Keywords

Introduction

We live in an era of globalization, internationalization, transnationalism, and transmigration, where cross-cultural and cross-linguistic exchange is at its highest in human history. This is particularly the case in Canada, which has long had one of the highest per capita immigration rates in the world. Between 2006 and 2011, for example, Canada received approximately 1,162,900 immigrants (Statistics Canada 2013b) and an additional 263,000 arrived between June 2012 and July 2013 (Statistics Canada 2013a). Projections indicate that in the coming years, immigration will rise steadily to 400,000 annually. Consequently, there is expanding linguistic and cultural diversity, especially though not exclusively, in large urban areas. In the 2011 census, one in five Canadians, or nearly seven million people, reported a mother tongue other than English or French (Statistics Canada 2012). The impact of globalization and immigration is realized markedly in the linguistic diversity represented in Canadian schools. For example, in British Columbia (BC), 11 % of students Kindergarten-Grade 12 (K-12) are designated English language learners, while in the K-4 range the percentage rises to over 20 %. Overall, some 25 % of BC K-12 students speak a language other than English at home (BC Ministry of Education 2013), and in Vancouver the number is greater than 50 %, with approximately 150 different languages represented in the city’s public schools (Vancouver School Board n.d.). Additionally, dramatic transformations in the global economy have occurred that impact schools, particularly in the move from a manufacturing- and industry-oriented economy to a knowledge-based economy . This ongoing change is codeveloping with equally dramatic technological innovations. These forces jointly impact multiple aspects of our lives and call into question language and literacy pedagogies for the twenty-first century (New London Group 2000). In BC, as in other parts of the world, these radical economic and social changes have led to a process of curriculum review and reformulation. In the recent BC education plan, it is noted that:

our education system is based on a model of learning from an earlier century. To change that, we need to put students at the centre of their own education. We need to make a better link between what kids learn at school and what they experience and learn in their everyday lives. We need to create new learning environments for students that allow them to discover, embrace and fulfill their passions. We need to set the stage for parents, teachers, administrators and other partners to prepare our children for success not only in today’s world, but in a world that few of us can yet imagine. (BC Ministry of Education 2011, p. 2)

New times, characterized by cultural and linguistic diversity , and the requirements of new competencies (creative and critical thinking; superior communications skills across a range of modes, audiences, and platforms; and enhanced personal and social responsibility awareness), demand new, innovative approaches to instruction. How best to prepare teacher candidates to enter such twenty-first century classroom contexts is one question that motivated us in part to bring the TELL and PBL cohorts together and to research the process and product of the merger in terms of the knowledge flows and mobilization that can occur (and not occur) in the context of an innovative teacher education initiative.

From TELL to TELL-Through-PBL

The TELL cohort was originally established to respond to the circumstances surrounding the increasing presence of English language learners in BC schools alluded to above. As one of several themed teacher certification cohorts in the Teacher Education Office of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, TELL adopted an inquiry orientation to developing knowledge about language and second language teaching into an elementary generalist teacher education curriculum. TELL added a 26-hour course to the existing teacher education curriculum , which focused on knowledge about language and second language pedagogy, with a particular focus on integrating language with content-area instruction. Additionally, there was a specific aim toward working to integrate a TELL focus across the 1-year teacher education curriculum, for example, by emphasizing (second) language and literacy issues in the social studies, science, math, and language arts methods courses TELL students were to take.

In 2012, with the implementation of a revised teacher education curriculum and a reduction in the number of themed cohorts, it was decided to merge the TELL cohort with the existing PBL cohort to create a new cohort: TELL/PBL. The rationale was that in addition to ensuring that both TELL and PBL would continue as thematic strands in the TEO with the merger, that TELL would fit well with PBL’s original language and literacy orientation, and that PBL would be ideal for the inquiry orientation originally envisioned (and somewhat unevenly implemented) for TELL: the merged cohort would enable TCs to become ethnographers of language/language use, so they could implement such an approach in their own classrooms, to have their students similarly become more metalinguistically aware and investigate how language was used in schools, their families, and their communities.

