One of the simple facts of life in the present time is that the English language skills of a good proportion of its citizenry are seen as vital if a country is to participate actively in the global economy and to have access to the information and knowledge that provide the basis for both social and economic development. Central to this enterprise are English teaching and English language teachers. There is consequently increasing demand worldwide for competent English teachers and for more effective approaches to their preparation and professional development.

This book brings together key issues and debates in teacher education for language teachers. To provide an orientation to and overview of the book in this section, we will examine the major trends in second language teacher education today and identify some of the key issues that are shaping the way second language teacher education (SLTE) is currently conceptualized and realized.

The field of SLTE has been shaped in its development by its response to two issues. One might be called internally initiated change, that is, the teaching profession gradually evolving a changed understanding of its own essential knowledge base and associated instructional practices through the efforts of applied linguists and specialists in the field of second language teaching and teacher education. Much of the debate and discussion featured in the professional literature in recent years and in this volume, for example, is an entirely internal debate, unlikely to interest those outside the walls of academic institutions. The emergence of such issues as reflective practice (Chapter 30, Burton), critical pedagogy (Chapter 3, Hawkins and Norton), knowledge about language (Chapter 12, Bartels) and teacher identity (Chapter 17, Miller), for example, arose from within the profession largely as a result of self-imposed initiatives.

At the same time, the development of SLTE has also been impacted by external pressures, for example, by globalization and the need for English as a language of international trade and communication, which has brought with it the demand by national educational authorities for new language teaching policies, for greater central control over teaching and teacher education, and for standards and other forms of accountability (see Sections 1 and 2).

INTRODUCTION

In general usage, a “professional” is a trained and qualified specialist who displays a high standard of competent conduct in their practice, for example, “We’re very proud of the professional manner in which our teachers have implemented the curriculum reforms.” The term professionalism is regularly used in a constitutive sense to refer to practitioners’ knowledge, skills, and conduct. In discussions on teacher education, professionalism issues are often addressed through questions such as What should teachers know? and How should teachers go about their business? Other chapters in this volume are good examples of such discussions. Over time and in different educational environments though, the what and the how questions can, and often do, lead to different answers in different contexts.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

This protean nature of the conceptualization of teacher professionalism is the main concern of this chapter. I will first look at some examples of how teacher professionalism in general, and second language teacher professionalism in particular, can be characterized and defined differently at different times and in different places by professional and / or political authorities; sometimes different and incompatible definitions can coexist without mutual reference in the same place. I will refer to all such instances of institutionally endorsed and publicly heralded definitions as sponsored professionalism. Sponsored professionalism is usually proclaimed on behalf of teachers as a collectivity; therefore, it does not necessarily coincide with individual teachers’ views on professionalism, as often as not because it is promoted by regulatory bodies to introduce reform and / or by professional associations to advocate change.

After that I will examine the need for individual teachers to develop socially and politically sensitive views of professionalism; this is a particularly important issue for second language teachers working in the diverse field of English language teaching (ELT) in different world contexts (see also Hawkins and Norton, Chapter 3). I will refer to this more individually oriented notion of professionalism as independent professionalism. In the final section I will discuss two examples of the kind of issues that independent professionalism can address.

In this last section the focus is on strategies teachers can use to explore their own teaching practices as well as develop their own understandings of teaching as part of their long term professional development.

In the first discussion (Chapter 28), McKay begins with a broad focus on classroom inquiry. She surveys the nature of classroom research in teacher education and its potential for language teachers. She offers a useful overview of the different assumptions and procedures used in quantitative and qualitative approaches to classroom research and raises some of the issues that can usefully be explored in relation to second language teaching and learning. She also highlights some of the challenges teacher educators sometimes face when introducing classroom research to novice teachers.

In the Chapter 29, Burns examines one widely advocated strategy for reflective practice – action research – comparing it with other inquiry-based approaches. What distinguishes action research from some other approaches is its emphasis on intervention (the action in action research) as a way of trying to bring about improvement or change. Such intervention often takes the form of collaboration between researchers and classroom teachers. However, Burns points out that successful implementation of action research is often dependent upon training in the procedures it makes use of (e.g., classroom observation, discourse analysis, research writing) as well as institutional support. She sees earlier models of action research, that were typically focussed on problem-solving, giving way to action research viewed as membership of a “community of inquiry,” one that provides an opportunity for teachers and researchers to collaborate in the shared exploration and understanding of teaching and learning.

