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Hello Teacher and my dear partners

This is my summary of the following reading

DE MEJÍA, A.-M. T. (2016). Teacher Development for Bilingual Education in Colombia:


Towards Teacher Empowerment. Estudios Sobre Educacion, 31, 15–35.
https://bibliotecavirtual.unad.edu.co:2444/10.15581/004.31.15-35

This reading attempts to analyze how bilingualism programs are being developed in
Colombia with reference to such programs, first, it gives us an overview of developments in
the area in other Latin American countries.

The country of Chile has developed with the aim of improving the teaching and learning of
the English language in three main ways:

By improving standards based on school curricula.

Through professional development opportunities offered to in-service teachers.

Supporting teachers in the classroom.


These programs' main objectives were directed toward the initial education of English
teachers, through a training scheme aimed at school teachers in order to empower them as
mentors and effective school models for newly graduated teachers.

In the country of Ecuador, teacher trainers throughout the country, in collaboration with a
specialist in English as a Second Language (E.S.L.) funded by the U.S. Embassy, and
Ecuadorian universities and institutes dedicated to the training of future English teachers,
came together "to create new curricula...based on international standards," with the
common purpose of providing what is necessary to obtain "more effective English teachers,
capable of increasing the linguistic sufficiency of their students" (Serrano et al., 2015, p.
105).

Already touching on the subject in our country Colombia according to research in a study
by Truscott de Mejia et al. 2012 done in 8 bilingual schools in Bogota resulted in many
deficiencies by teachers in their practice in the classroom, based on the results of the study,
has to do with factors such as the use of imported textbooks, which have been designed
primarily for native English speakers and therefore do not fit easily into the Colombian
standards of the curriculum, in addition to low levels of motivation on the part of students
who have difficulty learning different subjects through the use of English.
Among the conclusions of this study, in relation to teacher training, the challenge for
bilingual schools is how to prepare English teachers to teach content areas in English:

"Most of the teachers interviewed are aware of the need to integrate the teaching and
learning of the foreign language harmoniously with the teaching and learning of content
areas in their pedagogical work, although sometimes they are not very sure how to achieve
this balance".

Now with regard to the positive results of teacher training there is a recent study (Guzman
Mejia et al. 2014), focused specifically on the ways in which language teachers who
recently completed postgraduate teacher training courses can generate changes in their
classroom practices, empowering themselves, their colleagues and students, changing
power structures and promoting collaborative working together in order to improve
students' communicative proficiency in English.

Cordially: Nestor Almanza

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