Teaching oral language at intercultural educational contexts in Mexico
Submitted by:
María Teresa Zarza Díaz
Abstract:
Teaching oral language at intercultural educational contexts in Mexico
Background and theoretical framework
Mexico is a multilingual country, with 364 different linguistic groups that are distributed throughout the entire Mexican Republic. However, teaching in intercultural environments is an issue that has gained strength in the last three decades. Teaching oral language, for example, seems to be a consistent challenge in these populations that need an intercultural teaching approach, but in which it is unknown which competencies must be taught. In addition to this, in general in the Mexican educational context, there are still many questions about how to teach oral languageln that scenery, this work arises from the latent need to work together with the teachers of these intercultural contexts in a really collaborative position, in order to know from first-hand their strengths, doubts and problems and giving a professional development program (PDP) that allows them to improve their teaching oral language process.
Research question
Which are the changes in teachers‘ oral language teaching strategies and in students’ oral language abilities from intercultural contexts, during and at the end of teachers’ participation in a professional development program?
Methods
Participatory action research was used in a sample of 12 teachers from elementaries schools from the community of Putla, at Oaxaca, Mexico and 30 students from elementary school (6-12 years). Teachers participated in a PDP which included a digital instrument where they used a self-reflective digital instrument called EVALOE-SSD and had meetings with each other and with the researcher in order to constantly dialogue and collaborate between them, using conversational methodology as the main framework, in order to build different strategies for their communicative competence. and teachers.
The findings show that both, teachers and students, improved their skills around oral communicative competence, transformating classes into spaces for communication, discussion and reflection on the language, using the diversity as a strength.. Also, it reflects another way of investigating these spaces (different form how historically they have been researched), constructing together between teachers, bilingual community and researchers, the professional development programme and the strategies that helped them in their particular context which is challenging.