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Multilingual Language Awareness and Teacher Education

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Encyclopedia of Language and Education

Introduction

In the last two decades, we have developed a substantial, although incomplete, body of knowledge about what teachers need to know and be able to do, to build on and/or develop many languages and literacies present in twenty‐first century classrooms and communities. Less understood, however, is how to educate teachers in ways that ensure not only the acquisition of those understandings, but also the teachers’ enactment of those understandings in their teaching, as well as the relationship that this kind of teaching holds for their children's learning. This chapter starts out by describing different kinds of language awareness that are necessary in diverse schools, specifically focusing on what we call multilingual awareness (MLA) for today's multilingual schools. The chapter focuses on the pedagogy of MLA that must be the core of ALL teachers education programs. Although the discussion that follows is relevant for the entire world, we focus here on North America and Europe.

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García, O. (2008). Multilingual Language Awareness and Teacher Education. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_163

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_163

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-32875-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-387-30424-3

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