...this is a thought-provoking book that will be useful for researchers, teacher-educators wanting to go beyond focusing on how children learn in their training, and teachers who are interested in research.

[This] book is a valuable contribution to the field of pre and in service TEYL development. It will be of interest and assistance to many. A strength of the book is that it presents research on language teaching in several bilingual contexts.

Early language learning and the policies associated with it have been introduced around the world, but there is still little known about teacher education in global contexts. This book addresses this need and brings together a group of major scholars who have done a brilliant job in each chapter. Highly recommended resource!

The book is coherent, contains sound pedagogical and theoretical reflections on a number of issues in primary English, and starts to break down barriers between disciplines, such as foreign language teaching and bilingualism. This is an important step forward considering the number of multilingual children in classrooms around the world whose multilingual voices are usually silenced.

This book is a very useful resource for university educators of future teachers and also education policy makers because of the clear overview provided about the varying ways in which English and other Modern languages are taught.

This volume is a very welcome addition to research in a much-neglected area: early language teacher education. As well as taking a truly international perspective, it includes chapters on bilingual education, TESOL, Modern Foreign Languages - areas of early language teacher education which are rarely found together, despite the synergies between them. Presenting thoughtful and innovative discussions of a range of key topics in the field, it is set to become essential reading for anyone involved in early language teacher education.

Early Language Learning and Teacher Education

International Research and Practice

Multilingual Matters

Contents

Introduction 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.