ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the findings from a small study of a cohort of teacher trainees in the latter stages of their teaching practice placements in English state schools located in East London, considered against the backdrop of a rapidly changing national provision for initial teacher education.

In the study, participants’ views were sought to evaluate the extent to which the content of their training courses supported their developing knowledge and implementation strategies for effective classroom pedagogy for multilingual learners. Participant responses indicated that while their academic knowledge of multilingual learner support was appropriately drawn from sound pedagogic research (the training element), the conversion of such knowledge into effective classroom pedagogies was not always sufficiently explicated during teaching placements (the practice element).

Drawing from these findings, we argue for greater integration between the academic and practice elements of initial teacher education, which could be achieved with stronger collaborative structures between teacher training institutions and schools. Such structures, we suggest, must be sufficiently robust to withstand the challenges we are likely to continue to experience during this period of flux in the national provision for teacher training.