Teacher training and primary school education: an analysis of the ministry of education’s curriculum proposal and three pedagogy programs from different chilean universities

Abstract

The design of teacher training programs that deal with Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is expected to be aligned with the Language Planning and Policy presented by the Chilean Ministry of Education. Therefore, the present study focuses on the analysis of the National Curriculum Proposal for the First Four Grades of Primary Education in addition to three teacher training programs from different universities. The gaps this investigation aims to fill is, first, if the public policy for Primary Education is based on theory. Second, if there is a distinction made for SLA of children vs. adolescents both in the three teacher training programs and the Curriculum Proposal document. Lastly, if there is a dialogue between the English language policies and the teacher training curricula from the universities selected for the study. The major findings indicate inconsistencies within the national curriculum that might be related to the inconsistencies found in the programs. The implications of this research point towards the need to follow the extant literature in Foreign Language Teaching in children -as it differs from adult language teaching- and the need to acknowledge the different school contexts in order to improve the training future teachers are receiving