Collaborative Professional Conversations: Knowledge Mobilization and Innovation

Three interrelated perspectives inform the conceptual frame of our study: a functional theoretical stance on teaching academic language and content across subject areas in multilingual /ELL classrooms, a critical pedagogical approach to L2 teacher education, and participatory action research. For a number of years, there has been a growing literature on policy, programs, and practices in classrooms where ELL students are learning school subjects in English (for comprehensive reviews, see, e.g., Crandall 1992; Snow 1998; Mohan et al. 2001; Stoller 2004, 2008). Still, in a review that addressed what are commonly termed content-based L2 programs, Stoller (2008) maintained that as yet, “[t]he integration of content and language-learning objectives presents challenges for policy makers, program planners, curriculum designers, teachers, materials writers, teacher educators, teacher supervisors, test writers, and learners” (p. 65). However, while challenges, as well as opportunities, persist, Schleppegrell and O’Hallaron (2011) highlight three significant instructional aspects as a way forward in this area. These include: providing support for teachers regarding “how language works in their subject areas,” careful unit planning, and scaffolding students’ academic language and content learning simultaneously (p. 3). With respect to L2 teacher education, Burns and Richards’ (2009) edited volume was important for the theoretical framing of this study, particularly the chapter by Hawkins and Norton (2009), which drew on a wide range of research to offer five principles for critical language teacher education: the situated nature of programs and practices, responsiveness to learners, dialogic engagement, reflexivity, and praxis. A related body of research on participatory action research (Kemmis and McTaggart 2005) was also significant for this study. Research participants met on a two-week cycle to discuss and revise the cohort’s cases and to engage in what we considered to be a crucial feature in the merger: the exchange and mobilization of knowledge about TELL and PBL from respective specialists’ perspectives. Similar to participatory action research, “[the participants’] principal concern [was] in changing practices in the ‘here and now’” (Kemmis and McTaggart 2005, p. 564). As such, we were mindful of the key features of participatory action research, as characterized by Kemmis and McTaggart: as a social process, as participatory, practical and collaborative, as emancipatory, critical, and reflexive, and with aims to transform both theory and practice (pp. 565–568).

The Study

Given the comparative lack of research that examines teacher education initiatives such as the TELL/PBL cohort merger, and in an effort to provide an empirical basis to inform its continued implementation, we formulated a small-scale qualitative case study to investigate its processes over the course of its first year of implementation. There were three research questions for the study; this chapter only concerns the firstFootnote 1:

What successes, challenges, and opportunities resulted from efforts to create a successful collaborative teacher educator inquiry group of diverse participants who sought new and innovative inquiry-based ways, appropriate to changing times, to support teacher candidates in multilingual classrooms?

Participants of the study included the TELL/PBL cohort coordinators, cohort tutors, and several, but not all, cohort instructors.Footnote 2 Several forms of data were generated for the purpose of answering this question:

  • Audio and video recordings of twice-weekly meetings over the course of the year with cohort tutors and instructors regarding upcoming cases which served as the basis for TELL/PBL. These meetings were a central data source as they were the primary site where efforts to infuse TELL principles into already-existing PBL cases were undertaken. Approximately 16 h of audio/video data were generated from these meetings.

  • Field notes and reflections on these meetings.

  • One audio-recorded interview each with four of the cohort tutors/instructors, conducted at the end of the first year of the merger by a graduate research assistant (Melanie Wong).

  • Email communication over the course of the one-year study period among various research participants.

  • The original (PBL) and revised (TELL/PBL) cases and other documents relevant to the cohort merger.

Audio/video data from the instructor meetings and interviews were logged and transcribed for content by Melanie Wong and subsequently analyzed for themes by the authors, who developed a coding scheme responsive to both the data set and research question. Following repeated readings/viewings of the data set, the authors identified and refined two clusters of “semantic” themes (Boyatzis 1998): successes and challenges of the TELL/PBL cohort. These thematic clusters were in fact topicalized in the research question, and they organize the discussion that follows.

Before we continue, we pause to note that while we have endeavored to represent the perspectives of everyone who participated in this study as fairly and accurately as possible, our backgrounds and expertise in TELL, and our experience as TELL specialists in the merged cohort, have invariably influenced our discussion below of the first year of TELL/PBL. We are confident that a PBL specialist working with our data set would arrive at similar findings as we have; we are equally confident that because no scholar writes from nowhere (Haraway 1988), certain nuances or traces of PBL experience and expertise would shape the representations of those findings, just as ours as specialists in teaching L2 learners inevitably have.

