Another piece of the puzzle: preparing pre-service language teachers for the Australian Curriculum: Languages.

Harbon, Lesley

ABSTRACT

As they complete their teacher education degrees, Graduate Teachers should possess knowledge and skills to plan for, and manage, learning programs for their students. Their graduate competencies include designing lessons that meet the requirements of curriculum, assessment and reporting. As they embark on a teaching career that moves them forward to 'proficient' and further to 'highly accomplished' status, they should possess a baseline set of understandings about professional contexts in schools. This professional competence must include an understanding of curriculum and curriculum processes. This article discusses a number of key issues for pre-service language teacher education students and language teacher educators in the broader national context as the details of the Australian Curriculum: Languages are emerging. These issues are termed the 'pieces of the puzzle' being considered by pre-service teachers. These 'puzzle pieces' need to be considered, understood and acted upon in order for accomplished language teaching and learning to take place in school languages programs.

KEY WORDS

Australian Curriculum, curriculum, curriculum development, pre-service language teachers, language teacher educators, Australian Curriculum: Languages

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INTRODUCTION

Pre-service language teachers currently enrolled in teacher education degree programs are, like their colleagues teaching in schools, gradually hearing more about the shape and key notions within the Australian Curriculum: Languages. Even if their experience is nothing more than keeping up with the public and professional discussions on its development by reading announcements and summary updates in professional language teacher network bulletins, their engagement with why and how the Australian Curriculum: Languages is being shaped is essential for their professional development at the pre-service level.

As pre-service language teachers complete their teacher education degrees, they are now known as 'Graduate Teachers' (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], 2011, p. 5), who 'possess the requisite knowledge and skills to plan for and manage learning programs for students'. Their graduate competencies, among a number of things, include designing 'lessons that meet the requirements of curriculum, assessment and reporting' (AITSL, 2011, p. 5). As they embark on a teaching career that moves them forward to 'proficient' and further to 'highly accomplished' status, they should possess a baseline set of understandings about professional contexts in schools. It may be the case that they secure full time permanent teaching positions immediately after graduation, or wait longer for a permanent full time teaching position and accept casual work in the interim. In any event, teacher registration requirements will stipulate this initial understanding of, and competence to design learning tasks, according to current curriculum priorities. Of course, now it is presumed that a developing understanding will be forming about the Australian Curriculum: Languages, even if at the time of writing this article at least, one state, New South Wales, has decided to 'continue to use existing NSW syllabuses' (Alegounarias, pers. comm., 2013).

Becoming familiar with developments in the Australian Curriculum: Languages is just one of the large and complex fields of professional knowledge, skills and understandings with which these teachers engage in the pre-service period: a complexity that recent comment on language teacher education has found to be a landscape of 'wonderments and puzzlements' (Kleinsasser, 2013, p.86). Similarly it is clear in the 'readiness to teach' literature, that the intricacies of what it means to be ready to teach are multifaceted and include, among other things, knowledge of policy and documentation, knowledge of subject matter content and the ability to plan for student learning, enacting and managing teaching, assessing and use of evidence about student learning, as well as considerations of professional attributes, personal attributes, and managing relationships and their own learning (see, for example, Haigh, Ell & Mackisack, 2013). Beginning language teachers who are getting ready to teach also engage with their professionalism through the interlocking aspects of what has been scoped as the Professional standards for accomplished teaching of languages and cultures (Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Federations [AFMLTA], 2005). Quite simply, pre-service language teachers engage with the many complex aspects of their professionalism, and the Australian Curriculum: Languages now adds another 'piece to the puzzle'.

