Proposing a Conceptual Model for Teacher Expertise in ELT

Abstract

Interest in expertise studies has been shown from the beginning of 21st century so far in quite many fields including art, music, chess, medical sciences, etc. Just recently, applied linguistics has joint this new wave of research and this was an inspiration for conducting the present research. Since the early twenty-first century, expertise studies have been undertaken in a large number of domains. Applied linguistics is relatively a newcomer to the list which makes any study aiming to cast light on some aspect of expertise in this domain worth considering. In the present study, a model is proposed for the construct of teaching expertise in ELT comprised of 8 interrelated factors. Based on a perusal of previous research on expertise in education and the thought patterns and behavior of exemplary teachers of English language these factors were extracted. The direct or indirect effect of each factor on the latent variable, teaching expertise, is indicated in the model. For further content validation, 20 specialists of the field were interviewed. These specialists included university professors of applied linguistics, teacher educators, teacher trainers at the private sector, mentor teachers and experienced teachers. The 8 factors which were extracted from prior research and interviewees’ remarks include: teacher’s language proficiency, pedagogical content knowledge, social recognition, cognitive skills, experience, professional development, contextual knowledge, and learner-centered teaching. These are perceived to be the key constituents of teaching expertise in ELT. This model is aimed to be later used as a basis for developing an instrument for operationalizing the construct of teacher expertise in ELT.