Permeating the Boundaries of Traditional Second Language Professional Development

This essay reviews how a French-as-a-second-language/second language consultant supports teachers with curricula renewal and the required shift from pedagogic approaches that are Grammar-Translation and content-based to those that are communicative and competency-based. Through a traditional professional development model, the consultant prepares the teachers for new curricula. Through a job-embedded professional development model, the consultant and teacher apply new methodologies to the classroom environment, assessment and instruction. The data indicate the number of traditional and job-embedded professional development sessions for the 2012 to 2013 school year within four of the second language programs in the Greater Saskatoon Catholic School division: French Immersion, Intensive French/Post-Intensive French, Core French, and Ukrainian Bilingual. The results show that traditional sessions lead to a greater number of job-embedded sessions. To conclude, curricula renewal requires ongoing support not only for teachers at the division level, but also for pre-service teachers at the university level