A Service-Learning Program for Multilingual Education at an Early Age

Abstract

This chapter explores the effects of a service-learning program on the development of competences for teaching Spanish to young learners during initial teacher education. The framework of action science provides guidelines for the design of participative inquiry in which the student-teachers evaluate their theories of language teaching and embrace opportunities for developing a more efficient, flexible, but also a more critical approach to early language education. By implementing interpretative phenomenology as a research tool, a particular attention is dedicated to the participants' understanding and interpretation of specific pedagogical events of tandem teaching, which marked their positive and negative didactic experiences and influenced reconsideration of their theories of teaching.