Mimi Masson

University of Ottawa · Faculty of Education

Gatekeepers’ language ideologies and beliefs about language learning determine how learners experience French as a second language programs, in particular, their access to, and success and inclusion in, the French immersion (FI) program. In this article, we explore how FI principals understand language learning and the inclusion of English language...

French as a second language (FSL) teacher flight in Canada has become a serious issue, endangering the health of existing FSL programs (Masson, Larson, Desgroseilliers, Carr, & Lapkin, in press). One way to address FSL teacher retention and well-being is to develop a model for professional learning rooted in a sociocultural approach to (re)position...

Based on a workshop given at the University of Ottawa to pre-service teachers, this chapter explores the potential benefits of welcoming art and other forms of artistic expression in classrooms to foster student learning. While the process of learning can be overwhelming for students who are English-language learners (ELLs), it can often be that wa...

In Canada, institutional and systemic barriers in French as a second language (FSL) programs have created conditions for ongoing exclusion of marginalized groups, such as English Language Learners (ELLs), many of whom are students of colour. The present paper seeks to examine the complex interplay of status, language ideologies and hierarchies of p...

Parental involvement is a crucial, but often, neglected factor for success in learning languages. A growing number of Canadian students from immigrant families attend French Immersion programs and bring additional languages to the classroom. Yet, the role of Eastern-European immigrant parents in their children’s French Immersion education, their be...

Initial teacher preparation is a key stage in the development of language teachers. Engaging teachers as active learners, developing their linguistic and pedagogical skills, and introducing them to collaborative practices and supportive networks are central to professional growth and retention....

Canada, French is taught as part of the core curriculum across most provinces and content classes (e.g., math, social studies, and science) are taught in French, called French immersion. Across both of these programs, teaching French as a second language (FSL) from an anti-oppressive and antiracist lens has become a strong point of interest given r...

Utilisant des procédures d'interprétation critique, les auteures passent en revue des études empiriques qualitatives et quantitatives ( N = 181) publiées entre 2000 et 2017 dans le contexte canadien du français langue seconde (FLS), de la maternelle à la 12 e année. Elles examinent l'orientation thématique des résultats pertinents pour les principa...

This article extends our synthesis of 181 published empirical articles on Canadian K-12 French second language (FSL) education since the turn of the century1 to focus specifically on FSL programs. Here, we examine issues related to French Language Instruction that are top of mind across FSL programs (i.e., Core French, Extended French, Intensive Fr...

Le présent article présente notre synthèse de 181 articles empiriques publiés qui traitent de l’enseignement du français langue seconde (FLS) au Canada de la maternelle à la 12e année, depuis le tournant du siècle1, et se concentre plus particulièrement sur les programmes de FLS. Nous y examinons des questions préoccupantes de premier plan liées à...

This research synthesis aims to investigate the broader trends in K-12 French as a second language (FSL) published research from 2000-2017 (inclusive). We assembled a database of 181 peer-reviewed articles relating to FSL education to examine what we already know about specific issues. We used Nvivo 11 (Pro) to facilitate coding the articles for ke...

L’étude visait à recueillir des renseignements sur les sujets ci- après et à les explorer : • la nature et l’ampleur du problème d’offre et de demande d’enseignants en FLS et d’autres facteurs qui peuvent être liés aux difficultés d’accès à l’éducation en FLS; • les mesures en vigueur et les mesures potentielles que le gouvernement du Canada, de pa...

The study objectives are to document and explore: • the extent and nature of the FSL teacher supply and demand challenge and other factors that may be related to the challenges in accessing FSL education; • current and possible measures that the Government of Canada along with different ministries of education, faculties of education and school boa...

Le présent rapport s’ouvre sur une recension de la recherche menée au cours du millénaire actuel sur l’enseignement et les enseignants de FLS pendant la formation initiale et continue. Selon ce que Mimi Masson, Stephanie Arnott et Sharon Lapkin rapportent, la plupart des études ont été menées dans des contextes d’immersion et portaient sur les poin...

A larger study exploring the dominant trends in 21st century FSL literature* found that of the 166 peer- reviewed articles appearing between 2000-2017: • 49 (30%) involved teachers; • Most were set in urban Ontario contexts; • The majority (55%) focused on French immersion (FI), whereas 24% focused on core French (CF), and 4%, respectively, each fo...

