Departamento de Lenguas y Culturas

This paper presents a metaphor of the hats that CALL teachers could wear: the designer’s, the researcher’s and the anti-hype teacher’s hat. These hats represent some of the methodological and contextual challenges discussed by Colpaert (2013) in the context of a private university setting. In this qualitative study, data was examined from several sources (including questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and two prior research studies: Cuesta, 2014; Carreño, 2013) through which the experience of several groups of language teachers and students from various language levels was examined.

Results display several constraints in the understanding of the affordances of CALL, mainly due to a lack of an effective blend between the process of learning of a foreign language and mediation held through technology (Cuesta, 2014), a lack of replication
and continuity of successful practices, and a lack of teacher training both at the undergraduate and practitioner’s level. Results also indicate that teachers´ naiveté towards design and implementation has revealed a lack of confidence and knowledge in their undertakings, while displaying empirical rather than research-focused approaches, and strong reluctance towards a possible transformation in teachers’ thoughts and actions. Such a panorama also poses additional opportunities to overcome students’ and teachers’ perception of CALL as a “low value activity” and emphasizes the importance of gauging solutions to understand, disseminate, validate and/or replicate pedagogical initiatives in different settings. The authors find that although the body of educational stakeholders (including ministries and institutions) aims at fostering successful CALL initiatives, a severe divergence between goals and results is evidenced. Thus, the challenge is to make sound decisions that can meet the expectations of stakeholders, teachers and students, given the lack of global standards for the use of CALL materials and processes that do not prioritize technology over the language learning pedagogies.

The authors propose suggestions for further improvement within an integrative perspective of teachers’ action, with special emphasis on research and pedagogy decision-making topics, factors and agents involved. The authors’ proposal presents ideas for a global partnership of CALL development at many levels, focusing on faculty and
training plans, types of curricular adaptations, and transnational collaborative research projects.

APRENDER OTRA LENGUA: UNA OPORTUNIDAD SUBJETIVANTE.
La mente, el cuerpo y subjetividad en el aprendizaje de otra lengua.
Mind, Body and Subjectivity in Foreign Language Acquisition.
Autoras: Lic. Casal, Vanesa , Lic. Hillyard,Susan, Lic. M Celina Ali
Mail: vcasal@bue.edu.ar
Resumen: Este trabajo se propone relatar el surgimiento, diseño y puesta en práctica del proyecto “English in Action” (“Ingles en Acción”) destinado a niños y niñas que concurren a escuelas domiciliarias, hospitalarias y de “recuperación” de la CABA. El mismo surge con el objetivo de ofrecer el acceso al aprendizaje de un idioma extranjero a los/as niños/as destinatarios/as para facilitar la inclusión posterior en condiciones de igualdad en la escuela común. En este trabajo se profundiza también sobre modelos mentales de los agentes que trabajan en el programa en el marco del proyecto de investigación P 061 Se completa con el análisis de modelos mentales de dos docentes integrantes del proyecto