For some language teachers currently working in school languages programs, the arrival of the Australian Curriculum: Languages is yet another layer of complexity for their roles, and may involve change, which in turn may impact their professional careers. The same can be said for the case of pre-service language teachers during their initial teacher education programs. Hopefully school education systems and professional learning groups in each state and territory are planning for teachers to be 'change ready'. In the case of pre-service teachers, who may already consider they are already in midst of a period of change--moving from being in the learners' seats as students in the languages classroom, to standing at the teacher's desk, planning their pedagogy to implement curriculum--the change and its impact will require the space, time, and perhaps also within the space, some guidance through professional learning programs and opportunities to make a mindset change about what underpins this new curriculum, and to monitor and engage with curriculum implementation.

This article discusses a number of key issues for pre-service language teacher education students and language teacher educators as they prepare for the implementation of the Australian Curriculum: Languages. It discusses the pieces of the puzzle that pre-service language teachers need to put together and make sense of, including the need to balance the contextual priorities and challenges, and how best to prepare for school realities during their professional experience practicum sessions --all within the context of the appearance of the Australian Curriculum: Languages.

PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS GETTING 'READY TO TEACH'

Craig (2013, p.25) suggests that in the pre-service period, pre-service teachers are in 'the eye of the storm'. The metaphor is a powerful one, and captures what Haigh, Ell and Mackisack (2013) conceptualised about teacher candidates' 'readiness to teach' (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 indicates that within the wider context of teacher professionalism, in the midst of professional observation opportunities, professional discussions, relevant and contextual documentation, and the various and sometimes competing notions emerging from 'other voices' in teaching/learning contexts, a teacher's 'readiness to teach' is comprised of personal attributes (teachers' relationships, teachers' personal qualities, and teachers' own learning) and professional practices (teachers' knowledge and planning, teachers' enacting and managing teaching, and teachers' assessment and use of evidence of student learning). Although not specifically referring to the Australian context, or the Australian Curriculum: Languages, Haigh et al. (2013) do refer to the place of relevant contextual documents as being important in the conceptualisation of teachers' 'readiness to teach'. The Haigh et al (2013) conceptualisation points to the scope of contextual complexity, particularly the importance of consideration of curriculum policy and documentation as a major parameter of 'readiness to teach', and that this dimension cannot be disregarded in pre-service teacher preparation.

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However, the contexts in the states and territories schooling systems, and in the teacher education faculties, are rarely standardised, and due to contextual factors, may not provide ideal circumstances for curriculum understanding and implementation or consensus about implementation in any way.

THE TENUOUS SITUATION FOR LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION DEGREE PROGRAMS IN AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES

Language teacher education has, in the past 15 years, succumbed to budgetary and staffing pressures within teacher education faculties. Anecdotally it is widely known in the profession that faculties of education have either casualised the language teacher educator positions (employing highly accomplished language teachers who hold lead language teacher roles in a local school on a sessional basis), or even cut the language teacher educator position entirely. In that case, pre-service teachers do not even have an opportunity to train as a language teacher. Alongside this erosion dimension is the absence of language-specific provisions in language teacher education. When faculties of education do include languages education units of study, these units of study are often limited in a degree program, certainly not 'core' and perhaps merely a 'specialisation'. As well, languages education options for pre-service primary teachers are rare, which is in contradiction to the agreed eight key learning areas endorsed every ten years (since The Hobart Declaration in 1988/9, and the Adelaide Declaration in 1998/9) by the state and territory ministers of education (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 14). Indeed in Tognini's (2006, p. 35) survey report, there were still faculties clinging on to their language-specific provision for secondary school languages learning, or working creatively to offer an equivalent experience. Seven years later, the situation seems even bleaker.

As well, when a faculty of education does offer a languages curriculum option, language teacher education programs don't always get it right. Conway, Richards, Harvey and Roskvist (2011, p. 33) hint at potential failures, noting that language teacher education programs may be nothing more than contexts where:

   ... lesson planning [has] a focus
   on materials, lesson aims, staging,
   timing and student teacher interaction
   [and] a teaching practicum with
   detailed feedback on content and how
   the lesson went.

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The pre-service period for prospective language teachers needs more security than these tenuous situations where a language teacher educator might be a casual member of staff, or where the syllabus offered is a poorly-planned program offered in limited formats or modes.