Educational research over the years has argued for the importance of developing teacher praxis to improve practitioner performance in the classroom (e.g., Imbert & Ardonio, 1985; Justice & Tenore, 2018). Drawing from this research, we consider how similar ideas may be applied to developing ‘researcher praxis’, that is identifying ways of being (epi...

This review of trends in the French as a second language education literature, drawn from a larger study conducted by Stephanie Arnott, Mimi Masson, Sharon Lapkin, and Ibtissen Knouzi (Arnott, S., Masson, M., Lapkin, S., Knouzi, I. (in progress)), found that: • Of 145 peer-reviewed articles that appeared between 2000-2016, 93 focused on students (o...

Une étude plus vaste examinant les tendances dominantes dans la documentation sur le français langue seconde (FLS) au 21e siècle (Arnott, Masson & Lapkin, en cours; Masson, Arnott & Lapkin, 2017) a montré ce qui suit • Sur 145 articles examinés par des pairs qui ont paru entre 2000 et 2016, 93 portaient sur les élèves (les autres groupes incluaient...

As of 2010, half of the childcare population (18 mo. - 5 y.o.) in Canada’s largest city consists of immigrant children who speak one or more heritage language at home, yet there is little research into how immigrant mothers navigate heritage language education (HLE). This arts-based research (ABR) project consists of pictures and interviews collect...

Praxis as a means of professional development has been a prominent topic of discussion in Teacher Education in Higher Education programs. Whether attained through self-study (e.g., Pithouse-Morgan & Samaras, 2016), action-research (e.g., Goodnough, 2010), or other means such as reflective practice (e.g., Farrell, 2013), praxis, grounded in social a...

This first report of the OME Community Talk Series chronicles the conversations, views, and experiences of four panelists at a public community event held by Ontario Multilingual Education (OME), and the open discussion with community representatives that ensued. It summarizes the panelists’ experiences with learning, teaching, researching, and gov...

This workshop will provide a variety of multimodal, hands-on activities (e.g., visual arts, text-based storytelling, drama, video) based on multilingual approaches that promote inclusive and equitable language education. Teachers will be invited to collaboratively develop their own activities, emphasizing critical and creative thinking, within thei...

As doctoral students, we have engaged in various types of challenging but also bene cial collaborative work. This paper addresses these challenges by unpacking three common myths about collaborative work. We will critically re ect on collaboration through personal stories that are an amalgamation of our experiences with collaborative work. In the i...

Les chercheurs tentent d'examiner les réussites scolaires au sein du programme d'immersion française (IF), depuis ses débuts. La réussite scolaire en immersion a été examinée et évaluée de façon positive en ce qui concerne a) l'acquisition du français par les élèves (p. ex., Harley, Allen, Cummins, & Swain, 1991), b) la performance des élèves en an...

The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), received funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, Official Languages Support Programs, for a project housed at the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers (CASLT) that began during the summer of 2014. The project had two main goals: (1) to provide an overview of issues in FSL t...

Almost 50% of high-frequency English (L2) words have Japanese cognates in the form of loanwords, and depending on cognate type these are generally considered to be an excellent way to promote vocabulary retention. However, relatively unexplored is the impact loanword cognates have on word usage in sentences. This paper will describe the discrepanci...

Context: Integrated and multi-skills instruction are not common in Japan where language learning is usually divided into a grammar/ reading portion and a listening/speaking portion, each taught by different teachers. The separation of the skills and teachers fails to offer students a holistic view of language and how it is used. To address this iss...

To build strong vocabulary knowledge, students need to use strategies which call upon receptive and productive language skills (Nation, 2001; Ryan, 1997). However, most language classrooms tend to focus on receptive activities (Webb, 2005) due in part to the fact that productive activities are a more complex task (de la Fuente, 2002). This is parti...

Teachers and students make up the two major actors in classroom environment. How these two interact will largely determine the amount of learning produced. Of the many forms of t e a c h e r-s t u d e n t i n t e r a c t

Background: This paper details the development of a qualitative instrument to gather data on teacher feedback used in SLA classrooms stems from the conceptual gap on feedback and its uses between second language acquisition (SLA) and general education (GE) research. While GE has validated most of the claims made in SLA with regards to the impact of...

Using Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) in the classroom environment has not only continued to increase in popularity in the last 20 years, but become a reality for a growing number of teachers. Despite the growing popularity of CALL, literature that provides us with conclusive evidence on its positive effects on second language acquisitio...