Additionally, we would like to problematize from the outset the rather stark binary between TELL and PBL that might be inferable below, another artifact of this study, its premise, and the institutional realities it aims to investigate (i.e., that there were two distinct cohorts named TELL and PBL; that they were merged; that participants for the study were recruited and/or self-identified as either TELL or PBL specialists; that these categories were mobilized by participants in meetings, email communication, and interviews; and so forth). Because of these considerations, we are aware that it may at times appear in the analysis that PBL specialists had little or even no experience with TELL and, vice versa, that people in TELL had no experience with PBL. However, this is not the case. Our discussion should therefore be viewed in terms of programmatic, administrative, and disciplinary emphases between two distinct institutional entities, rather than the individual people who comprised them.

Successes

The first cluster of themes we generated variously referenced the successes of the TELL/PBL merger, viewed both in terms of how TELL was taken up and extended in the new cohort and how PBL principles and practices were manifested. The data that we have drawn these themes from come particularly from the twice-monthly cohort meetings; they were confirmed informally among participants over the year, as well as in the formal interviews with instructors/tutors.

Infusion of ELL Issues

A distinguishing feature of TELL/PBL was the wide range of issues germane to the education of school-age ELLs that was infused into the newly merged cohort’s curriculum and instructional practice. The significance of this most basic success cannot be overstated: there is overwhelming empirical evidence from a range of disciplinary perspectives that demonstrates that ELLs are “overlooked and underserved” (Ruiz de Velasco et al. 2000) in North American schools, from elementary through high school. Reasons for such neglect include the “invisibility” of language and language demands to non-ELL specialists (Early 1990; Harper and de Jong 2004), a belief among subject area teachers that ELL instruction is not their responsibility (Samway and McKeon 1999), the conflation of L2 needs with behavioral, emotional, and cognitive “deficits” (Crawford 2004; Klingner et al. 2008), assimilationist views concerning immigrants and the languages they speak (Cummins 2007; Menken 2013), mistaken assumptions and lay language ideologies about L2 learning and learners (McLaughlin 1992), challenges of adding ELL programming to existing administrative structures (Harklau 1994), and negative beliefs about ELL from ELL teachers and students themselves (e.g., Talmy 2009, 2010). As a result, simply raising the sorts of neglected issues ELLs consistently face in schools in the professional conversations that took place over TELL/PBL’s first year was an important development.

The clearest indication of this infusion was how ELLs were featured in the PBL cases that cohort coordinators, tutors, and instructors revised in the twice-monthly meetings. Register, for instance, a key theoretical construct in functional approaches to content-based L2 learning and teaching, was featured throughout most of the cohort’s 11 cases, particularly as it related to commonalities in academic language across subject areas (Mohan 1986; Schleppegrell 2004). The concept of register was complemented approximately mid-year with consideration of educational genres, as another means of implementing pedagogy that was responsive to ELLs as well as non-ELL children and youth (see, e.g., Derewianka 1990; Early 1990). An early case concerning how classroom community could be created and maintained was revised to attend to how students’ first languages might be incorporated in service of this endeavor (Lucas and Katz 1994). Classroom composition profiles that previously alluded to race/ethnic and cultural diversity were updated to explicitly consider linguistic diversity; relatedly, TCs were encouraged to move beyond an appreciation of cultural and linguistic diversity to consider how it might be utilized as a pedagogical resource (Cummins 2007). Discussion of the importance of oracy for kindergarten classrooms was expanded to include its centrality for L2 learning as well, particularly among children (Gibbons 2002). Issues concerning English as a second dialect were foregrounded in a case about Aboriginal children in a Northern BC elementary school (Ball et al. 2005; Siegel 2007), focal students in cases were transformed into multilingual youth rather than English monolinguals, bullying was extended to recognize many of the ways that it can occur through language, the advantages of a (post-)process approach to writing was discussed in terms of its advantages for L2 learners (Ferris and Hedgcock 2005), and much more. This is not to suggest that the PBL cases that existed before the TELL/PBL merger were deficient in any way, just to indicate a few of the many ways that ELL issues were infused into the cohort over its first year of implementation.

Integration of PBL Principles and Practice

The professional conversations that stakeholders engaged in as we went about revising the PBL cases for ELLs were exceptionally rich, not just in terms of the infusion of ELL issues, but in PBL’s inquiry orientation, as well. Just as specialists in TELL raised topics related to principles of L2 learning, register, genre, and the like, for the merged cohort, PBL specialists regularly pointed to ways that TELL education could be implemented in terms consistent with PBL. As a result, the aims for inquiry that we had always envisioned for TELL were provided both a firm theoretical and methodological basis and, perhaps more importantly, a structure for actually implementing it. This structure was manifest in the PBL two-week case cycle; the recruitment of instructors in the TEO who had background and understanding of PBL principles and practice; the twice-monthly meetings with cohort coordinators, tutors, and instructors; and the unique approach to assessment (the triple jump) that had long been featured as hallmarks of the original PBL cohort. It is fair to say that the merger with PBL provided TELL the means for implementing the stance toward learner inquiry that we had always hoped for, but that remained unattained in our first years; more significantly, PBL extended our understanding of just how thoroughgoing that inquiry orientation could be. It also demonstrated to us the significant challenges that had been negotiated by PBL specialists in the years prior to the TELL/PBL merger, to implement a cohort structure that simply did not fit within existing institutional constraints of the TEO.

Time on TELL

In contrast to TELL/PBL TCs’ perceptions (see below), the amount of time and attention devoted to ELLs was greater, more variegated, and more dispersed than in previous iterations of the (unmerged) TELL cohort. Although the two-week PBL case cycle meant that the two-credit class concerning ELL education in the TEO (LLED 353: Teaching English Language Learners) met less frequently than in other cohorts, in fact, ELL issues were taken up in the tutorials and, though less consistently, depending on the instructor’s awareness of the characteristics of language used in their disciple, in subject area classes. This meant that ELLs were considered in a range of different contexts from a range of different perspectives over the entire academic year, rather than simply one two-hour class per week over a single university term, as in other cohorts. Additionally, workshops, another unique feature of PBL that carried over to the merged cohort, allowed more extended consideration of certain issues concerning ELL education. Workshops offered TC hands-on demonstrations and practical applications in a range of subject, thematic, and topical areas. Considered together, the time and attention that ELL issues received in TELL/PBL cohort via the ELL course, the tutorials, the subject area classes, and the workshops were significant successes that derived from the merger.

Collaboration and Communication

The distinctive characteristics of PBL, both in terms of its pedagogical principles and its programmatic infrastructure, were important affordances in carrying the first year of the TELL/PBL merger through to completion. The twice-monthly meetings with cohort coordinators, tutors, and instructors were central sites where knowledge mobilization and innovation could occur, from discussions about the revised cases and the issues they involved to how teachers could work together around a particular topic to the planning for workshops, and beyond. A web-based learning management system that all coordinators, tutors, and instructors had access to was another important site where stakeholders could check in with each other, monitor what others were doing, work to articulate lessons with one another, and so on. The website, the twice-monthly meetings, and ongoing email communication among stakeholders were instrumental in implementing PBL not just for the TCs, but among all of us involved in bringing TELL and PBL together. Regardless of the differences that arose over the year, and there were several (see below), it was without question done in the sort of spirit of collaboration and goodwill that PBL affords and promotes.

Challenges

Bringing together two teacher education cohorts, with distinct sets of practices, emphases, and foci, different histories and stakeholders, all in a fairly inflexible institutional context, was an endeavor that we knew from the start would inevitably encounter difficulties. Add to this the implementation in the larger TEO of a new curriculum and administrative structure, and the challenges would only multiply. Such was the case with the TELL/PBL merger. Despite the important successes described above, there were several substantive challenges, which led to several stakeholders to in fact question over the course of the first year whether the merged cohort should continue. This section outlines those challenges.

Frontloading

The matter of what we came to term “frontloading” was perhaps the single thorniest and most persistent challenge that those involved in the implementation of the cohort merger grappled with over its first year. By frontloading, what we mean is the a priori provision to TCs of concepts, constructs, and knowledge required to undertake inquiry, specifically, the sorts of inquiry that we as TELL specialists had in mind for them: inquiry into language, how it is used to construct subject area content in schools, and whose interests particular language-constituted representations serve. Frontloading was, in short, aimed at providing both a provocation and a means for inquiry.Footnote 3 What we had hoped to do was require a textbook (such as Gibbons 2002) and related assignments to help TCs learn what it was they actually could inquire about and problematize for their PBL cases (via, e.g., metalinguistic constructs such as register and genre), in addition to some basic texts in L2 learning and teaching (e.g., Lightbown and Spada 2013).Footnote 4 This was protested by several PBL specialists, who indicated that prior to the merger, they had not assigned readings or other activities to TCs, that to do so would undermine the integrity of the cohort’s inquiry orientation, and that overall, such practice was contrary to PBL principles. Although this conundrum was not satisfactorily resolved over the first year, it was heartening to learn that it is not new to PBL (see Provan 2011).

Working with Existing Cases

The process of working to infuse TELL issues and principles into the existing cases was a rewarding and interesting task for all stakeholders and, as discussed earlier, proved to be a productive site for knowledge mobilization and innovation. At the same time, modifying existing cases rather than creating new ones meant that too often, ELL issues seemed to have been simply “added on” rather than integrated in more meaningful ways. For instance, in a case where bullying was featured, bullying through language was added onto bullying due to gender nonconformity. In a case that featured working in a classroom composed of a substantial number of Aboriginal students, English as a second dialect was added to issues concerning culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy. As a result of these sorts of additions, tutors and instructors commented that the original issues (e.g., bullying due to gender nonconformity) may have been given less attention than was needed, and it was apparent to us, as well, that the TELL issues were not always attended to in ways we believed they could have been. There were also frequent discussions about the increase in the number of issues per case: with the addition of TELL issues, there was now too much in the cases to be adequately taken up by tutors and TCs.

TELL Knowledge Mobilization

The goal of this study was to investigate knowledge mobilization among PBL and TELL specialists and nonspecialists. One of the primary findings of the study was that TELL knowledge mobilization was not robust enough to adequately support the integration of TELL issues across the cases. This was a particular challenge when it came to working with TCs to help them discern the language demands of subject area content; if instructors or tutors were themselves not sure how to inquire about language using concepts such as register or genre, they indicated they were not able to help TCs sufficiently do so either. This challenge no doubt had much to do with structural constraints described above, including working with existing cases, and the non-assignment of a relevant textbook and related coursework. It may also have been due to inadequate support from those of us in TELL to help scaffold understanding of TELL principles over the course of the year: we did not provide as many professional development sessions as we had initially hoped, and several instructors were unavailable to attend those that we did schedule. As a result, the status of language as “an invisible medium” (Diaz-Rico and Weed 2002, in Harper and de Jong 2004, p. 156), its role in learning and teaching implied or even taken for granted, unexpectedly endured in the first year of TELL/PBL cohort, with uptake to ELL issues varying considerably among instructors and tutors. In essence, TELL simply became another “subject area” to be covered, one issue among many, rather than a coherent approach to inquiring into, investigating, and problematizing the registers that are conventionally understood to constitute academic language, across the disciplines.

Loss of PBL Identity

If TELL specialists were disappointed in the adequacy of TELL knowledge mobilization and the inconsistency in uptake to issues of importance in ELL education, several PBL specialists lamented the loss of what was variously referred to as PBL identity, spirit, and its “core” principles. Many factors evidently played a part in creating this sense of loss. They included: the desire of those in TELL to require a textbook and related assignments even though PBL had in the past explicitly rejected such practice; the expansion in the number of case issues that attended the TELL “infusion,” which rendered more focused and “organic” inquiry unviable; the recurrence of (TELL) issues that had (ostensibly) been addressed in previous cases, for instance, the repeated appearance of “register” across multiple cases; the pressure to ensure that TELL was discussed in classes and tutorials, to the apparent detriment of other important issues; the diminishment of central PBL practices like Socratic questioning brought on by the need to “steer” TCs toward issues of concern to TELL; and more. Another significant frustration voiced by participating PBL specialists had to do with TCs who had signed up for TELL rather than PBL. In previous years, when PBL was a standalone thematic cohort, TCs explicitly selected it, ensuring a cohort group that knew what they were opting for, and embraced it. Many TELL/PBL TCs, in contrast, had chosen the cohort for TELL; some did not understand or accept PBL as TCs in the past had. Thus, there was an underlying tension among a minority in the cohort who wanted TELL, but not PBL, and who in fact viewed PBL as an impediment to learning more about TELL. There were complaints from TCs about having far fewer of the ELL classes (LLED 353) than their peers in non-PBL cohorts were receiving, even though they were actually receiving more “time on TELL” than other cohorts, in the tutorials, other subject area classes, and workshops. Regardless, the TCs’ frustration with the merged cohort was felt by us all as we worked to ensure that we met their needs while adhering to curriculum objectives and the at times competing priorities of TELL and PBL emphases.

Possibilities

The challenges just described notwithstanding, we and other members of the TELL/PBL group remain optimistic that our initial successes can be cultivated to create the sort of dynamic cohort we still believe is possible. To abandon the merger due to the tensions experienced in its first year would not recognize the complexities involved in bringing together two groups with distinct histories, expectations, and emphases. Neither would it honor the substantial amounts of time and effort the coordinators, instructors, and tutors put into making it work. And it would not recognize that the endeavor we all undertook was made far more complicated by the larger TEO curriculum revision, when it was not always clear whether challenges that were encountered were due to the merger or to the newly revised teacher education program.

