Article

Second Language Teacher Education

Today
Jack C. Richards
RELC, Singapore
[email protected]

Abstract ■ Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE) is affected by two factors; a

rethinking of its knowledge base and instructional practices as a response to changes
in our understanding of the nature of SLTE, as well as external pressures resulting
from the expanded need for competent language teachers worldwide. The impact of
these two factors is seen in the growing professionalism of the field with the need for
acceptance of standards, a rethinking of the knowledge base of the field, a move
towards a sociocultural view of teacher learning, a focus on teacher cognition as the
underpinning of teacher practice, acknowledgement of the role of teacher identity in
teaching and teacher learning, implementation of collaborative approaches to SLTE,
the need for greater accountability, as well as critical perspectives on teacher edu-
cation. These factors are examined and their implications discussed for theory and
practice in SLTE.

Keywords ■ curriculum practices, sociocultural theory, teacher cognition, teacher

education, teacher learning, teacher training.

One of the simple facts of life in the present time is that the English lan-
guage 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 teach-
ing 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. In this
paper I want to examine trends in second language teacher education and
to identify some of the key issues that are shaping the way second lan-
guage teacher education (SLTE) is conceptualized and realized today.

Vol 39(2) 158-177 | DOI: 10.1177/0033688208092182

© 2008 SAGE Publications, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
http://RELC.sagepub.com
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Second Language Teacher Education Today

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 that has appeared in the professional literature in recent years,
for example, and which is surveyed in this paper, is an entirely internal
debate, unlikely to interest those outside the walls of academic institutions.
The emergence of such issues as reflective teaching and critical pedagogy,
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 teach-
ing and teacher education, and for standards and other forms of account-
ability. The Common European Framework is an example of the profession
attempting to respond to external pressures of this kind.

The Growth of SLTE

The field of TESOL is relatively new and, in the form that we know it
today, dates from the 1960s. It was during the 1960s that English language
teaching began a major period of expansion worldwide and that method-
ologies such as Audiolingualism and Situational Language Teaching
emerged as the first of a wave of new methodologies to reinvigorate the
field of English as a second or foreign language. The origins of specific
approaches to teacher training for language teachers began with short
training programs and certificates dating from this period, designed to give
prospective teachers the practical classroom skills needed to teach the new
methods. The discipline of applied linguistics dates from the same period,
and with it came a body of specialized academic knowledge and theory
that provided the foundation of the new discipline. This knowledge was
represented in the curricula of MA programs, which began to be offered
from this time, that typically contained courses in language analysis,
learning theory, methodology, and sometimes a teaching practicum.
The relationship between practical teaching skills and academic knowl-
edge and their representation in SLTE programs has generated a debate
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ever since although, as we will see in what follows, it is now part of the
discussion of a much wider range of issues. In the 1990s the practice
versus theory distinction was sometimes resolved by distinguishing
‘teacher training’ from ‘teacher development’, the former being identified
with entry-level teaching skills linked to a specific teaching context, and
the latter to the longer-term development of the individual teacher over
time. Training involved the development of a repertoire of teaching skills,
acquired through observing experienced teachers and practice-teaching in
a controlled setting, for example through micro-teaching or peer-teaching.
Good teaching was seen as the mastery of a set of skills or competencies.
Qualifications in teacher training such as the CELTA (Certificate in English
Language Teaching to Adults) were typically offered by teacher training
colleges or by organizations such as the British Council. Teacher devel-
opment, on the other hand, meant mastering the discipline of applied lin-
guistics. Qualifications in teacher development, typically the MA degree,
were offered by universities, where the practical skills of language teaching
were often undervalued.
By the present time the contrast between training and development has
been replaced by a reconsideration of the nature of teacher learning, which
is viewed as a form of socialization into the professional thinking and
practices of a community of practice. SLTE is now also influenced by
perspectives drawn from sociocultural theory (Lantolf 2000) and the field
of teacher cognition (Borg 2006). The knowledge base of teaching has
also been re-examined with a questioning of the traditional positioning of
the language-based disciplines as the major foundation for SLTE (e.g.
linguistics, phonetics, second language acquisition) (Freeman 2002). At
the same time it has also been affected by external factors—by the need
to respond to the status of English as an international language and the
demand worldwide for a practical command of English language skills.

The Professionalization of Language Teaching

A common observation on the state of English language teaching today
compared with its status in the not too distant past is that there is a much
higher level of professionalism in ELT today than previously. By this is
meant that English language teaching is seen as a career in a field of
educational specialization, it requires a specialized knowledge base
obtained through both academic study and practical experience, and it is a
field of work where membership is based on entry requirements and
standards. The professionalism of English teaching is seen in the growth
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industry devoted to providing language teachers with professional training

and qualifications, in continuous attempts to develop standards for English
language teaching and for English language teachers, to the proliferation
of professional journals and teacher magazines, conferences and profes-
sional organizations, to attempts in many places to require non-native
speaker English teachers to demonstrate their level of proficiency in
English as a component of certification, to the demand for professional
qualifications for native-speaker teachers, and to the greater level of sophis-
ticated knowledge of language teaching required of English teachers.
Becoming an English language teacher means becoming part of a world-
wide community of professionals with shared goals, values, discourse, and
practices but one with a self-critical view of its own practices and a com-
mitment to a transformative approach to its own role.
The focus on professionalism may mean different things in different
places. In some it may mean acquiring qualifications recognized by local
educational authorities or by international professional organizations and
attaining standards mandated by such bodies. It may also mean behaving
in accordance with the rules and norms that prevail in their context of
work, even if the teacher does not fully support such norms such as when
a teacher is told to ‘teach to the test’ rather than create his or her own
learning pathway.
Leung (in press) contrasts two different dimensions to professionalism
that will be alluded to throughout this paper. The first can be called insti-
tutionally prescribed professionalism—a managerial approach to profes-
sionalism that represents the views of ministries of education, teaching
organizations, regulatory bodies, school principals and so on that specify
what teachers are expected to know and what quality teaching practices
consist of. There are likely to be procedures for achieving accountability
and processes in place to maintain quality teaching. Such specifications
are likely to differ from country to country. For example, in Singapore
teachers are encouraged to take up to 100 hours of in-service courses a
year. In Australia support for in-service professional development is
almost non-existent in many schools.
The second dimension to professionalism Leung refers to as independ-
ent professionalism, which refers to teachers’ own views of teaching and
the processes by which teachers engage in reflection on their own values,
beliefs, and practices. Much of the discussion in this paper above has
addressed this dimension of individual professionalism and the current
literature on professional development for language teachers promotes a
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wide variety of procedures through which teachers can engage in critical

and reflective review of their own practices (see Richards and Farrell
2005), for example through self-monitoring, analysing critical incidents,
teacher support groups, and action research.

The Knowledge Base of SLTE

As noted above, there have traditionally been two strands within the field
of SLTE—one focusing on classroom teaching skills and pedagogic
issues, and the other focusing on what has been perceived as the academic
underpinnings of classroom skills, namely knowledge about language and
language learning. The relationship between the two has often been prob-
lematic. One way to clarify this issue has been to contrast two differing
kinds of knowledge—which may be thought of as knowledge about and
knowledge how. ‘Knowledge about’ or content knowledge provides what
has come to be the established core curriculum of SLTE programs, par-
ticularly at the graduate level, where coursework on topics such as lan-
guage analysis, discourse analysis, phonology, curriculum development,
and methodology is standard. The language-based courses provided the
academic content, and the methodology courses showed teachers how to
teach it. An unquestioned assumption was that such knowledge informs
teachers’ classroom practices. Recent research, however, (e.g. Bartels
2005), shows that teachers in fact often fail to apply such knowledge in
their classrooms. Despite knowing the theory and principles associated
with Communicative Language Teaching, for example, in their own
teaching, teachers are often seen to make use of traditional ‘grammar-and-
practice’ techniques in their classrooms. Freeman (2002: 1) raises the
issue of the relevance of the traditional knowledge base of language
teaching, observing, ‘The knowledge-base is largely drawn from other
disciplines, and not from the work of teaching itself’. Those working
within a sociocultural perspective have hence argued that second language
acquisition research as it has been conventionally understood has focused
on an inadequate view of what the object of learning is, since it has not
considered the way language is socially and culturally constituted (Miller
2004; Firth and Wagner 1997; Norton 1997).
The distinction between explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge
throws some light on the dilemma of failed uptake, the former constituting
the basis of ‘knowledge about’ and the latter of ‘knowledge how’. Implicit
knowledge covers a wide range of terms that have been used in the litera-
ture to refer to the beliefs, theories, and knowledge that underlie teachers’
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Second Language Teacher Education Today

practical actions (terms such as ‘principles’, ‘practitioner knowledge’,

‘personal theories’, ‘maxims’) (Richards 1996; Tsang 2004). Central to
knowledge how are concepts such as pedagogical content knowledge (the
capacity to transform content into accessible and learnable forms) and
practical knowledge, all of which refer to the knowledge and thinking that
teachers make use of in facilitating learning in their classrooms and which
belong to a third strand that has often been missing from formulations of
the core content of SLTE—namely the nature of teaching itself. Freeman
and others have emphasized that the knowledge base of SLTE must be
expanded to include the processes of teaching and teacher-learning and the
beliefs, theories and knowledge which inform teaching. Rather than the
MA course being a survey of issues in applied linguistics drawing from
the traditional disciplinary sources, coursework in areas such as reflective
teaching, classroom research, and action research now forms parts of the
core curriculum in many TESOL programs and seeks to expand the
traditional knowledge base of language teaching. Van Lier proposed a way
to resolve the theory-practice issue in a 1992 paper:
Instead of the usual linguistic sub-topics such as phonetics, syntax,
discourse analysis and so on, I propose that we identify language-related
themes from the teachers’ own sphere of activity… Within each theme,
it is inevitable that straightforward linguistic phenomena of phonology,
syntax, discourse, etc will need to be explored at some point. This
exploration will necessitate a certain amount of linguistic study in the
traditional sense, but it is very important that such study is now
motivated by a real-life question that requires an answer. Interestingly
in this scheme of Language Awareness development, we treat ‘the
teaching of linguistics’ in a similar way to the way in which we treat
‘the teaching of grammar’ in a task-based communicative approach. We
do not teaching linguistics ‘because it is there’, but because it helps us
to solve language problems in real-life tasks (Van Lier 1992: 102).

Kumaravadivelu proposes what he calls ‘critical classroom observation’

as a procedure for engaging teachers in the process of theorizing their
own practice, a procedure which involves self-observation of a lesson by
the teacher together with observation by students in the lesson and an
observer, following which their different perspectives are compared and
the meaning of the lesson is interpreted and theorized (1999).

The Nature of Teacher-Learning

A focus on the nature of teacher-learning has been central to a rethinking
of both the content and delivery of SLTE programs. Teacher-learning
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from traditional perspectives was seen as a cognitive issue, something the

learner did on his or her own. Nunan (1995: 55) describes this learner-
centered view. ‘In the final analysis…it is the learner who must remain at
the centre of the processes, for no matter how much energy and effort we
expend, it is the learner who has to do the learning.’ Teaching was then
viewed as a transmission process.
When couched within a transmission model the process-product
paradigm examined teaching in terms of the learning outcomes it
produced. Process-product studies concentrated on the link, which was
often assumed to be causal, between the teacher’s actions and the
students’ mental processes… In product-process research the aim was
to understand how teachers’ action led—or did not lead—to student
learning (Freeman 2002: 2).

Traditionally the problem of teacher-learning was hence often viewed as a

question of improving the effectiveness of delivery. The failure of teachers
to ‘acquire’ what was taught was seen as a problem of overcoming teach-
ers’ resistance to change (Singh and Richards 2006). A focus on teacher-
learning as a field of inquiry, however, seeks to examine the mental
processes involved in teacher-learning and acknowledges the ‘situated’
and the social nature of learning (Lave and Wenger 1991). From this
perspective, learning takes place in a context and evolves through the
interaction and participation of the participants in that context. Teacher-
learning is not viewed as translating knowledge and theories into practice
but as constructing new knowledge and theory through participating in
specific social contexts and engaging in particular types of activities and
processes. This latter type of knowledge, sometimes called ‘practitioner
knowledge’, is the source of teachers’ practices and understandings.
While traditional views of teacher-learning often viewed the teachers’
task as the application of theory to practice, more recent views see
teacher-learning as the theorization of practice—in other words, making
visible the nature of practitioner knowledge and providing the means by
which such knowledge can be elaborated, understood and reviewed. As
Freeman (2002: 11) puts it: ‘Teacher education must serve two functions.
It must teach the skills of reflectivity and it must provide the discourse and
vocabulary that can serve participants in renaming their experience’. In
practical terms this has led to a reconsideration of traditional modes of
teaching in SLTE programs and a focus on the course room as a commu-
nity of learners engaged in social practices and the collaborative construc-
tion of meanings. Transmission modes of teaching are replaced with
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various forms of dialogic and collaborative inquiry. This view of learning

