The importance of the young learner element of teacher training programmes

Trinity's Simon Dunton presented on 'The Importance of the young learner element of teacher training programmes' at the Future of English Language Teaching Conference in October 2020.

While a huge number of EFL teachers find themselves in the young learner (YL) classroom at some point in their teaching experience, few get much formal training in this area. On essential/foundation teacher training courses like the CertTESOL or CELTA, for example, as little as one input session is dedicated to the topic, sometimes with disappointingly little or no real focus, and therefore of little use to trainees.

In this talk, we explored what such courses currently offer in terms of YL training, based on syllabuses, training timetables and training room observations.

Simon then looked at the importance of integrating YL teacher training throughout courses like those mentioned above. In this, we mean moving away from the one input session model to a more integrated one, whereby trainees will be encouraged to consider YLs and their specific needs in a number of sessions. This, we will argue, will be of great benefit to those who end up in YL classrooms, sometimes exclusively.

Finally, we discussed any gaps we notice between what we currently find and what we might aim to find in teacher training courses and suggest some ways in which these gaps can be addressed, taking elements from such courses as TYLEC and other YL-specific extension courses.