The first year of the TELL/PBL cohort showed us the promise of what the merged cohort could offer, and it showed us that it will take more work. In order to fashion a cohort that is responsive to the interests of both sets of stakeholders , what follows are a set of recommendations we have produced that is based on our collective experience in the cohort in addition to the empirical record generated for this study.

  • Frontloading . We respect the reluctance, as reported in this study, to assign core readings in PBL, but our experience with the first-year cohort underscores that without even rudimentary preparation in knowledge about language, second language learning, and language/content integration that TCs are simply ill-equipped to undertake informed and critical inquiries into academic language and the demands of the language of schooling for ELLs. We do not claim that teachers of ELLs must be experts in language – quite the opposite, in fact – but they must have a basic understanding of how language works in schools in order to inquire about it, investigate it, and interrogate it on their own and, more importantly, teach their ELLs how to inquire about it, investigate it, and interrogate it on their own. In this respect, we liken this sort of understanding about language to basic anatomy or pharmacology coursework that medical students in PBL programs across the world must take prior to or in tandem with their cases in problem-based learning. The idea here would not be to take away from learner inquiry, but to enable it in ways that TCs in the cohort’s first year simply never learned. The ostensible invisibility of language is a major challenge for mainstream teachers working with ELLs; what we would aim to do is to help render perceptible that which has frequently proven indiscernible to the non-ELL specialist.

  • A one-week TELL orientation, for TCs and tutors. While this may not be workable in the current context of the TEO, we believe a series of workshops over the first week of the school year, where we introduce in some depth a few basic constructs we believe are essential for successfully working with ELLs in mainstream, subject area classrooms . Key among them is:

    • A perspective on language that goes beyond it serving as a simple means of transmitting information, toward one that acknowledges that language means, language does, and language is used in very particular ways to constitute subject area content and academic texts and that language use is therefore inherently political.

    • An understanding that ELLs bring with them a range of resources for making meaning, including most significantly, their first languages, but also other modes, modalities, and registers (written, visual, musical, embodied, and so on) that are often not valued in school. These are resources that can and should be mobilized in the acquisition of English registers and genres that are necessary for academic success.

  • New cases . We worked in the first year of the merger with existing cases from past years of the (non-TELL) PBL cohort and revised them to infuse principles of relevance to ELL education in K-12 North American settings. While the process of revising these cases was a significant site for knowledge mobilization and innovation, the product – the revised cases – was ultimately inadequate for the successful integration of TELL with PBL. Therefore, going forward, we need new cases, cases that will build into them from the start principles of teaching ELLs, which will feature recurrent attention on (meta)language and language-related issues that develops from case to case (e.g., case sequencing of matters concerning register), so that TCs can become informed inquirers into (academic and nonacademic) language and help their own students become ones, as well. This may be the most important innovation for the TELL/PBL cohort moving forward.

  • Tutors with TELL expertise (or a strong curiosity and commitment to rapidly developing this professional knowledge and know-how). Tutors are appointed on a three-year cycle, and as such, time is of the essence vis-à-vis “apprenticing” into the culture of this rich and complex cohort. Given the central role that tutors play in the TELL/PBL cohort in ensuring that particular issues are taken up by TCs, and taken up effectively, we believe cohort tutors would ideally have a strong grasp of how language functions in school, and in theories of second language learning, so that they may more expertly guide TCs in their inquiries.

  • Finally, the importance of the workshops often meant that there were numerous interests competing for workshop time. We would suggest that additional workshops be taken up throughout the year and in addition to the first week of TELL workshops that will prioritize in them perspectives on these issues as they relate to TELL.

Conclusion

The successes of the TELL/PBL cohort in its first year of implementation, in the context of a major structural overhaul in the UBC TEO, were a tribute to the time, effort, and goodwill of a group of immensely committed university educators. The challenges, some anticipated, many not, were in some senses inevitable given the difficulties of knowledge mobilization and innovation in a setting where tradition, disciplinary insularity, and institutional inertia frequently prevail. As this study has suggested, however, the possibilities of the TELL/PBL cohort demonstrate the power that can result when those who are committed to it will persist. This includes those in the current second year of the TELL/PBL cohort, the cohort coordinators, tutors, and subject instructors who, at the time of writing, are currently working to put a number of these recommendations into practice, with plans for further development, in the coming years.