However, in teacher education programs where there is a full-time permanent language teacher educator academic employed, and where the syllabus is comprehensive and rich, pre-service language teachers may have good opportunities to explore the Australian Curriculum: Languages in some depth. In such a languages curriculum method program, the pre-service language teacher may begin to understand how the Australian Curriculum: Languages has developed, and what proliferation of policy (Lo Bianco & Gvozdenko, 2006; Lo Bianco & Slaughter, 2009) has existed around its inception. Pre-service language teachers are at an early stage of grappling with key factors impacting curriculum, and need an opportunity to explore in more detail how policy 'operates to shape ... knowledge and views about curriculum' (Kable, 2001, p. 330). There is a certain logic in our pre-service teachers exploring the close link between documents that appear as policy, what emerges in the public and educational discourse, and what aspects of policy finally become implemented curriculum.

Marquand (1988) argued that a curriculum is continuously constructed and reconstructed in an interlocking network of local (school level), regional (local/state government level) and national directives by teachers, principals and administrators. Teachers are key players in implementing curriculum. It is the responsibility of teachers, along with principals and administrators to participate in discussions about the aims, processes, understandings and forms of curriculum practice (Elliott, 1998, p. 35), to construct and reconstruct, or to operationalise (Thornton, 1988) and deliver the curriculum. The process of operationalising a curriculum involves teachers taking curriculum goals and, often working with the syllabus (which is already a 'translation' of the goals into smaller, more manageable goals), and within a chosen pedagogical stance, enacting and mediating policy and resources to design teaching and learning activities (Flinders & Thornton, 2004). Policy impacts curriculum and pre-service teachers come to understand that curriculum is both artifact/ document as well as an enacted process in school practice. However, policy 'translation-into-practice' is increasingly less a 'bottom-up' approach, and with the appearance over the past five years or more of both the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), the national government has more and more control of teachers' curriculum operationalisation, despite the outward appearance of extensive consultation and validation by teachers. Comber (2011) even refers to this top-down process as 'rampant standardisation'. Knowing about this curriculum complexity is vital for pre-service language teachers.

KNOWING CURRICULUM AND CURRICULUM PROCESSES

Through their call for a greater response to the 2007 Report of teacher education for language teachers, Stracke, Houston, Maclean and Scott (2010) prompted a group of language teacher educators to outline the key issues they believe are currently impacting language teacher education (Harbon, Fielding, Moloney, Kohler, Dashwood, Gearon & Scrimgeour, 2012). The issues are wide-ranging and the ones captured in the Harbon et al. (2012) chapter only scratch the surface of the gamut of issues impacting language teacher education. The issues include

1 the increasing policy and regulations impacting our program design

2 developing a holistic knowledge base of beginning language teachers

3 the crowded language teacher education curriculum

4 preparing native speakers for the Australian classroom

5 the importance of the in-country experience for pre-service language teachers

6 demands on pre-service teachers regarding proficiency levels and pedagogical understandings

7 the special considerations in preparing teachers for community languages schools.

Despite those impacting issues, one of the most essential skills that pre-service language teachers need to develop is the ability to plan and program, and a detailed knowledge of curriculum and policy documents, among other things, is essential for such planning. In order to implement planning, knowledge of how to operationalise or enact curriculum is necessary. In her paper that described a project that set out to explore teachers' engagement with teaching, learning, and assessment in South Australia, Kohler (2003, p. 9) noted that in 'programming with a long term perspective, teachers could better understand and attend to continuity in teaching, learning, and assessment'. Knowledge of curriculum will make programming and planning tasks much easier.

