“Delivering 1 + 2 Languages” – pre-service teachers’ perspectives

This study aims to build on a previous study conducted by Birnie (2021) to evaluate the experiences and attitudes of new entrants to the teaching profession in Scotland towards languages in order to support these students’ pre-service provision in line with the latest Scottish Government short-life working group recommendations on the 1 + 2 policy. Furthermore, this study will aim to identify the attitudes of student teachers towards languages themselves; an important indicator of how they will conceptualise this in the classroom but also their perceived confidence and competence in different languages. Where teachers feel confident and competent in the delivery of a curricular area, they are more likely to be able to deliver this successfully (Valdera Gil & Crichton, 2020) and therefore any measures that can be taken to support student teachers pre-service will impact on the delivery of this area of the curriculum in primary schools. This will guide future development on the post- and under-graduate Initial Teacher Education Programmes and provide a valuable insight into the future support needs of early-career teachers.