Professional development programmes for teachers moving from majority to minoritised language medium education:Lessons from a comparative study

Education through the medium of a minoritised language is widely regarded as a critical component of language revitalisation initiatives. Given the demographic and social position of many minoritised languages, however, it may not be easy to find teachers who are fluent and literate in the language, confident about using and teaching it, and prepared for the demands of working in classrooms where the language is the medium of instruction. This article presents findings from a comparative study of teacher education programmes adopted in Catalonia, the Basque Autonomous Community, Wales and New Zealand, to prepare teachers to teach through the media of Catalan, Basque, Welsh and Māori respectively. The research was conducted to inform new professional development initiatives in Scotland, designed to enable qualified teachers to transfer from English-medium to Gaelic-medium education. The findings have wider relevance for other contexts in which the recruitment, professional development and retention of teachers to work in minoritised language medium education represent a challenge

Early-life Causes and Later-life Consequences of Migration: Evidence from Older Irish Adults

Between 2009 and 2011, fieldwork was undertaken for the first wave of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Extensive information was collected on about 8,500 individuals aged 50 and over and living in Ireland, covering topics such as economic circumstances and health. One of the features of Ireland’s older population is the remarkably high proportion of returned migrants, that is, former emigrants who have returned to live in Ireland. This is reflected in the TILDA sample with over 20 % being returned migrants. Given the large number of returned migrants in the TILDA sample and the fact that the respondents are older, it has been possible to use the data to provide insights into different dimensions of migration at different points in the life-cycle. This paper provides a review of this work to date. Three issues are addressed. First, what circumstances contributed to the decision to emigrate? Second, was there evidence that living away produced psychological stress? Third, do return migrants suffer from social isolation on their return? The data suggest that the return migrants were more likely to have suffered abuse as children, to have been more prone to alcohol problems and to be more socially isolated currently