Resumen de Agency and competency-based communicative pedagogy in secondary additional language teaching in Catalonia
The LOMLOE (2020) and Decree 175/2022 establish the foundation for a competency-based approach that enhances the quality of learning in Catalonia. However, materializing such an approach in the additional language classroom can be challenging when theoretical concepts are to be concretized into tangible pedagogical actions. In view of this challenge, this study aims to design an agency and competency-based communicative pedagogical approach. This approach would be founded on the legal framework above and complemented by an agency-based conceptual framework and its accompanying pedagogical principles. The implementation and effects of the suggested approach is analyzed so as to understand how it promotes learners’ use of the additional language that is, in turn, driven through agency. A sociocultural psychology research methodology has been chosen and involves twenty students in compulsory secondary education in their fourth year in a school in Barcelona. For this study, interviews have been conducted and recordings have been taken based on virtual interactions. The interviews that focus on students’ perceptions of the pedagogical approach and how they felt during its implementation are examined through content analysis. The recordings from the students’ virtual interactions are analyzed for agentive behavior through agency-based classroom discourse analysis. The findings indicate that there are two main reasons as to why the new approach promotes agentive use of the additional language: a co-constructed trustful learning environment (Johnson & Golombek, 2016) and reflective action-oriented learning (Esteve, Fernández, Martín-Peris, & Atienza, 2017).
