‘We acted like ELLs’: A pedagogy of embodiment in preservice teacher education

Abstract

Many US K-12 teachers in ethnolinguistically homogenous, rural areas are not adequately prepared to meet the needs of their English language learner (ELL) students. Such educators often lack conceptual understanding of language pedagogy and affective investment in ELLs. The field of language teacher education (LTE) needs research on how to better prepare these teachers to serve ELLs. The teacher educator and lead researcher in this article responded to this need, implementing an LTE pedagogy of embodiment for preservice K-12 teacher-learners. Embodiment refers to ways in which a concept or feeling, related to language pedagogy in this case, is made physically or emotionally tangible. Participants – undergraduates in a TESOL survey course – took part in an embodied ELL lesson, which was rich in tasks that the teacher educator had developed years earlier for her own language learner students. In the context of the university teacher education classroom, teacher-learners participated in this authentic ELL lesson. Data include LTE classroom discourse, focus groups, written reflections, and background questionnaires. Findings reveal that two language learning tasks from the embodied lesson especially enabled teacher-learners’ language pedagogy concept learning. Namely, in a timed reading and video enactment, teacher-learners experienced and reflected on language pedagogy concepts related to task sequencing, collaborative interaction, fluency development, and engagement. The participants performed two distinct roles during the embodied lesson: at some moments, they ‘acted like’ language learners while at others like reflective language educators. These teacher-learners reported increased empathy towards ELLs as a consequence of their participation in the embodied lesson. This research offers insights into LTE pedagogical practices that promote preservice K-12 educators’ learning of language pedagogy concepts and their development of empathy for ELLs. By presenting the notion of an LTE pedagogy of embodiment, we contribute to sociocultural frameworks of learning.