draws on sociocultural theory and the notion of identity construction and
considers how the social processes of the course room or lecture room
contribute to and shape learning. Key to the teacher-learning processes are
the roles of participants, the discourses they create and participate in, the
activities that take place and the artefacts and resources that are employed.
All of these shape the nature of the learning that occurs (Singh and
Richards 2006). Learning is seen to emerge through social interaction
within a community of practice.
Johnson (2006: 239) captures current views of teacher-learning as
arising from research which has the following characteristics:
This research depicts L2 teacher learning as normative and lifelong, as
emerging out of and through experiences in social contexts: as learners
in classrooms and schools, as participants in professional teacher edu-
cation programs, and later as teachers in settings where they work. It
described L2 teacher learning as socially negotiated and contingent on
knowledge of self, subject matter, curricula, and setting. It shows L2
teachers as users and creators of legitimate forms of knowledge who
make decisions about how best to teach their L2 students within com-
plex socially, culturally, and historically situated contexts.

The Role of Context in Teacher-Learning

Sociocultural perspectives on learning emphasize that learning is situated,
that is, takes place in specific settings or contexts that shape how learning
takes place. The location of most teacher-learning in SLTE programs is
either a university or teacher training institution, or a school, and these
different contexts for learning create different potentials for learning. In
one, the course room is a setting for patterns of social participation that can
either enhance or inhibit learning. In the other, learning occurs through
the practice and experience of teaching. Both involve induction to commu-
nities of practice, Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept for learning takes
place within organizational settings, which is socially constituted and
which involves participants with a common interest collaborating to
develop new knowledge and skills. In the course room, learning is con-
tingent upon the discourse and activities that coursework and class partici-
pation involve. In the school, learning takes place through classroom
experiences and teaching practice and is contingent upon relationships
with mentors, fellow novice teachers and interaction with experienced
teachers in the school. Velez-Rendon (2006: 321) points out the crucial
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role cooperating teachers play in novice teachers’ professional develop-

ment, assisting their socialization into the profession and adjusting their
role according to the teacher-learners’ needs, thus serving both as instruc-
tional models and as sources of guidance.
Typically the campus-based program (in the case of pre-service teacher
education) is seen as the start of the teacher’s professional development,
subsequent learning taking place in the school through classroom experi-
ence, working with mentors and other school-based initiatives. In SLTE
programs, making connections between campus-based and school-based
learning is often problematic and student-teachers often perceive a gap
between the theoretical course work offered on campus and the practical
school-based component. Challenges include locating cooperating schools,
building meaningful cooperation with schools, developing coherent links
between the campus-based and school-based strands, training mentor
teachers, and recognizing them as an integral part of the campus-based
program. While the teaching practicum is often intended to establish links
between theory and practice, it is sometimes an uncomfortable add-on to
academic programs rather than seen as a core component.

The Role of Teacher Cognition

An important component of current conceptualizations of SLTE is a focus
on teacher cognition. This encompasses the mental lives of teachers, how
these are formed, what they consist of, and how teachers’ beliefs, thoughts
and thinking processes shape their understanding of teaching and their
classroom practices. Borg (2006: 1) comments:
A key factor driving the increase in research in teacher cognition, not
just in language education, but in education more generally, has been
the recognition that teachers are active, thinking decision-makers who
play a central role in shaping classroom events. Coupled with insights
from the field of psychology which have shown how knowledge and
beliefs exert a strong influence on teacher action, this recognition has
suggested that understanding teacher cognition is central to the process
of understanding teaching.

