Thinking ‘Outside of the Box’ in Modern Education Systems: Working across Cultural and Language Boundaries with Student Teachers in Lithuania

• Main Author: Gillian L. S. Hilton
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bulgarian Comparative Education Society (BCES) 2018-07-01
• Series: BCES Conference Books
• Subjects: teaching in English with non-native speakers; Lithuania; peer assessment
• Online Access: http://bces-conference-books.org/onewebmedia/2018.105-111.Gillian.Hilton.pdf

This paper explores the challenges of working with non-native speakers of English, on areas pertinent to the successful education of trainee teachers of young children in Lithuania. The challenges faced were numerous, as the two week programme was not specifically related to the young child’s education, covering subjects such as quality assurance of programmes, induction processes for new teachers, the characteristics of teacher educators and mentors and the skills required by teachers in the twenty first century. The conclusions reached were the following; subject matter more directly related to young children’s education, though this would not have stretched the students in the way desired by the researcher; and translation of the material used into Lithuanian, originally suggested by the researcher would have without doubt aided the comprehension and learning of the students, many of whose standard of English was often not sufficient for the tasks set. Struggling with the language of instruction definitely affected content learning. However, students despite the difficulties made very successful efforts to embrace the end of programme’s challenge, involving group work and group presentations of a new curriculum for training pre-school teachers and pre-primary teachers.