Almost twenty years ago, Scarino (1995, p. 12), captured what exactly is occurring as language teachers grapple with curriculum and planning documents. Noted are things such as teachers understanding more clearly the different pathways that exist for language learning; developing conceptual frameworks for dealing with the question of what constitutes socio-cultural understanding and how it is manifested in planning and assessing long-term learning; developing frameworks for elaborating cognitive processes and higher-order thinking, including metacognition; developing frameworks for focusing on language as a system; and developing frameworks for conceptualising progression through the learning stages. These notions are still valid twenty years later, but with further layers of complexity superimposed, including our knowledge of the importance of the intercultural stance in languages education, and the embedded 'cognitive' notions therein. Understanding 'knowing' and 'understanding' of language and culture concepts within our language learners' cognitive processing, involves cognitive effort on the part of the learners who are learning, and the teachers who are judging the learners' learning. This is a complex process and very importantly included in pre-service language teacher education degree programs.

Language teacher education degree programs are all about assisting pre-service teachers to learn how to teach languages. Pre-service language teachers study curriculum and policy documents. They learn about their role in enacting curriculum and how orientations of different curricula have different conceptual underpinnings. The literature is dotted with checklists of what this looks like. Most notably Freeman and Freeman's work from 1994 (cited in Benson, 2010) lists seven notions which influence how teachers teach:

1 how teachers were taught themselves

2 their professional training

3 colleagues and administration

4 exposure to new ideas

5 availability of materials

6 the types of students they teach

7 their personal views of learners and learning.

It appears that knowledge of curriculum, or even teacher participation in curriculum (Crookes, 1997) was not explicitly mentioned in Freeman and Freeman's list twenty years ago, as being an influence on how teachers teach, yet it may have been implied in one or more of the notions.

However, reporting on the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers' Association's data collection regarding pre-service language teacher education in the first years of last decade, Tognini's paper (2006) details how she found examination of curriculum documents to be what the teacher education programs were all offering as a 'core'. Tognini stated that (2006, p. 31), 'the ability of novice language teachers to grow professionally and become increasingly skilled and thoughtful practitioners depends, in part, on the quality of their initial training', and that the topics

... common across most of the units described in the case studies are familiarisation with local key languages curriculum documents ... an exploration of their implications for planning and delivering language programs (Tognini, 2006, p. 36).

Such detailed examination of curriculum documents is necessary, says Moloney (2009, p. 18)

   Pre-service student teachers are
   engaged in developing a critical
   perspective on the profession they are
   about to join. They are assessing the
   way the profession presents itself and
   its values, they are keen to see the
   opportunities it may offer for growth,
   and they are curious as to how their
   particular personal backgrounds and
   talents will fit into this new context.

Other countries include consideration of curriculum and curriculum processes in their teacher education, as Daly (2010, p. 58) reports similar considerations for the preparation of language teachers in New Zealand. The findings of her study:

   ... suggest that it is important to
   educate pre-service teachers in
   language teaching approaches
   and methods which will create a
   supportive interactive context for
   language learning, with reference
   to appropriate resources and
   techniques ...

Pre-service language teachers need to know how to plan and program, and will need knowledge of curriculum to do this. Without a detailed knowledge of language curriculum documents and their conceptual underpinnings, and without an understanding of how curriculum is enacted and operationalised, language teachers may not be able to develop this critical perspective. Moloney (2009, p. 18) cites Howard and Denning del Rosario (2000, p. 136) to confirm that 'only through on-going reflection, inquiry and examination of their changing patterns of thought and practice will new pedagogical practices begin in teachers work', as part of this critical perspective. A critical perspective can be promoted through engaging with curriculum documents, as well as textbooks and other resources, not forgetting the essential role of pedagogical practices that involve enactment (or not) of (prescribed) curricula. Harbon (2009, p. 23) also acknowledges that in language teacher learning programs, we can 'empower language teachers to understand more about the processes and strategies for accomplished practice in assessing languages learning' after the pre-service language teacher preparation period ensures an engagement with all related aspects of curriculum.

