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Advancing Teacher Education for Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Classrooms in Türkiye

This workshop aims to present and discuss the key takeaways from an international research practice partnership conducted within the scope of the U.S. Mission Turkey Grants Program during the 2022-2023 academic year, spring term in Izmir, Türkiye. The 12-week course co-designed and implemented aimed to equip pre-service EFL teachers with the practical skills and theoretical knowledge to support their multilingual learners in their future classrooms. Following a mixed methods needs analysis, we identified the areas for growth for pre-service teachers and co-designed the content of the course accordingly. During the course, we addressed different kinds of linguistic and cultural diversities to be expected in the classroom, unpacking the meanings of core concepts plurilingualism and pluriculturalism through a concrete set of strategies for leveraging diverse linguistic repertoires in the classroom. We made use of readings, multimedia tasks, and podcasts to support the participants to develop a deeper understanding of concepts and to elicit and leverage the existing linguistic and cultural assets the participants have brought into the course. The analysis of student reflection reports, course artifacts, researcher field notes and discussions indicated that participants were able to identify diversity and multilingual learning issues in ELT and got acquainted with a host of instructional strategies to address these issues in their future classes. Thus, in this workshop we will illustrate strategies for engaging multilingual youth in language classes and initiate conversations and understanding on the needs and challenges in preparing teachers for linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms through case examples and group discussion tasks.

February, 2024

In this chapter, we examine the work of Project DIVE.