Affiliation:
1. Iona University, USA
2. St. Francis de Sales School for the Deaf, USA
3. Teachers College, Columbia University, USA
Abstract
The underrepresentation of authentic classroom grammar teaching in teacher education leads to teacher candidates being introduced to “pedagogical options in grammar teaching without being able to illustrate when, how, and why teachers in real classrooms draw upon these options” (Borg, 1999b, p. 160). Integrating portraits of classroom language teaching into teacher education programs can help ameliorate that problem. This chapter shares one such portrait, drawn from interview and observation data collected from high-quality teachers in a Swedish bilingual school for the deaf. A portrait of the way in which Christel applies her “Knowledge of Learners,” an important component of teacher language awareness (TLA) is presented, organized around observed classroom vignettes during which she focuses on the grammatical structure of both signed and spoken languages. Suggestions are then offered for how such portraits might be integrated into the curriculum of teacher preparation programs to better prepare teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing.