The Knowledge Base for Language Teacher Education Revisited: A Review

Abstract

The debate on the knowledge base for teacher education (TE) in general and language teacher education in particularhas been going on for while with no unanimity on what it should entail. In this paper, I review literature on the issueof the knowledge base, specifically on language teacher education (LTE). The key question guiding this review is:What is the conceptual foundation of the knowledge base for LTE? This suggests that the debate needs to considerpedagogical reasoning as a core pillar of the knowledge base for LTE. At the centre of the concept of pedagogicalreasoning is the need for language teachers to understand the relationships between principles and procedures oflanguage teaching. While this paper focuses on English language, I believe that the issues raised are relevant to anyother second language teaching contexts since the concept of pedagogical reasoning as a basis of the knowledge basefor LTE is not limited to English Language (EL) Contexts.