Educators worldwide have been attracted by lesson study for its teaching and learning enhancement potential. However, some believe it takes for granted language, out of which all teaching and subject matter are made. Employing a functional linguistics lens in an analysis of two second language science lesson studies, called 'learning' studies in Hong Kong, the paper evaluates the extent of a language-aware perspective in the studies. The data are recordings of the most polished lessons in the lesson study cycles, with planning, teaching and testing materials from post-study presentations. Minimal evidence of a language-aware perspective was found. That is, the academic 'content' was de-contextualized in that lessons focused on propositional knowledge rather than its academic cultural use in explaining, reporting or discussing science; and attention to the cognitive academic language (CAL) construing the science was negligible. The teachers' CAL seemed unplanned and students' CAL development was largely ignored. Some recommendations are made and significant implications of the findings are addressed.
[Copyright of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2011.555557]

Commencing study through a foreign language in senior secondary school brings huge challenges because of the cognitive-linguistic demands of academic subjects. This paper argues for the need to blend sociocultural and systemic functional linguistic (SFL) perspectives to address this enormous task. Firstly, readers' attention is drawn to the less than successful history, globally, of helping students overcome the challenges. Secondly, the paper sets out the author's intention to respond to the call by Coyle for bilingual educators working in a predominantly sociocultural paradigm to 'connect' with other paradigms. Next, aiming to respond to two exploratory questions regarding the power of SFL to inform planning of language-aware teaching, which is richer and more productive than is evident in sociocultural scholarship, the paper proceeds towards descriptive and comparative analyses of a student's written outcome in science, using the SFL framework based on 'text architecture'. The SFL analyses exemplify what might be taught, with brief mention of how SFL practitioners do so, in order to raise awareness of academic genre creation. Finally, drawing on the paper's analyses and evidence from elsewhere, arguments for the paradigmatic blending are synthesised.
[Copyright of Language Awareness is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658410903431721]

This paper focuses on collaboration between native-speaking English teachers (NETs) and local English teachers (LETs) in Hong Kong secondary schools. It examines some of the strengths and weaknesses of NETs and LETs documented in the international literature. It reviews, in various contexts, schemes where team teaching has been carried out. Using case studies of selected effective practitioners augmented by recent published research, we discuss how native and non-native teachers worked together and how their collaboration impacted on themselves and their students. Our analysis elaborates on some inter- and intra-personal factors facilitating the team teaching, balanced by some of the dilemmas particularly with respect to educational philosophies. The paper concludes by arguing for relationships between particular features of the collaborations and theorised conditions for second language acquisition.
[Copyright of Language and Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/le627.0 ]