In the final overview in the book (Chapter 30), Burton explores the concept of reflective practice as one approach to investigating teaching, and which, like other strategies described in this section, seeks to find ways of linking theory and practice through an exploration of classroom processes. She shows how teacher educators have developed the notion of reflective practice, beyond Dewey and Schön’s earlier conceptualizations of it, and isolates three central questions that reflective practices seek to answer, namely: What do I do? How do I do it? and What does this mean for me and those I work with and for? Burton discusses a number of reflective practices such as collaborative inquiry groups, stimulated recall, written narratives, journal writing, and action research.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter begins by considering similarities and differences among mentors, supervisors and others who help teachers learn and develop. Drawing on the work of many in the field, conditions needed for mentoring to be effective are discussed. Finally, a view of what mentoring is, what mentors are, and what they do is presented.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

TERMINOLOGICAL CONFUSIONS

One school has a teacher called a “mentor” who is responsible for students from university based initial teacher-preparation programs during their placements in the school. Another school has a teacher called a “supervisor” who has a similar job description. In two further schools, two people both have the title “mentor” and are charged with “looking after” trainees on school placement and yet engage in very different day-to-day practices in their workplaces and in relation to their mentees. One education system has “professional mentors,” “subject mentors,” and an “ITT” (Initial Teacher Training) coordinator involved with the learning of a student-teacher in a school; in another system there is a single “mentor,” or “supervisor.” There is a certain amount of terminological confusion in the field.

Many (e.g., Bailey 2006) note this terminological confusion. It seems to result in part from different historical views of the process of teacher learning and the roles of others in supporting that process. The role-title “supervisor” in teacher education, it could be argued, is a leftover from a view of teacher learning as a straightforward process of practicing to “do it right.” The role of the supervisor was to assess through observation whether it was “done right” or not, passing on his or her assessment and giving the trainee advice on what to improve and how to do better next time. However, much of what makes for good teaching is not observable, and views of teacher learning have shifted to include constructivist (e.g., Richardson 1997), socio-cultural (e.g., Lave and Wenger 1991) and cognitive skill theory (e.g., Tomlinson 1995) perspectives. In addition to developing classroom skills, student language teachers need to be helped to participate in a professional community, become willing to investigate themselves and their teaching, become better at noticing (Mason 2002) – a crucial underpinning skill for investigations as well as responsive teaching – and develop complex, insightful and “robust reasoning” (Johnson 1999).

INTRODUCTION

Nonnative English-speaking (NNES) educators constitute a large majority of English as a second or foreign language teachers around the world (Canagarajah 1999). However, it is only recently that they have become more visible and that the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) has begun to address issues that are of concern to them. Although there is wide agreement that the terms native and nonnative speaker are impossible to define (Kaplan 1999) and that they “obviously and pointlessly dichotomise the world neatly into ‘us’ and them” (Kaplan 1999: 5), the reality is that “teachers who are perceived as speaking a language other than English as their mother tongue – regardless of their actual proficiency with English – are typically labelled as ‘nonnative English speakers’” (Pasternak and Bailey 2004: 156). This chapter focuses on NNES educators in relation to issues of language teacher preparation programs.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

It could be argued that work on NNES teachers-in-preparation has focused on two different broad themes related to the setting in which language teacher-education programs are offered. Specifically, the first theme deals with issues of teacher language proficiency in relation to language teacher-preparation programs. With some exceptions, this line of work has been the focus of attention in teacher-preparation programs for / in English as a foreign language (EFL) settings (e.g., Barnes 2002; Berry 1990; Chacon 2005; Cullen 1994, 2002; Lavender 2002; Murdoch 1994, etc.). Work on issues of language proficiency draws on the notion that “a teacher’s confidence is most dependent on his or her own degree of language competence” (Murdoch 1994: 258); therefore, it deals with language as a skill that needs to be improved for a teacher to be a successful professional.

