Relationships and linguistically sensitive teaching : Developing teacher practicum at Åbo Akademi University

Abstract

Project “Linguistically sensitive teaching in all classrooms” (Listiac) aims to make an impact on initial teacher education systems in Europe through action research. In line with European policies, the seven partner countries including Finland, Spain (the autonomous Basque country and Catalonia), Belgium, France, Slovenia, Lithuania and Portugal work together in providing competences and skills needed for handling linguistic diversity in our schools. Diversity education has been regarded nearly everywhere as an isolated ‘add-on’ course or study module (EC 2017). Thus, it has remained insufficiently mainstreamed as an integrated component of teaching practice. Listiac addresses this imbalance by redefining teacher education curricula towards linguistically sensitive multilingual pedagogies in mainstream classrooms and providing reflection tools for initial teacher education.