In a research project that reported data about Hong Kong secondary school English teachers' planning of their 'Schemes of Work', Benson (2010) found that teachers' decision-making is largely based around such Schemes of Work. Benson (2010, p. 273) found:

   the evidence provided by the
   interviewees indicates that day-today
   decisions about teaching and
   learning are mainly determined by
   Schemes of Work that are drawn up in
   the school and based on the content
   of commercial textbooks, which in
   turn reflect the content of systemwide
   English language curriculum
   guidelines, syllabuses and public
   examinations. Schemes of Work
   and the systems of supervision and
   surveillance that surround them are
   also the major constraint on teachers'
   capacity to make their own decisions.

A number of important ideas are raised by Benson (2010). The 'pieces of the puzzle' even include a consideration about whether textbooks are suitable representations of prescribed curricula or particular interpretations of them, and whether textbooks even 'drive' classroom practice, regardless of their connection to curricula.

Heeding Benson's study as a lesson for our admittedly different Australian context (the high stakes Hong Kong examinations place extreme emphasis on successful English outcomes), we might deduce that pre-service language teachers need to develop detailed knowledge of the Australian Curriculum: Languages as soon as possible so that they can prepare to be decision-makers, despite the 'rampant standardisation' (Comber, 2011). Within a context of change, and to avoid our Australian language teachers succumbing to the same top-down pressures as Benson suggests exists in the Hong Kong context (and losing their curricular decision-making ability) then, it is the pre-service language teachers who, alongside their colleagues teaching in language classrooms, need to prepare to understand the new Australian Curriculum: Languages.

PRE-SERVICE LANGUAGE TEACHERS PREPARING FOR CHANGE

Pillen, Den Brok and Beijard (2013, p. 11) refer to the period known as the beginning teaching period as a concerning and tenuous time, and note that beginning teachers who have emerged from their pre-service education courses can be classified into one or more of six 'tensions':

* teachers struggling with (views of) significant others

* teachers with core-related tensions

* teachers with responsibility-related tensions

* moderately tense teachers

* tension-free teachers

* troubled teachers.

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Mason (2010, p. 20) details some of the reasons for this anxiety, including '... teaching across a number of schools, teaching large numbers of students, and dealing with negative attitudes and isolation'.

As pressing as this anxiety is, and despite contextual factors being all-encompassing and overwhelming, pre-service language teachers still need to build their skills, competencies and teaching behaviours to stay in tune with language teaching and learning from a teacher's perspective now that they have achieved teacher status. The pre-service period is where they come to terms with the fact that throughout their professional language teaching careers change will be constant, and that they will need to continuously respond to change. Pre-service language teachers do not necessarily fear change, as they may not be so set in their ways as to resist it. However, what those pre-service language teachers need has been described in the literature as a 'space' in which to prepare for dealing with curriculum change, and the Australian Curriculum: Languages presents some level of change. The concept of new curriculum is not an issue in itself for pre-service language teachers. It is the detail of some aspects of curriculum, whether current or newly emerging (and the limited time they will have to prepare), that represent the challenge or 'puzzles' in their pathways.

THE 'CONTENT' PUZZLE PIECES

The Australian Curriculum: Languages is somewhat different from state and territory languages curricula or syllabuses. The Australian Curriculum: Languages is conceptualised through an intercultural base, where culture is located in language, in intercultural relations and intercultural knowledge, and our Australian school language learners are gaining skills to be language and culture mediators (see Morgan, Kohler & Harbon, 2011; Scarino, Liddicoat, Crichton, Curnow, Kohler, Mercurio, Morgan, Papademetre & Scrimgeour, 2008). The Curriculum is formulated according to Strands and Sub-strands, which are then expanded into Content descriptions and further Elaborations. The first Strand is Communicating. Those engaging with the draft curriculum, including pre-service language teachers, learn that embedded within Communicating are five notions: socialising and taking action; obtaining and using information; responding to and expressing imaginative experience; moving between/translating; expressing and performing identity; and reflection on intercultural language use. The second strand is Understanding, and embedded within that are four further notions: systems of language; variability in language use; language awareness; and role of language and culture.