The second theme has mainly focused on issues of teachers-in-preparation in Inner Circle settings, where English is the dominant language (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand); therefore, it may not be surprising that work in this area has dealt with how NNES teachers-in-preparation socialize into their language education programs in these countries, how they perceive themselves in relation to their English-speaking peers, and how they develop a sense of professional identity (e.g., Brutt-Griffler and Samimy 1999; Golombek and Jordan 2005; Morita 2004; Thomas 1999; Pavlenko 2003, etc).

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this chapter is to describe the skills and knowledge that can be gained from second language teacher qualifications around the world and what level of expertise is valued by employing and institutions and accrediting bodies. The content is derived from current literature and from the experience, knowledge, and contacts of the authors, who have more than 60 years of experience in English language teaching and teacher training between them. Both public sector and private sector institutions are considered in these areas:

• • the processes of getting certification

• • an exploration of ways in which some countries have attempted to establish standards and criteria to describe both competency and excellence

• • the issues around these areas

In addition to considering the skills and expertise that training programs seek to inculcate, we will consider what it is that needs improvement in teacher-education programs. We include those programs that award an initial certificate to teach to be followed by a more substantial qualification after extended professional experience. We also discuss which qualifications, beyond the minimum, teachers may opt to study for, and what may motivate teachers to acquire these extra qualifications.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

The four principal areas involved in professional recognition for ELT (English Language Teaching) work suggested by Martha Pennington are career structure, accountability, power base, and qualification (Pennington 1992). Regarding qualification, she advocates that:

Qualifications abound. In fact, the latest directory of professional preparation programs in TESOL (Garshick 2002) lists 400 programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the United States and Canada alone. There are many more offered in the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and around the world.

The chapters that follow provide an introductory overview of some of the main themes in second language teacher education. Many of these are taken up and elaborated upon in subsequent sections of this volume.

In Chapter 1, Freeman begins the overview by mapping out the broad trajectories and terrains of SLTE over the last half century. He conceptualizes the scope of contemporary SLTE as encompassing three dimensions of substance, engagement, and outcomes / influences in order to map past and present practices and signal new conceptual and theoretical developmental directions. Freeman’s chapter sets the scene and raises many key themes that are subsequently taken up and expanded by other chapters in the book.

Following on from Freeman’s broad conceptualizations of the scope of SLTE, Johnson (Chapter 2) identifies significant trends in SLTE arising from changing epistemological perspectives on learning and teaching. They encompass the knowledge base of teaching, the recognition of the legitimacy of teachers’ practical knowledge, the sociocultural turn that has seen the broadening of definitions of language and second language acquisition, and changes in the nature of what constitutes language teacher professional development. She signals explorations of the impact of new forms of professional development, and the relationships between teacher learning and student learning as the next frontiers for development.

Extending one of the themes raised by Johnson, Chapter 3 by Hawkins and Norton considers how the impact of sociocultural perpectives has necessitated consideration of critical approaches to SLTE. While considering that the notions of critical and critical second language teacher education are hard to define, they identify the core concern with social action and empowerment through educational change. Accounts of CSLTE are still rare in the language education field. However, Hawkins and Norton offer an heuristic and examples of three types – critical awareness, critical self-reflection, and critical pedagogical relations – which highlight the notions and characteristics of current practice and praxis.

In Chapter 4, Franson and Holliday argue that teacher education programs urgently need to include a focus on the social and cultural position of English in the world.

INTRODUCTION

Among the disciplinary challenges of L2 teacher education programs at the undergraduate and graduate level, few seem more difficult to meet than the systematic integration of school-based experience. Although it has received continued attention since the 1990s, and although it is claimed to be an integral part of many programs, current practice often lacks consistent and convincing models; school-based experience not only appears to be incompatible with academic curricula, but also seems difficult to implement in view of institutional constraints and cross-institutional incompatibility. The notion of the importance of school-based experience is grounded in a growing awareness that although the core components of traditional teacher education programs (such as literary and cultural studies, applied linguistics, research in second language acquisition, and teaching methodology) contribute to the knowledge base for teaching, they must not be confused with the activity of language teaching itself (Freeman 1989; Freeman and Johnson 1989). As a consequence, any academic subject matter in applied linguistics and language learning pedagogy has to be understood “against the backdrop of teachers’ professional lives, within the settings where they work, and under the circumstances of that work” (Freeman and Johnson 1989: 405). This is why school-based experience must be an integral part of teacher education.