An interest in teacher cognition entered SLTE from the field of general

education, and brought with it a similar focus on teacher decision-making,
on teachers’ theories of teaching, teachers’ representations of subject
matter, and the problem-solving and improvisational skills employed by
teachers with different levels of teaching experience during teaching. Con-
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structs such as teacher’s practical knowledge, pedagogic content knowl-

edge, and personal theories of teaching noted above are now established
components of our understanding of teacher cognition. From the per-
spective of teacher cognition, teaching is not simply the application of
knowledge and of learned skills. It is viewed as a much more complex
cognitively-driven process affected by the classroom context, the teachers
general and specific instructional goals, the learners’ motivations and
reactions to the lesson, the teacher’s management of critical moments
during a lesson. At the same time teaching reflects the teacher’s personal
response to such issues, hence teacher cognition is very much concerned
with teachers’ personal and ‘situated’ approaches to teaching. Borg’s
(2006) survey of research on teacher cognition shows how such research
has clarified such issues as the relationship between teacher cognition
and classroom practice, the impact of context on language teacher’s cogni-
tions and practices, the processes of pre-service teacher learning in lan-
guage teaching, the relationship between cognitive change and behavioural
change in language teachers, and the nature of expertise in language
teaching.
In SLTE programs a focus on teacher cognition can be realized through
questionnaires and self-reporting inventories in which teachers describe
beliefs and principles; through interviews and other procedures in which
teachers verbalize their thinking and understanding of pedagogic incidents
and issues; through observation, either of one’s own lessons or those of
other teachers, and through reflective writing in the form of journals, nar-
ratives, or other forms of written report (Borg in press).

A Focus on Teacher Identity

A sociocultural perspective on teacher-learning posits a central aspect of
this process as the reshaping of identity and identities within the social
interaction of the classroom. Identity refers to the differing social and
cultural roles teacher-learners enact through their interactions with lectur-
ers and other students during the process of learning. These roles are not
static but emerge through the social processes of the classroom. Identity
may be shaped by many factors, including personal biography, gender,
culture, working conditions, age, gender, and the school and classroom cul-
ture. The concept of identity thus reflects how individuals see themselves
and how they enact their roles within different settings. In an SLTE
program a teacher-learner’s identity is remade through the acquisition of
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new modes of discourse and new roles in the course room. What is
involved is not simply ‘language acquisition’, but ‘discourse acquisition’
(Miller 2004).Teacher-learning thus involves not only discovering more
about the skills and knowledge of language teaching but also what it
means to be a language teacher. In a courseroom, teacher-learners negoti-
ate their identity through the unfolding social interaction of a particular
situated community, in relation to its specific activities and relationships
(Singh and Richards 2006).
Native-speaker and non-native-speaker teacher-learners may bring
different identities to teacher-learning and to teaching. For example,
untrained native-speakers teaching EFL overseas are sometimes credited
with an identity they are not really entitled to (the ‘native-speaker as
expert’ syndrome), finding that they have a status and credibility which
they would not normally achieve in their own country. In language insti-
tutes, students may express a preference to study with native-speaker
teachers, despite the fact that such teachers may be less qualified and less
experienced than non-native-speaker teachers. For non-native-speaking
teachers studying in SLTE programs, identity issues may lead some to feel
disadvantaged compared to native-speaker teachers in the same course.
While in their own country they were perceived as experienced and highly
competent professionals, they now find themselves at a disadvantage and
may experience feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. They may have a
sense of inadequate language proficiency and their unfamiliarity with the
learning styles found in British or North-American university course rooms
may hinder their participation in some classroom activities.
Identity and how it shapes teacher-learning can be explored through
case studies, through the review of lesson protocols, through narratives in
which teachers describe the emergence of their professional identities and
the struggles and issues that are involved. Miller (2004: 120) emphasizes
the importance of understanding the context in which teachers will work.
Knowing the school, the possibilities of the classroom space, the stu-
dents, their neighbourhoods, the resources, the curriculum and policy,
the supervising teacher—these are all critical elements that affect what
teachers can do, and how they negotiate and construct identity moment
to moment.

Miller (2004: 130) also describes the use of personal journals as ‘an activ-
ity that opens up a range of discursive practices to students, while allow-
ing them to use their previous Discourses and identities and to renegotiate,
to translate and to transform these Discourses and identities’.
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Second Language Teacher Education Today

A Rethinking of Teaching Methods and Strategies

Wallace (1995) identifies three models of teacher education that have
characterized both general teacher education and also teacher education
for language teachers, which he calls the craft model, the applied science
model, and the reflective model. Barduhn and Johnson (in press) charac-
terize these approaches as follows:
In the craft model all of the expertise of teaching resides in the training,
and it is the trainee’s job to imitate the trainer. The applied science
model has been the traditional and the most present model underlying
most teacher education and training programs. The followers of this
model believe that all teaching problems can be solved by experts in
content knowledge and not by the ‘practitioners’ themselves. The third
model, the current trend in teacher education and development, envi-
sions as the final outcome of the training period that the novice teacher
become an autonomous reflective practitioner capable of constant
self-reflection leading to a continuous process of professional self-
development.

