Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) - Mercator ...

2.5.3 Training of practitioners
There is no basic education training for working in Breton language with young children.
From birth to 3 years old, there is an in-house training and Divskouarn established a first
training session in 2009. It is a 6-day training where trainers specialized in Breton language
work along with trainers more specialized in pre-school education.
Since 2011, teachers working with children up to 3 years need to have a Master degree. Each
of the 3 systems has its own Master degree. So it means firstly 3 years of general studies,
and then 2 years more specialized in teaching with 2 languages.
Once the practitioners have passed their Master Degree exam, they need to go through
another exam in order to get an appointment to a permanent position. Each year, 20
students manage to be appointed as bilingual teacher, and to work within the three different
systems. 77
2.5.4 Pedagogical guidelines, Divskouarn and Regional Council of Brittany
In Brittany each pre-school institute (settings with children from 0 to 3 years old) has its own
curriculum. There is no official curriculum about teaching in Breton, it depends mainly on
practitioners and pre-school teachers. Most of the pedagogical guidelines of the pre-school
education rely on ideas developed through the concept of “active pedagogies” like
Montessoris' 78 or Lóczy. 79 Most of the provisions are under the influence of the spirit of
Françoise Dolto. 80
For the 3 bilingual systems of schools (up to 3 years old), they have to follow the National
curriculum. The only difference to a monolingual school is that the public and catholic ones
have to have studied all the subjects at least in French. The Divskouarn Charter, with its 3
models, gives guidelines to the settings, where Breton is introduced.
There is a public organization, TES 81 , linked with the national services of education and the
regional council of Brittany which works on creating teaching materials by writing new books
in Breton and translating others. TES is funded by the State, the region Brittany and the
département Côtes-d'Armor as well as by a range of private institutions, such as publishers
77
NPLD, the questionnaires from the project ‘Pre-School Education’ (2010). http://www.npld.eu/currentprojectsbestpractise/preschooled/pages/default.aspx
[Accessed June 2011].
78
Montessori education is an educational approach developed by Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori. Montessori education
is practiced in an estimated 20,000 schools worldwide, serving children from birth to eighteen years old. Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education [Accessed June 2011].
79
Pediatrician Emmi Pikler (1902-1984) was director of the orphanage-Lóczy in Budapest Hungary. With its innovative ideas on the care and
upbringing of children, she showed that children in an orphanage are mentally healthy and physically able to develop. Adults must respect
the individuality and autonomy of the child and his or her room in a friendly manner by giving the child attention.
Penn, H. (1999) Values And Beliefs In Caring For Babies And Toddlers. Institute of Education, London University.
http://childcarecanada.org/sites/childcarecanada.org/files/fs7.pdf [Accessed June 2011].
80
Françoise Dolto (1908 -1988) was a French paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was a pioneer as far as the psychoanalytical study of
young children is concerned. She worked e.p.g. together with the French psychiatrist Jacques Lacan. Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7oise_Dolto [Accessed June 2011].
81 TES, Ti-embann ar Skolioù Brezhonek, a publishing house for the bilingual and Breton-language schools which functions as a section of
the Centre Départemental de Documentation Pédagogique since 1993. Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and
Language Learning, Regional Dossiers http://www.linguae-celticae.org/dateien/Breton_in_Education.pdf [Accessed June 2011].
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