In this chapter, referring to relevant research, we will briefly discuss the rationale behind this assumption and elaborate on three design principles for teacher education, which have emerged from a continuous critique of established practice. An illustration of different ways of integrating school-based experiences into teacher education programs will conclude the chapter.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

RATIONALE FOR INTEGRATING SCHOOL-BASED EXPERIENCE

FOCUS ON THE PERSON WHO TEACHES

Various learning-to-teach studies have demonstrated that student-teachers begin their education with images of teaching that they have acquired during their own (language) learning experience as students (Appel 2000; Kagan 1992; Johnson 1994; Kennedy and Kennedy 1996; Kennedy 1998). Lortie (1975) has termed this process “the apprenticeship of observation.” This apprenticeship shapes both student-teachers’ views on what they consider to be appropriate teaching and their disposition to act in the classroom (see Farrell, Chapter 18) with no regard to whatever they may have learned from studying the relevant disciplinary knowledge.

INTRODUCTION

The content of teacher training, or education, needs to include not only the linguistic features of English and how these may be taught and learned, but also its social and cultural position in the world and its subsequent impact on the lives of both teachers and language learners. If teachers of history do not address with their students the way in which often uncertain events can be used by governments and movements to promote political agendas, the teaching of history can be reduced to propaganda. There will be a similar effect if English is not presented as a postcolonial language that is deeply socially and culturally involved in world politics, which is often unequal.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

Much of prevailing second language education practice remains dominated by an essentialist view of culture in which students and their language-learning attitudes and abilities are very much characterized by imagined and problematic stereotypes of their national, ethnic, regional, or religious cultures. To counter this, there has been a call for a decentered, or locality driven, approach to the way in which teachers and students recognize and explore the cultural complexity and diversity within their own experiences (e.g., Kumaravadivelu 2007), and to the way in which students are exposed to curriculum content that addresses the political nature of English in the world and non-center forms of English (e.g., Holliday 2005). Attention to the social “contexts” of language teaching has gone some way to meeting this need; but these contexts have often been overgeneralized or oversimplified as a result of superficial center-led investigation. Attention to specific contexts can also suffer from inattention to the bigger political picture.

In this chapter we are going to address this state of affairs by juxtaposing two sets of experiences that we feel have often remained apart. The first is the very generalized international arena called Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), which although it has produced critical understandings of English in the world, has few examples of rich decentered research. The second derives from the more localized contexts of publicly funded education, which is often described as English as a Second Language (ESL), and which includes immigrant and adult English language programs (often termed ESOL).

INTRODUCTION

Many teacher educators, teachers, students, administrators, and even novice teachers themselves assume that once novice teachers have graduated, they will be able to apply what they have learned in teacher-preparation programs during their first year of teaching. However, the transition from the teacher-education program to the first year of teaching has been characterized as a type of “reality shock” (Veenman 1984: 143); the ideals that novice teachers may have formed during the teacher-education program are often replaced by the realities of the social and political contexts of the school. One reason may be that teacher education programs are unable to reproduce environments similar to those teachers face when they graduate. Consequently, many novice teachers are left to cope on their own in a “sink-or-swim” situation (Varah, Theune, and Parker 1986). This chapter examines the challenges that novice second language teachers face in their first years in the classroom and outlines how these challenges can be addressed in language teacher education to better prepare novice teachers for the delicate transition from the teacher-education program to the first year of teaching. It first defines what is meant by the novice teacher and then discusses the topics of learning to teach, and the influences and challenges novice teachers that face during their first year.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

Novice teachers, sometimes called newly qualified teachers (NQTs), are usually defined as teachers who have completed their teacher-education program (including the practicum) and have just commenced teaching in an educational institution. More than any other time in their careers, they are involved in the process of learning to teach, or as Doyle (1977) puts it “learning the texture of the classroom and the sets of behaviours congruent with the environmental demands of that setting” (p. 31). In the first years of teaching, their experiences are also mediated by three major types of influences: their previous schooling experiences, the nature of the teacher-education program from which they have graduated, and their socialization experiences into the educational culture generally and the institutional culture more specifically. Their schooling experiences include all levels of their education, from kindergarten, elementary, and high school, to university, and involve what Lortie (1975) refers to as an “apprenticeship of observation.”

