Redefining Teaching Competence Through Immersive Programs: Practices for Culturally Sustaining Classrooms

This edited book examines how teacher education utilises international immersion and field teaching (or service-learning) experience to develop teachers' global, multilingual and intercultural competencies, in preparation for entering today's culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. Through a series of theory-based case studies, the authors demonstrate how teachers' awareness of social inequities and responsive actions, the ability to bridge one's own and others' perspectives, and understanding of key principles of second language learning are pedagogical concepts and skills that become ever more essential across all mainstream K-12 educational contexts. The chapters bring together the voices of teacher educators, intercultural learning theorists and pre- and in-service teachers to identify threads of practice and theory that can be applied within teacher education more broadly. This book will be of interest to academics, instructors and graduate students in the fields of teacher education, language learning, intercultural communication and social justice education. Daniela Martin is Associate Professor of Psychology at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. Her research ranges from a focus on identity development among diverse students and the contexts of multicultural and ESL education to student development during study abroad, and pedagogical principles that sustain our increasingly diverse schools. Elizabeth Smolcic is Associate Professor of Education at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. She has led the Teaching ESL Certificate Programme with Immersion in Ecuador programme for over 15 years. Her scholarly interests include teacher education for multilingual/ multicultural realities and building fully reciprocal relationships in study abroad and home community contexts. Part I: Re-conceptualizing teacher competence: Challenging inequity through collaboration and learning within diverse communities.- 1.Cultural/linguistic immersion in teacher preparation for emergent bilingual learners: Defining a new space for asset-based pedagogies (Elizabeth Smolcic and Daniela Martin).- 2."Nested Interculturality": Dispositions and Practices for Navigating Tensions in Immersion Experience (Netta Avineri).- 3. Decolonizing teacher education in immersion contexts: Working with space, place and boundaries (Fran Martin and Fatima Pirbhai-Illich).- 4. Ontario's K- 12 International Education Strategy: Policy impacts on teacher education for international, intercultural and multilingual sensibilities (Roopa Desai Trilokekar and Amira El Masri).- Part II: Teaching as moral imagination: Bridging student-teacher gaps through immersive education.- 5. Language and (inter)cultural learning: Supporting language teacher candidates' development of interculturality during study abroad (Michelle L. Pasterick).- 6."Maybe What We've Done Here in Antigua is Just the Thing to Combat Global Inequity": Developing Teachers for Linguistically Diverse Classrooms through Study Abroad (Enrique David Degollado, Deborah Palmer, Luis Urietta, Jr., Julia Menard-Warwick, Eric Ruiz Bybee and Shannon Kehoe).- 7. Teachers Navigating Cultural and Linguistic Differences: Building Empathy through Participation in Immersive Experience (Courtney Wood and Adam Virzi).- 8. Decolonizing identities of teachers of color through study abroad: Dreaming beyond assumptions, toward embracing transnational ways of knowing (Sue Kasun, Ethan Tinh Trinh, and Brittney Caldwell).- Part III: New Directions: Expanding the Center of Immersive Teacher Education.- 9. Promoting Sustainability Literacy through Immersion Abroad Experiences for Teachers (John Katunich).- 10. Immersion in 'Othered' Spaces for Teacher Preparation: Encountering Different Knowledges (Pauli Badenhorst).- 11.Voices Together: Perspectives from the Host and Sojourner Communities (Eleanor Leggett Sweeney, Sharon Smith Childs, Ana Loja, and Yolanda Loja).