Teaching Canadian Culture: Teacher Preparation

Authors

  • Robert Courchene

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v13i2.666

Abstract

With the transformation of cultural content from an add-on to an integral part of the K-Adult ESL classroom, L2 specialists must come to grips with three separate but related issues in the Canadian context: What is Canadian culture? How do we prepare teachers to teach Canadian culture? How do we teach about culture in the classroom? After presenting a new vision of Canadian culture that is to serve as a framework for deciding what to teach in the L2 classroom, I discuss three important pedagogical issues: (a) consciousness raising-making both teachers and students more aware of the origins and role of culture; (b) teacher preparation- how adequately to prepare teachers to teach Canadian culture in a multicultural classroom; and (c) tolerance and conflicting visions-how to strike a balance between the dominant cultural paradigm and the new cultural knowledge and experience that arrives with each new Canadian.

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Published

1996-06-26

How to Cite

Courchene, R. . . . . . . . . . . (1996). Teaching Canadian Culture: Teacher Preparation. TESL Canada Journal, 13(2), 01–16. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v13i2.666

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Articles