Introduction

During a one-on-one tutoring session, a pre-service teacher, Sharon, reads aloud a non-fiction children's book about water. The kindergarten child, Elaina, experiences this English text in her second language. On the last page, the book's illustration depicts a body of water, referred to in the text as a ‘lake’. As Elaina reads the pictures, she reacts with certainty to Sharon's misreading of the printed words:

Sharon and Elaina's interaction represents the challenge facing all educators, whether they are student teachers, qualified teachers or those working in initial and continuing teacher education contexts: No two children bring identical linguistic resources to their learning and increased linguistic and cultural diversity has become a common reality across all contexts. All educators must learn to build upon the diverse knowledge and experiences that pupils bring to the classroom. This includes the social, cultural and linguistic resources from both in-school and out-of-school literacy practices. The question facing policy makers concerned to find the most efficient way to develop teacher knowledge and the teacher educators who design pre-service courses is: how might student teachers, such as Sharon, best learn to develop the language and literacy resources of children, such as Elaina?