Educational systems of most European countries seem to be unable to
respond adequately to the growing migration-induced multilingualism. None of the
European member states has developed an integrated approach to address linguistic
diversity in teacher education programmes that will respond to the demands of
inclusion, equity, and social justice for all learners. This paper presents a European
proposal for a second language teacher education curriculum and the process of its
adaptation for the Portuguese context. This curriculum intends to prepare content
teachers to work with immigrant pupils in mainstream classrooms with a focus on
academic language. After the contextualization of the issue of social and linguistic
needs of these immigrant students, the authors present a brief overview of the
European project curriculum for Inclusive Academic Language Teaching, followed by
a discussion of the Portuguese proposal and its implementation caveats. The authors
propose a module on Portuguese as a Non-Native Language (PNN L), which covers
the issues of second language acquisition in the schooling project, didactical issues
of teaching and learning (inclusive) academic language, inclusive academic language
and school organization issues. A national proposal for Portugal also embraces the
concept of the teacher as a critical reflective practitioner and of school as a learning
community. The authors conclude that this European proposal responds to pressing
necessities in Portugal for the education of these students and constitutes a viable
response to their language needs, in spite of the many constraints in its application
