Embracing Cultural Diversity in the Primary MFL English and Spanish Teacher Education Classroom Through Fairy Tales
摘要
This chapter focuses on the exceptional situation where for one semester, students who opt for English or Spanish as part of their Master’s degree in Primary Education (Master MEEF 1er degré (les métiers de l’enseignement, de l’éducation et de la formation)) was included in one class at the University of Bordeaux Institute of Education, l’Institut national supérieur du professorat et de l’éducation (l’INSPE) de l’Académie de Bordeaux. Because the teacher was unexpectedly unable to teach the course for Spanish students involving the theory of MFL language teaching and pedagogy, those students were invited to join the English class for this specific domain thus creating a challenge for the teacher educator/trainer of English MFL as she herself had never studied Spanish. The instructor assigned to teach both groups simultaneously decided to design a course of study using the task approach in order to explore English, French and Spanish fairy tales in the hope that all students in this classroom experience first-hand, the value of cultural diversity as well as an understanding of what fairy tales can bring to the primary classroom in terms of MFL language learning and literacy. Data drawn from interviews and video footage reveal that this collaborative experience enabled the students of both languages to better understand theoretical approaches to learning, teaching and pedagogy in the MFL classroom through the use of the two languages side by side. The cultural input through the exploration of fairy tales not only helped the students in this study to be all the more aware that the French, English and Spanish cultural heritage is one that they all share but it enabled the students who went through this experience to feel valued as a consequence of their cultural diversity.