Bilinguismo e educação : um novo currículo para a formação de professores

Abstract

Educational systems of most European countries seem to be unable to respond adequately to the growing migration-induced multilingualism. None of the European member states has developed an integrated approach to address linguistic diversity in teacher education programmes. “Compartmentalised” language support, as it is presently offered, does not suitably respond to the demands of inclusion, equity, and social justice for all learners. There is thus a need to move to “mainstreamed” approaches where second language instruction is integrated across school years and subjects in the regular school curriculum. This paper discusses the adaptation to a Portuguese context of a European proposal for a teacher education curriculum aimed at preparing them to work with pupils with a migration background in mainstream classrooms with a focus on the issue of academic language teaching. After a contextualization of the issue of social and linguistic needs of these students, the authors present a brief overview on the project, followed by a discussion of the implementation caveats for Portugal. The authors conclude that this European proposal responds to pressing necessities in Portugal for the education of these students and constitutes a viable response to their language needs, in spite of the many constraints in its application.