ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we examine bilingual teachers’ experiences with designing project-based learning units that focus on language learning. The teachers were participants in a professional development institute held in Spain in the summer of 2017. We focus our discussion around the project-based language learning (PBLL) design work they completed to investigate (1) the extent to which teachers attend to language as action in their PBLL units and (2) what we can learn from those data with respect to the assumptions teachers make about how students learn English in PBLL contexts. We highlight the Language as Action approach in the PLATE framework (Project as Main Course, Language as Action, Authenticity, Technology, and Evaluation), where language is viewed as a sociolinguistic activity to be learned in context and through practice. Findings show teachers moving away from a decontextualized, traditional approach to language teaching and toward more intentional and explicit language learning in the context of a PBLL unit. However, while teachers were more comfortable with providing opportunities for students to learn language in action through PBLL, there remains a gap between their desire to do so and their ability to enact those desires in their curricular design. Implications for design and instruction are discussed.