INTRODUCTION

THE ARC OF ASSESSMENT

Assessment, like many aspects of second language teacher education, is changing. Several factors are driving the change, among them how we understand the work of teaching generally, language teaching in particular, and more fundamentally the role of teachers’ knowledge in teaching. There are also issues of identity and practice: who teachers are and what they are expected to teach in the face of changing student demographics, all of which are redefining theoretical frameworks for assessing knowledge-in-action. Thus, what might, at one point, have seemed like a straightforward notion – documenting what teachers know as language teachers – is becoming increasingly complex. When that knowledge was seen as unitary – knowing about language, its grammar, form, and uses – then assessing it could be equally straightforward: it was simply a matter of testing teachers’ knowledge of content.

However, this formula – that content could equal competence – belied the messy complexity of language teaching itself. The challenge with language teaching is that teachers use language to teach language, so knowledge in language teaching is actually a dual phenomenon: It must relate (or blend) content and process in and through language. Language is the basis of the lesson – what the teacher is teaching – and it is the means of teaching it – how the teacher teaches that lesson. Added to this complexity is the more general challenge of assessing teaching as an activity: whether to document its processes (what the teacher is doing), its outcomes (what the students appear to have learned), or some combination of the two. There are also key choices to be made in assembling such documentation: whether the records are grounded externally in visible practices or combine, or indeed are based in, the teacher’s self-assessment of their work.

The confluence all of these challenges and issues make the question of assessment in second language teacher education a rich, complex, and shifting enterprise. We gather these complexities under what we call the arc of assessment, to capture the way these concerns, and indeed the central question of how best to document what language teachers know and do in relation to their own and their students’ learning, are shifting over time.

INTRODUCTION

Being reflective assists teachers’ lifelong professional development, enabling them to critique teaching and make better-informed teaching decisions. This axiom is widely accepted in language teacher education contexts, but what it means in practice is not all that clear. This is partly because the term reflective practice is used in connection with a variety of teacher-learning activities (e.g., Burns and Bailey, this volume, on action research and supervision respectively) and partly because the actual nature of reflection, like other cognitive skills, remains somewhat elusive. Reflective practice has become something of a slogan term (Noffke and Brennan 2005).

This chapter reviews the concept of reflective practice and some of the ways it has come to be used in language teacher education and argues that, in the main, confidence in the value of the process is not misplaced, especially when reflection is used in conjunction with other inquiry – and exploratory-based practices.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

Dewey’s (1933, 1938) distinction between routine and reflective action in teaching highlighted the importance of teachers reflecting systematically upon their working contexts, resources, and actions and applying what they learned from reflection in their everyday and long-term decision making. Reflective teaching, in his view, involved being constantly on the alert to the circumstances of teaching and the implications of issues arising during teaching. He argued that teachers were responsible for all aspects of their teaching and their consequences. He identified three essential teaching qualities: teachers should listen to all points of view (open-mindedness), be alert to all the consequences of their actions (responsibility), and have these qualities at the core of their being and actions (wholeheartedness).

Teaching all the time with these levels of commitment may appear very daunting for many teachers, especially in institutions or educational systems that do not recognize such broad responsibilities for teachers. For example, in some parts of the world, teachers still tend to be regarded only as curriculum implementers, rather than planners and evaluators as well (Burton 2007); this restricted conception of teaching has been characterized as technical or instrumental (e.g., Noffke and Brennan 2005; Zeichner and Liston 1996).

INTRODUCTION

This chapter defines the scope of professional development for language teacher educators (LTEds) (or trainer development as I shall term it), identifies what becoming a teacher educator entails, provides an overview of current practice in trainer development, and identifies issues in future trainer development activity. The chapter argues that trainer development is a vital aspect of language teacher education (LTE) because of teacher educators’ central role in defining and disseminating ideas about pedagogy.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

Forty years ago, becoming a language teacher educator (LTEd) commonly came about in recognition of classroom teaching expertise. Good teachers thus progressed to become teacher educators, as models of good practice. In many public education systems, this typically resulted in transfer to the tertiary sector – to a training institution – and a concomitant change in status and role for the person involved from teacher to “lecturer” (or similar). Becoming a teacher educator did not at this juncture require any specific formal preparation for the role.

