Language Teacher Education Research Articles

Investigating English Teachers’ Perceptions of English language Education through the Q Method

Educators, politicians, and scholars have been interested in English language education for many years. Despite the rising significance of English as a global language, there still needs to be agreement on the most effective techniques for teaching English language skills. Understanding the opinions and attitudes of English instructors towards language instruction might assist in shaping educational practises and initiatives. This research sought to evaluate English instructors' perspectives on English language education using the Q approach. Q methodology is a research strategy that enables people to rank and prioritise their ideas on an issue, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of people’s viewpoints. The research included 40 English language instructors from various areas of Turkey who were asked to rate 20 English language education statements based on their degree of agreement. A survey of the literature and conversations with instructors and students were used to construct the assertions. The study’s findings indicated three unique points of view among English language instructors, which the researchers named "Traditionalists," "Idealists," and "Realists." Traditionalists felt that language learning should be based on knowledge of linguistic norms and emphasised the significance of grammar and translation abilities. The Idealists felt that language study should strengthen students’ abilities to communicate and comprehend diverse cultures and that communication and critical thinking skills should be prioritised. Realists emphasised practical abilities and tactics that can be used in everyday life, and they felt that language instruction should be relevant to students personal and professional aspirations. The research finds that varied opinions and attitudes towards English language education among English instructors might impact their teaching practises and tactics. The research also emphasises the necessity of knowing teachers’ opinions on language instruction and the possible advantages of investigating instructors’ perceptions using the Q technique. This research has practical consequences for language education policy and teacher education programmes.

Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices Relating to the Use of Tasks in Tertiary English as a Foreign Language Classrooms in China

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been recommended in the new College English Curriculum Requirement in China (Ministry of Education, 2017) for students learning English as a foreign language. Teachers might not, however, implement these concepts in their classes. This study aims to investigate whether the concept of TBLT has made its way into EFL teachers’ theoretical beliefs and the degree to which TBLT is being put into practice. By using semi-structured interviews and classroom observations, this study investigated the beliefs and practices of three tertiary English teachers in China and their use of tasks in their language classes. The results show that although these teachers had positive attitudes toward TBLT, only some activities in their classes could be classified as tasks. The teachers’ use of tasks seemed to be influenced by web-based textbooks and their own reflective practices. This study provides recommendations for developing language teacher education programmes based on TBLT in China.

Exploring Dimensions of Teacher Education in Nepal: Perspectives, Challenges, and Reform Opportunities

This study evaluates Nepal's English Language Teacher Education (ELTE) reform possibilities and challenges. The study examines teacher education in connection with social contexts, knowledge transformation, and knowledge generation from many perspectives. Reflective teaching, modelling, and research habits improve instructors' professionalism and create effective learning environments. According to the report, English Language Teachers in Nepal face obstacles that must be addressed in teacher education. Content analysis is used to study the diverse literature. Surkhet English teachers and headteachers participate in a focus group. The paper's results and discussion section summarize the literature review and participants' opinions. It covers key concerns such as the absence of physical facilities and funds for teacher training, poor English language ability among instructors, coordination issues between pre-service and in-service training programs, and minimal research on ELT classroom methods. Reforming teacher education to improve topic knowledge, pedagogical skills, and technology expertise is recommended. English language teacher education faces societal inequities, uneven government regulations, and limited access to internet resources and databases. The study also examines technology integration in English language classrooms, online platforms, and the lack of research on ICT integration in Nepalese education. This research article helps to understand ELTE in Nepal and suggests areas for development and additional study.

Toward humanizing SFL praxis: Coconstructing language teachers' understandings of their intersectional identities via language use

AbstractContextualized within our Projects in Humanization in language teacher education and part of our on‐going collaborative self‐study of our language teacher educator practices, we used multiple case study to examine multimodal representations of cultural and linguistic identities curated by three language teachers—Daniel, Yuseva, and Sarah—and humanizing dialog to engage them in reflection on those identities. The central task, the Language Use Profile—part of the foundations course in our language teacher education programs—guided language teachers in developing their understandings of their bi‐/multilingual language use, language ideologies, and systemic functional linguistics (SFL). In all three cases, examination of language use served as a window for the language teachers to observe their intersectionality or, in some cases, to become aware of it. Each language teacher took up the assignment in different ways, with the task as the context for reflection on language use and identities journeys such as translanguaging to survive, negotiating my identity and being a white woman who learned Spanish. SFL metalanguage served as a tool for the language teachers to make sense of their multidimensional language use. Our findings point to the potential of the Language Use Profile as a means for guiding language teachers in the identity work that is central in humanizing language teacher education.

