The New Alliance: Pedagogy and Student Experience in Intercultural Professional Learning

Abstract

The Faculty of Education in the University of X collaborates with a consortium of French universities to provide a ‘double diploma’ for students: a 2 year Masters FLE (Français comme Langue Etrangère) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in teaching Modern Languages. The first cohort of French students to do this programme recently completed the PGDE in X. The students were interviewed at the beginning and at the end of the academic year in order to investigate how their attitudes to teaching and learning had developed through their experiences in the X environment, how they viewed the process of becoming a teacher in a system which is different to the one they had been used to in their native country and if they felt they were offered adequate support during the PGDE year. This article describes the background to the collaboration and provides an overview of initial interview findings, which appear to indicate that the students valued the combination of theory and practice which the two courses offer.