More recently, however, the idea has grown that teacher educators’ work is sufficiently different from teachers’ to require some form of professional development – formal and / or informal – to enable them to perform their roles effectively, and also to continue learning. I use the term trainer development to refer to the formal process of language teacher educators’ professional development. The term also captures the developmental process of constantly “becoming” a language teacher educator, with or without the assistance of a trainer. Teacher educators can also, in less formal ways, undertake their own development (Russell and Korthagen 1995; see also Leung, Chapter 5).

Trainer development is a further level, or layer, of the professional-development process in LTE in addition to the professional development for teachers. Table 1 portrays three levels of activity in LTE. It maps the different roles and relationships in the different domains of language teaching, from trainer development (Level 3) through language teacher education (Level 2) to the classroom (Level 1), the ultimate target domain of the two preceding levels. In defining the scope of trainer development, we must focus on the work of the language teacher educator (LTEd).

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the aims and means of L2 teacher education have been questioned, and it is perhaps fair to say that the profession has undergone – and is still undergoing – a paradigm shift of sorts. Traditional, transmission-oriented approaches persist in some pockets of the world (Poynor 2005), although many teacher educators appear to have converged in their emphasis on reflective practice as a means of promoting the autonomous skills of novice teachers (Richards and Farrell 2005; Richards and Lockhart 1994; Schön 1987; Waters 2005; see also Burton, Chapter 30). Contemporary teacher preparation likewise emphasizes the cultivation of diverse kinds of teaching expertise (Berliner 1995; Borg 2005; Tsui 2003; see also Tsui, Chapter 19), as well as the social construction of knowledge for teaching (Hawkins 2004; Franson and Holliday this volume; Williams 1996). This transformation has unquestionably yielded positive results, and although the aims of reflective, socioculturally grounded practice have taken teacher preparation in a productive direction, the methods by which teacher education might achieve these aims remain somewhat underdefined (Freeman 1996b; Tarone and Allwright 2005; Tsui 2003).

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

This chapter examines the challenge of how teacher education might systematically apprentice newcomers to language teaching (LT) in a discourse-based framework. A useful means of engaging in such apprenticeship is to view LT as a diverse community of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991), defined by Wenger (1998) as “a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise.” In a community of practice, learning unfolds collectively, resulting in “practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations” (p. 45). To undertake this collective learning, I propose a socioliterate approach to teacher preparation, in which novice teachers are guided toward utilizing and reproducing the field’s discourse(s), including formalized means of knowledge construction and written communication (Hedgcock 2002; cf. Johns 1997). To illustrate how a socioliterate model might help teacher education bring newcomers into the LT discourse, this chapter first surveys socioliterate principles and then explores LT practices that support the appropriation of the profession’s discourse conventions.

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1980s, there have been a growing number of studies on expertise in teaching. These studies, inspired by investigations of expertise in other domains, have been motivated by the need to understand the special form of knowledge held by teachers as well as the need to demonstrate that experts in teaching possess skills and knowledge that are as complex and sophisticated as experts in other professions (Berliner 1994).

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS OF TEACHING EXPERTISE

This chapter outlines the approaches and perspectives adopted in studies of teaching expertise and the corresponding characterizations produced. In addition, it explores the possible reasons for the apparently conflicting images of expert teachers presented and the significance of research on teaching expertise for the education and professionalization of teachers. As teaching expertise is a relatively new area in the field of TESOL, this review covers studies on teaching expertise in other subject disciplines that have been drawn on.

Studying expertise in a specific domain necessarily involves investigations of the ways of knowing, acting, and being of experts in that domain. There are as yet no established common criteria for identifying expert teachers. This is not only because teaching is situated and, therefore, it would be difficult to have a set of objective criteria that can be applied across all contexts (Leinhardt 1990; Turner-Bisset 2001). It is also because there may be certain dimensions of excellence in teaching that are culture-specific (Ferrari 2002; Mieg 2001). As pointed out in Tsui (2005), in the Japanese culture, close interpersonal relationships (referred to as kizuna or kakawari) are considered a prerequisite for teaching and learning. Developing kizuna with students is more important than developing teaching competence (Shimahara and Sakai 1995). In the Chinese culture, master teachers (a term used for expert teachers) must possess two qualities: commitment to students and commitment to the subject of teaching. Although commitment to students is common to all cultures, commitment to subject of teaching is probably distinctively Chinese. It embraces both a cognitive dimension, which entails a profound knowledge of the subject matter (Ma 1999), and an affective dimension, which entails a genuine interest in the subject matter (see also Tsui and Wong, in press).

