach, Jenkins et al. explore whether mono- and bilingual educators differed in their understanding of bilingualism and in their perceptions of their relationships with bilingual children. The findings of their study point to the need to place greater emphasis on the training of educators in supporting the language development of both mono- and bilingual children that is contextually appropriate to the early childhood centres where they operate. In Chapter 13, Katherine M. Griffin, Alison L. Bailey and Rashmita S. Mistry write about what educators of young dual language immersion students learn from a bilingual approach to assessing development. Griffin et al. describe how their quasi-experimental, longitudinal study documented the educational experiences of early years schooling through the third grade of primary school students and teachers. They discuss how progress can be measured bilingually and identify the classroom practices for which teachers can support early language learners. The development of early language learning around the world has made the issue of perceptions, knowledge and assessment become more central. Rixon (2016), for example, highlighted the importance of parallelism between age-appropriate assessment with the development of policy implementation in early language learning. The development of teachers’ perceptions and knowledge has also gained increasing prominence with the need for increasing teachers’ knowledge about teaching and learning (Porsch & Wilden, 2017; Zein, 2017). The importance of the chapters in this final part therefore cannot be underestimated.

To conclude the volume, Chapter 14 is presented. It is written by Sue Garton to highlight emerging themes that have not been covered in this introductory chapter, including long-standing issues in policies on teacher education, shifting pedagogies and the role of collaboration. Garton also identifies future research directions.

Final Word

All in all, early language learning teacher education is broad in scope and wide in implementation, but it is still under-theorised. There is certainly much to address and a volume such as this can only hope to capture a fraction of the significant issues in our understanding of the theory and practice of early language learning teacher education. Nonetheless, the timeliness of the volume means it is probably a good start. The time has come for teacher educators and early language teachers to walk together on this journey of teacher education as we enter a new era of