The sociocultural view of learning outlined above moves beyond the view
of the teacher as an individual entity attempting to master content knowl-
edge and unravel the hidden dimensions of his or her own teaching and
views learning as a social process. Rather than teaching being viewed as
the transfer of knowledge, a sociocultural perspective views it as creat-
ing conditions for the co-construction of knowledge and understanding
through social participation. There are several forms such participation
may take. One strategy is known as dialogic teaching, that is, teaching
which centers around conversations with other teachers focusing on
teaching and learning issues during which teachers examine their own
beliefs and practices and engage in collaborative planning, problem
solving, and decision-making. It is often through dialogue that teacher-
learners create and experience different representations of themselves.
This may take the form of both spoken dialogue in group conversations
as well as through journals or online dialogues.
Of learning through talking with other teachers, a teacher-learner
comments:
Talking in a seminar provides you with time to talk about your teaching
and hear about the teaching of others and this in itself becomes con-
fidence inducing. You know, you think stuff about your teaching all the
time, but when you talk about it in public, with people who know you
and where you are coming from, it becomes real. Through this talk, we
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Regional Language Centre Journal 39.2

know what we are doing, we know why we are doing it, we know what
we do, and we can tell others why we are doing it (Quoted in Freeman
and Johnson 2005: 85).
For student-teachers used to more transmission-oriented teaching styles,
however, dialogic modes of teaching raise issues of identity, power, and
agency. Johnston suggests that dialogue in educational settings has at least
three interrelated elements—participation, contingency, and negotiation.
First, it requires the participation of the teacher and the teacher-
learners… The point is that both these sides are needed: There can be
no learning if either one is missing. Next dialogue is fundamentally
contingent. Because of the complexity of what the teacher and teacher-
learners bring to the classroom, and the further complexity of their
interaction in class, it is impossible to predict exactly what teacher
learners will or will not learn… Finally, dialogue involves contestant
negotiation. Because of its contingency, truly dialogical relations can
only be maintained through a constant moving to and fro between
participants in the domains both of content (what we are studying) and
process (how we go about it) (1994: 158).
‘Learning how to talk’ is essential in order to participate in a community
of practice. It involves learning to share ideas with others and to listen
without judgement, and like other forms of collaborative learning, may
require modelling and rules if it is to be successful.
Collaborative approaches to learning are central to current pedagogies
of SLTE. The collective knowledge, experience, and thinking of the par-
ticipants together with the course content and the course-room artifacts,
provide the resources through which they learn. Danielewicz comments
(2001: 141):
Collaborative learning creates a social context that helps students nego-
tiate entry into the academic discourse community and acquire discipli-
nary knowledge. But, at the same time, their joint efforts will produce
new knowledge, and eventually lead to a critique of accepted knowl-
edge, conditions, and theories, as well as of the institutions that produce
knowledge.
Johnston (in press) identifies four possibilities for collaborative teacher
development: collaboration with fellow teachers, collaboration between
teachers and university-based researchers, collaboration with students, and
collaboration with others involved in teaching and learning—administra-
tors, parents, supervisors, and so on. Key concepts in a collaborative
approach to learning are Vygotsky’s notions of the zone of proximal devel-
opment (ZPD) and mediation. These two constructs present a view of
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learning as a process of ‘apprenticeship’, where apprentices collaborate in

social practices with teacher educators as well as mentors, critical friends
and peers to acquire and construct new forms of interaction and thinking
(Vygotsky 1978). Crucial to the process is the role of mediating artifacts
in constructing new meanings. In the LTE course room these include
handouts, worksheets, technology, video, as well as the physical course-
room layout (Singh 2004).
Working in collaboration on classroom tasks offers many benefits. John-
son comments:
At the course level, collaborative efforts emerge among cohort groups
of teachers as they engage in the meaningful exchange of ideas and
experiences based on their understanding of themselves as teachers, of
theories and pedagogies presented in their academic course work, of
the students they teach, and of the day to day realities of their teaching
contexts… Whether occurring in face-to-face or via computer-mediated
communication, such exchanges foster the emergence of a professional
discourse, heighten a feeling of membership in a professional commu-
nity, and lessen the isolation and irrelevance often associated with
university-based professional course work (2000: 2-3).

