The collaborative role of EAL teachers in Australian schools from the perspective of EAL teacher education

The Australian Curriculum brings with it a strong focus on catering to EAL learners in the mainstream (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2014a). The focus is most apparent in the supplementary documents for EAL students that are currently embedded within different subject areas. This explicit and systematic acknowledgement of ways to teach EAL learners provides an opportunity to explore the collaborative role of EAL teachers, who are well placed to work with content area teachers to develop EAL students’ language proficiency. In this article I suggest that EAL and content area teacher collaboration outcomes may be enhanced by a dual focus on content area and language development. However, I also suggest that if this dual focus is not made explicit, the scaffolding of content areas is likely to take priority over the development of language proficiency. Data is taken from interviews with four EAL pre-service teachers who took part in a voluntary collaborative activity with pre-service content area teachers. Findings revealed both a lack of confidence and a perception that EAL and content area teacher collaboration signified providing the content area teacher with language support.