A further level of representation is conceptualised in statements that ensure teachers plan for their students to grasp/ engage with 'key concepts' such as culture or perspective, and 'key processes' such as reflection. Clearly articulated in this next level of intended learning statements are notions that teachers will be able to observe (and judge/assess) their students' learning. The verbs driving these learning statements include 'exchange', 'interact', 'participate in', 'take action', 'carry out', 'respond to', 'locate', 'construct', 'gather', 'report on', 'create', 'translate', 'examine', 'experiment with', 'interpret', 'recognise', 'negotiate', 'understand', among others. Teachers and pre-service teachers can learn about expectations for student learning through the large number of related terms listed in the curriculum that describe student learning/engagement. The curricula are language-specific, grammars and very specific topics/themes are not mandated, yet occasional suggestions for vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, etc,, are included. The curriculum documents are wordy pieces indeed, and a certain amount of navigation/ orientation around the documents will be necessary, no matter whether the language teacher is pre-service or more experienced.

It could be that pre-service language teachers are not troubled particularly by the concepts underpinning the Australian Curriculum: Languages. For them, every curriculum or syllabus document is new. One example is the case of pre-service language teachers in the New South Wales context who are already developing their understandings of the three interlocking objectives of the K-10 Languages Syllabuses (Board of Studies New South Wales, 2003): using language (UL); moving between cultures (MBC); and making linguistic connections (MLC). Whether national curriculum or state or territory syllabuses, these 'puzzle pieces' are just two of the many puzzle pieces which are being fitted into place. The New South Wales pre-service language teachers are not so tied to curriculum or syllabus that they cannot consider new concepts, such as the strands and sub-strands of the new Australian Curriculum: Languages. The fact is, all such documents are new to them. We can hopefully tap these pre-service language teachers' willingness to engage with what is new to them, and possibly they may perceive they are at the 'cutting edge' of new practice.

More importantly to the pre-service language teachers is gaining understandings of, planning for, and getting practice in, judging students' demonstrations of learning. For in-service language teachers, coming to understand new terms such as 'imaginative experience', 'performing identity' and 'variability in language use' may be the issue. For pre-service language teachers it may actually be that the aspect of their professional experience practicum period concerning them most is the behaviour management and operational classroom process challenges involving engaging and motivating learners. Indeed it would not be surprising to find that planning and programming for the strands and sub-strands of the Australian Curriculum: Languages or their own state/ territory syllabuses comes as second-level consideration in their thinking when other urgent and 'now' problems are uppermost considerations.

THE 'BAND DESCRIPTION' PUZZLE PIECES

A strength of the Australian Curriculum: Languages are the detailed 'Band descriptions', describing the learners in stages between Foundation and Year 10. Who the language learners are, and what concerns them and engages them is described in much detail, and represents the school language learners' life-worlds. Many Australian school language learners live in home situations where more than one language and culture are evident. For such a long time we have waited for a curriculum document to describe our learners of additional languages through the lens of diversity, acknowledging that the students in our classrooms are most likely to be adding a third or even fourth language to their repertoire. Many pre-service language teachers are from diverse backgrounds similar to the students in school.

So an encouraging sign is that our pre-service language teachers can now identify with the life-worlds of their school learner groups, as sometimes they share common heritage language backgrounds as the students in their classrooms. The challenge is for pre-service language teachers to differentiate the curriculum for these background speakers/heritage learners and not only plan for teaching and judging of 'communicating' and 'understanding', but also to capture this accurately and fairly/ethically in the different life-worlds of the learners.