In addition to collaborative forms of teacher development, professional

development is also increasingly viewed as something which is self-
directed, inquiry-based, and directly relevant to teacher’s professional
lives. The site for such inquiry is the teacher’s own classroom, either
through the teacher’s own efforts or in collaboration with supervisors,
university researchers, or other teachers. This often takes the form of
action research or other research-based activities.
The growing demand for SLTE courses as a consequence of the spread
of English worldwide has also created a need for new ways of delivery of
teacher education courses. Advances in technology have provided new
opportunities for both traditional forms of campus-based teaching (e.g.
internet-based resources) as well as for distance teaching through online
learning. These new forms of delivery allow for the development of teacher-
networks that cross regional and national boundaries, establishing glob-
alized communities of teachers who can bring their own cultural, social,
professional and personal experiences into the SLTE process.

The Need for Accountability

The scope of English teaching worldwide and the subsequent growth of
SLTE programs has created a demand for greater accountability in SLTE
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practices. What constitutes a quality SLTE program in terms of its curricu-

lum, the teaching methods that it gives rise to, and the kinds of teachers
that the program produces? What competencies do the graduates of such
programs possess? These kinds of questions are very difficult to answer
since there are no widely-accepted definitions of concepts of ‘quality’ in
SLTE and likewise there is no internationally recognized specification of
English language teacher competencies, though local specifications of
essential teacher competencies have been produced in many countries and
by a number of professional organizations (Leung and Teasdale 1999).
One way to approach the issue of accountability is through the identi-
fication of standards for SLTE programs. The standards movement has
taken hold in many parts of the world and promotes the adoption of clear
statements of instructional outcomes in educational programs as a way of
improving learning outcomes in programs and to provide guidelines for
program development, curriculum development, and assessment. In the
US the TESOL organization has developed the TESOL/NCATE Stan-
dards for P-12 Teacher Education Programs which cover five domains—
Language, Culture, Professionalism, Instruction, and Assessment, and the
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages has developed
the ACTFL/NCATE Program Standards for the Preparation of Foreign
Language Teachers (ACTFL 2002). These provide descriptions both of
what foreign language teacher should know and the level of proficiency
they should have reached in their teaching language. Critics of such an
approach argue that the standards themselves are largely based on intuition
and are not research based, and also that the standards movement has been
brought into education from the fields of business and organizational man-
agement and reflects a reductionist approach in which learning is reduced
to the mastery of discrete skills that can easily be taught and assessed.
Another dimension of accountability relates to the impact of SLTE
programs. How can the results of teacher education practices be evaluated
and what impact do SLTE programs have? Despite the huge investment in
ELT teacher training programs in different parts of the world in the last 30
years, there is very little research available on the impact of such invest-
ment. Shamin observes (in press); ‘In English language teaching, while
innovations abound—from innovative methods to curriculum, textbooks
and assessment practices, literature on exploring the nature of change and
its possible effects on innovation diffusion is surprisingly scant’.
We tend to take for granted that the teaching and learning experiences
provided in SLTE programs succeed in changing teachers’ beliefs, under-
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standings, knowledge, and practices. However, research often confirms

that there is often little immediate evidence for change in teacher’s prac-
tices as a result of training (Waters and Vilches 2005). Individual and
contextual factors can impede adoption of educational innovations, includ-
ing the amount of risk involved, the communicability of the innovation,
compatibility with existing practices, the number of gatekeepers involved,
the perceived benefits of the innovation as well as the organizational,
political, social and cultural context in which the change is being at-
tempted. An important collection of papers edited by Bartels (2005)
explores how teachers are affected by the academic knowledge they
received in their graduate courses and the extent to which they are able to
access and use this knowledge in their subsequent teaching.
SLTE programs can, of course, be evaluated in much the same way as
any other educational program is evaluated, that is, in terms of content,
instruction, relevance and so on but these factors may have little influence
on the extent to which the program and its activities initiates a deeper self-
awareness of teaching. Typically professional development is intended to
bring about change in teachers but change can mean many different
things, and while short-term impact may be relatively easy to measure,
much teacher development initiatives are designed to produce longer-term
changes that are not always directly measurable. Measures are needed that
involve teachers in self-evaluation, that enable them to monitor their
growth and development over time through the use of self-directed activi-
ties such as portfolios, narratives, and journal writing, rather than meas-
ures which capture perceptions of change at a given moment in time.
Sociocultural views of learning also suggest that evaluation considers not
only the products of learning, but more importantly the sociocultural
processes that are involved and the extent to which the social processes of
the course room serve to inhibit or enhance teacher learning.

