engleski

Development of teachers' and preschool teachers' competences for teaching children speakers of Croatian as L2

In the Republic of Croatia, 4% of the inhabitants speak a minority language as their mother tongue (L1) and the members of national minorities have the Constitutional right to be educated in their mother tongue and script. The minorities exert the right by organizing education in one of 3 offered models (Model A, B or C). Even though most of the minority language speakers acquire the Croatian language spontaneously and simultaneously with their L1 during the preschool age, some minority speakers are not adequately exposed to Croatian in order to become bilingual. Also, there is a raising number of the immigrant children in the Croatian educational system, to whom Croatian is also a second language (L2). The need for teaching Croatian as a second language from the early age has been recognized by the authorities, and in that respect considerable changes have been made in the educational policy and legislative in the past couple of years. However, besides the policy changes, the change in teacher and preschool teacher initial and continuous education is also required. This paper deals with the development of teachers’ and pre-school teachers’ competences for teaching children speakers of Croatian as a second language. Different approaches are possible based on the language status (L1 or L2, i.e. minority or majority language) and the type of teacher education (initial or continuous education). Three programs will be discusses in more details: 1) a model of continuous teacher education conducted by the Croatian Education and Teacher Training Agency, 2) a possible model of a postgraduate study, and 3) an existing university course which is a part of the teacher initial education.

teacher competence; teacher initial education; Croatian as L2

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