THE SITUATION FOR PRESERVICE PRIMARY SCHOOL LANGUAGE TEACHERS

The issue of knowing and being competent in curriculum understandings is relevant for pre-service language teachers preparing to teach in both the primary classroom as well as the secondary classroom. However for the preparation of primary language teachers, the situation is not so clear cut in Australia at present. Most language teacher education degrees in Australia prepare pre-service language teachers for secondary level language teaching. The 2007 report, An investigation of the state and nature of languages in Australian schools (Liddicoat, Scarino, Curnow, Kohler, Scrimgeour & Morgan, 2007), indicated that at pre-service level, very few of the 38 teacher education faculties are involved in preparing primary language teachers, and very few primary teacher education programs include languages curriculum method units of study. Liddicoat et al's (2007, p. 110) report notes that very few primary languages education units existed during the data collection phase, 2006 and 2007. Figure 2 lists the 11 teacher education institutions which indicated they offer primary languages education curriculum in those years. A quick follow-up scan of degree program information on those university websites shows that most, if not all (as a specialisation in languages may be 'hidden' inside another unit of study, such as 'second language acquisition') continue to offer a primary languages specialisation. Other universities, such as Flinders University in South Australia, have added a primary languages specialisation.

The issues concerned with curriculum implementation regarding primary school languages learning in the states and territories in the initial years of the implementation of the Australian Curriculum: Languages needs to be high priority for schooling systems. If there are very few trained teachers being prepared to teach languages in the primary school, it is difficult to imagine how the suggested indicative 400 hours of learning will occur in Australia's primary schools.

A 'SPACE' FOR THE PUZZLE PIECES--THE IMPORTANT UNDERSTANDINGS EMBEDDED IN THE AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM: LANGUAGES

Barkhuizen and Borg (2010, p. 237) note that 'we now appreciate in much more sophisticated ways the complex processes entailed in becoming, being and developing as a language teaching professional'. Becoming a language teacher is indeed a complex process. Pre-service teachers are concerned with developing their language and culture knowledge, and their teaching pedagogy and strategies at the same time. Because they need to make sense of this complexity, it is claimed that pre-service teachers need a 'space' to do this:

   ... space to reflect, to practise, to
   confer and to exercise autonomy.
   Space refers to time or to some
   mediational activity or to freedom
   from contextual constraints, which
   gives teachers the opportunity to
   develop their pedagogical knowledge.

Figure 2: DEEWR 2007 reporting of teacher
education degrees offering a primary
languages specialisation

NSW

University of New England
Newcastle University
The University of Sydney

Queensland

Central Queensland University
Queensland University of Technology
University of Southern Queensland

Victoria

Deakin University
LaTrobe University
University of Melbourne

South Australia

University of SA

Western Australia

Murdoch University

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Busch (2010, p. 319) argues that researchers have long thought about how to skill language teachers in their teacher education programs, some saying it is more than just knowledge of syllabus and materials, suggesting that reflection on their beliefs is important.

   ... it has been suggested that
   language teacher educators need to
   take into account the belief systems
   of pre-service teachers early in
   training programs as a means of
   maximising the intake of information
   taught in the courses (Peacock,
   2001; Lo, 2005). In addition, some
   researchers (Pennington, 1996;
   Angelova, 2005; Attardo & Brown,
   2005; Bartels, 2005; Lo, 2005)
   have suggested that professional
   coursework which includes
   experiential and reflective activities
   seems to have a stronger effect on
   the development of belief systems
   than declarative knowledge (theories
   and research) taught alone.

Kiely and Davis (2010, p. 277) note the need to provide a 'space' for pre-service teachers to prepare for their careers as well, noting that 'teachers found little space in their working lives'. The Kiely and Davis (2010) study focused on language teachers and their time/space for reading professionally. At least pre-service language teachers are already within the context of having to read academic papers for their professional development. The important aspect surely is that the pre-service period offers opportunity for the linking of theory from the professional readings, reflection time, as well as space to practice.

Morton and Gray (2010, p. 297) found that the pre-service language teacher education period is the perfect time to offer pre-service teachers the space to work on strategies for planning. In the pre-service period pre-service teachers are engaged with the practice of planning, which involved ' ... planning for teaching through such discursive acts as producing directives, proposing actions, evaluating, articulating teaching principles and imagining classroom events'.