INTRODUCTION

The focus of this chapter is twofold: What do we understand by “learning” in the context of postgraduate in-service courses in language teacher education (LTE), and what do we understand by “teaching”? Drawing broadly on the sociocultural perspectives of Lave and Wenger and Vygotskian models of cognitive apprenticeship, it considers how to design the course room as a learning environment.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

Lecturers on LTE courses spend much of their professional lives in course rooms (lecture theaters, classrooms, seminar rooms), seeking to provide a quality educational experience for their students (henceforth, teacher-learners) through a repertoire of course-room practices that include lectures, discussions, simulations, case studies, and so on. Whereas conversations about the content of LTE courses are common, discussions about LTE pedagogic practices in the course room are much less frequent. In general, LTE has been grounded in the dominant technical-rational discourse of teacher education, which maintains that language teaching expertise can be acquired through content-based courses followed by a practicum or school attachment. Focusing on designing courses however has ignored how human learning is emergent through social interaction, and where context and identity play crucial mediating roles (see Franson and Holliday, Chapter 4; Miller, Chapter 17). For LTE courses, this means understanding how teacher learning emerges in the life of the course room, which this chapter sets out to explore. From this perspective, the location – the course room – is contingent on teacher learning, as its life unfolds over time, as events and processes interact, and shape the way participants think, feel, and act.

Sociocultural theories of teacher learning center on the concept of learning as situated social practice, which includes mediation, discourse, and participation structures. However, sociocultural theories need to be complemented by understanding learning as identity construction. Relating the microprocess of the course room to the larger macro context in which LTE is situated, we conceptualize teacher learning as the appropriation and resistance to skills and knowledge for the purpose of remaking identity.

OVERVIEW

We take as axiomatic that before learning, there must be engagement, which includes the atmosphere and the climate of course room life (Wright 2005). The course room is also viewed as a site for social participation structures that can enhance or inhibit learning opportunity.

INTRODUCTION

Second language acquisition (SLA) is a relatively new discipline, dating back only some 40-odd years. It seeks to describe and explain how learners acquire a second language (L2). In this sense, second refers to any language other than the learner’s first language (i.e., it includes foreign as well as third or fourth languages).

Initially SLA was closely connected with language pedagogy as many of the early researchers involved were language teachers or teacher educators. Increasingly, however, SLA has become an autonomous field of study, drawing on a number of other disciplines – linguistics, psychology, sociology, as well as education. In its current form it constitutes a rich and far-reaching discipline, addressing a wide range of issues, not all of which are of relevance to teacher education. In recent years, a number of distinct branches of SLA have developed, one of which – instructed SLA – concerns the relationship between instruction and L2 acquisition. Arguably, it is this area of study that is of most immediate relevance to teacher education.

Language teacher education – the core topic of this book – embraces both pre- and in-service education in courses of varying lengths – ranging from a year or longer to a few hours. Thus, although most teacher educators would acknowledge that language teachers need an understanding of how learners learn an L2, there can be no single recipe for incorporating SLA into a teacher education course. In the following sections I will offer a number of different approaches for utilizing the findings of SLA in teacher education programs.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

WHAT DO TEACHERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SLA?

The main areas of inquiry in SLA are now well established. Widely used textbooks in language teacher education, such as Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991), Ellis (1985, 1994, 1997, 2008), Towell and Hawkins (1994), and Gass and Selinker (2001), all cover the topics listed and described in Table 1, although they label them somewhat differently (e.g., where Ellis has a chapter on “variability” Gass and Selinker’s corresponding chapter is called “interlanguage in context”). Judging from these standard textbooks, then, these are SLA topics that teachers need to know about. It can be argued, however, that not all of them are of equal relevance to language teachers.