Critical Language Teacher Eduction

The field of SLTE, as with other areas of language teaching, has also been
influenced by issues posed by critical theory and critical pedagogy,
prompting reflection on the hidden curriculum that sometimes underlies
language teaching polices and practices. English language teaching, it is
argued, is not a politically or morally neutral activity. Mastery of English,
it is claimed, often enhances the power and control of a privileged few and
in addition, English language teaching often consumes an inordinate
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amount of the scarce educational resources of many countries. Globaliza-

tion and the spread of English raise the need for SLTE programs to engage
teachers in an exploration of the political status of English in today’s
world, the role it can play in maintaining positions of privilege and ine-
quality, and the role the notion of ‘native speaker’ has played in TESOL
theory and practice. Hawkins and Norton (in press) argue that language
teachers have a particular role to play in promoting their learners’ fuller
participation in classrooms and communities.
Because language, culture, and identity are integrally related, language
teachers are in a key position to address educational inequality, both
because of the particular learners they serve, many of whom are margin-
alized members of the wider community, and because of the subject
matter they teach—language—which can serve itself to both empower
and marginalize… For those whose students may be members of the
mainstream community, they nevertheless represent the values, beliefs
and practices of the cultural groups with whom the new language is
associated. Critical language teachers make transparent the complex
relationships between majority and minority speakers and cultural
groups, and between diverse speakers of the majority language, thus
having the potential to disrupt potentially harmful and oppressive
relations of power.

From this perspective, language teachers are not simply teaching language
as a neutral vehicle for the expression of meanings and ideas, but should
be engaged both in reflecting upon the ideological forces that are present
in their classrooms, schools and communities and in empowering their
learners with the language knowledge and skills they need to be able to
function as moral agents in society. At the practical level, critical peda-
gogues would argue that this involves choosing developing curricula and
choosing materials and activities that raise students’ awareness of socio-
political as well as ethical issues and problems. But if this is critical lan-
guage teaching, what is critical language teacher education?
Hawkins and Norton (in press) identify three key practices that they
suggest are associated with critical language teacher education. Critical
awareness activities seek to raise teachers’ awareness of ‘the way power
relations are constructed and function in society, and the extent to which
historical, social, and political practices structure educational inequality’.
Critical self-reflection activities ‘encourage teacher learners to critically
reflect on their own identities and positioning in society.’ For example,
student teachers may create narratives or case studies that focus on aware-
ness and meaning of such identities as ‘non-native speaker’ or ‘female’
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and whether such identities impose limits on the teacher’s abilities to fulfil
their potential. Activities that address critical pedagogical relations are
those in which
teacher educators reflect on their attempts to restructure power relations
between themselves and their teacher learners, not only to model critical
educational practices, but to encourage teacher learners to consider
ways in which their own teaching can enhance opportunities for lan-
guage learners in their classrooms.

Conclusions
As this survey has illustrated, the field of Second Language Teacher Edu-
cation has expanded considerably both in breadth and in depth since its
origins in training approaches associated with the major teaching methods
of the 1960s and 1970s. Through the efforts of scholars and researchers,
on the one hand, the field has redefined its goals, its scope, its conceptual
frameworks and its teaching methods. On the other hand, growing demand
for effective SLTE programs in response to worldwide expansion in the
use of English has highlighted the need for a coordinated organizational
response, which has led to the demand for greater accountability through
standards, curriculum renewal, professionalism, and the development of
internationally recognized qualifications for language teachers. SLTE
today is consequently a vital component of the field of TESOL and makes
a central contribution to our understanding of what lies at the core of this
enterprise, namely, teachers, teaching, and the nature of teacher education.

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