Most particularly, the pre-service teachers need opportunities to compare the Australian Curriculum: Languages with what they have learned about the local state or territory scenario. As they come to terms with comprehending the terms in the two documents-for example, 'moving between' and 'performing identity', the pre-service language teachers, who may not yet have experienced a language classroom during a professional experience period, seek to know what these essentially cognitive behaviours might 'look like'.

The change referred to here as regards the Australian Curriculum: Languages concerns not only the new terms used in the document itself, but also the need for these pre-service language teachers to change their conceptualisation of languages education and their role in operationalising it (Thornton, 1988, p. 310), or translating into practice, also termed enacting curriculum (Rodriguez, 2006, p. 805): that is, the curriculum that is actually taught.

'SPACE' FOR REFLECTION AND GUIDANCE BY ACCOMPLISHED LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATORS

The Australian Curriculum: Languages is very close on the horizon for most schooling systems across Australia, with the notable exception (for the moment at least) of New South Wales. Anecdotal reports emerging from teacher education faculties would have us believe that the language teacher education pre-service curriculum is very full, and the pre-service language teacher educators claim they may need to wait to find a 'space' during professional experience practicum periods, where the pre-service language teachers first come to experience what it is to judge a student's cognitive development and learning of the elaborations of 'communicating' and 'understanding' language and culture. The 'space', or the 'mediational activity' (Barkhuizen & Borg, 2010, p. 238) may be case studies, or direct dialogues with classroom teachers implementing the curriculum right now--any number of possibilities could be planned-but it will be the skill of the pre-service language teacher educator in framing that pre-service language teacher learning that will make the difference. At the same time, the pre-service language teacher educators must guard against too many demands on the pre-service language teachers and the requirements for them to practise planning units of work, as these demands decrease the opportunity for consideration of 'new spaces'.

CONCLUSION

Coping with the challenges brought about by the early impact of the Australian Curriculum: Languages is not purely a 'time' issue. Allowing 'space' alongside 'time' for pre-service teachers to engage with the concepts underpinning the 'communicating' and 'understanding' aspects of the content may actually be provision of opportunities for them to know each strand of the content and the elaborations in a more detailed way.

It is assumed that employers of graduate language teachers will require them to have an up-to-date knowledge of curriculum documents and policy. Accomplished language teachers deserve to have access to the 'space' and 'time' to professionally update their understandings of curriculum. End-user stakeholders, such as school students and their parents deserve accomplished language teachers with such knowledge.

More than half a decade ago, Harbon and Browett (2006, p. 29) had described language teacher educators themselves as being at a 'crossroads ... [with] ... feelings of being novices ... with the new ... brief periods of feeling uncertain' (p. 30). Pre-service language teachers may not be fazed by the Australian Curriculum: Languages at all. What they need, however is 'space' and opportunity to learn and reflect on both curriculum documents and processes to be able to fit those important pieces into the Australian languages education puzzle.

REFERENCES

Alegounarias. T. 2013, 24 July. Memorandum to Principals: Update on NSW syllabuses incorporating the Australian curriculum. Sydney: Board of Studies New South Wales.

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Caption Figure 1: Conceptualization of a teacher's 'readiness to teach' (Haigh, Ell & Mackisack, 2013, p.1)

Lesley Harbon works in pre-service language teacher education in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at The University of Sydney. She also teaches in postgraduate coursework programs and supervises research higher degrees. Her research focuses on a number of areas in languages education including bilingual education, intercultural language education, language teacher professional learning and the value of short-term international experiences for language teachers. Prior to working in teacher education, Lesley taught Indonesian and German variously at primary, secondary and tertiary levels in New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland and Tasmania. Lesley can be contacted at lesley.harbon@sydney.edu.au or through her homepage at sydney.edu.au