Multilingualism and language teacher education

In this paper, we present the increasingly complex nature of language teaching in a multilingual world and discuss the implications for language teacher education programs. We then draw on the Douglas Fir Group framework to develop a roadmap for language teacher education and share our views on how research scholarships can provide the critical disciplinary knowledge foundation for language teacher education. We hope that the journal System remains a leading platform for disseminating crucial research that helps to prepare language teachers for the complex task of teaching in a multilingual world.

Limited capital: a genealogy of culturelessness in (language) teacher education

Abstract Black youth as ‘struggling students’ is a persistent narrative in the contemporary U.S. psyche, both preceded by and markedly displayed through the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, which reflected coded language encouraging a return to the pre-Civil Rights United States. This framing positioned Black students as culprits for the ills of U.S. schooling – a continuation of a history of educational policy that discursively enforces the need to defend society against ‘subhuman’ populations. Placing the 1983 policy report in conversation with Zwiers’ Building Academic Language: Meeting Common Core Standards Across Disciplines (2013) via raciolinguistic genealogy, I problematize the ways in which texts like these reinforce discourses of Black cultures and languages as subhuman, deviant threats to U.S. society.

A diachronic approach to perceptions of success and failure in language education

The paper is an article of reflection which aims to critically analyze the concept of success as viewed from an individual’s perspective as well as through the lenses of others. Historically and socially dependent norms and values regulating psychological and sociological approaches to success and failure are also considered and their personal and social consequences examined. Against this background the postwar concepts of a successful language learner and a successful language teacher are examined from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives. A model with six stages is proposed, the function of which is to estimate their approximate duration as well as to identify criteria adopted in order to distinguish between success and failure in particular periods. Terminology, drawn from the philosophy of law, relating to norms and expectations is presented to examine methodological issues in evaluation and assessment. Implications for language teacher education are also considered.

Language teachers’ engagement with ideological representations as materials designers

Language teachers are increasingly expected to design teaching materials that reflect locally appropriate cultural values and ideologies in different contexts. In response to the call for language teachers to engage with ideological representations as materials designers, this paper draws on an ecological perspective to investigate how language teachers engage with ideological representations during the design and development of teaching materials in Chinese universities. We interviewed 15 language teachers who had designed or were designing materials to examine their engagement with ideological representations when designing teaching materials. Our analysis reveals that these teachers' engagement with ideological representations was mediated by national policy requirements at the macro level, institutional and group expectations at the meso level, and individual beliefs at the micro level. These findings have significant implications for stakeholders such as policy makers and language teacher educators to support language teachers’ efforts to design locally appropriate materials and pursue their professional development.

The Relationship between Teaching-Learning Conceptions and Sense of Self-Efficacy of Pre-Service EFL Teachers

Teachers’ teaching-learning conceptions and sense of selfefficacy are important constructs that can affect each other and directly influence the effectiveness of teaching. This study investigates the relationship between teachinglearning conceptions and sense of self-efficacy of preservice EFL teachers using a mixed-method research design. The quantitative data were collected from 374 4th grader pre-service teachers who were studying ELT in state universities. This study used the Turkish versions of the Teaching and Learning Conceptions Questionnaire and Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale. Open-ended questions were used to gather qualitative data from 42 pre-service teachers who consented to respond. Descriptive statistical techniques and content analysis were used for the data analysis. The study found that teachers adopted a constructivist conception more than a traditional one. The results also suggest that the pre-service teachers have high level of self-efficacy beliefs. The results showed that preservice teachers' teaching-learning conceptions and sense of self-efficacy were related. High and positive correlations were found between their constructivist conception and efficacy for student engagement, efficacy for instructional strategies, and efficacy for classroom management. The preservice teachers felt efficacious in instructional strategies, student involvement, and classroom management. Their traditional conception is negatively correlated to their efficacy for student engagement.Taking the results into consideration, implications and suggestions were formulated for the main stakeholders of language teacher education.

Provoking novice teacher development: Cognition-and-emotion in learning-to-teach

Recently, increased attention has been drawn to the crucial role of emotions in developing language teacher cognition. Arguing against the secondary role of emotions in cognitive development, a Vygotskian Sociocultural Theoretical perspective views cognition-and-emotion as basic components of human consciousness, the dialectical relationship between them being captured in the concept of perezhivanie. Building on recent expansions of Vygotsky's concept of perezhivanie (Lantolf & Swain, 2019b) and distinguishing between affect, feeling, and emotion, this article explores the complex interplay between cognition-and-emotion and its link to provoking the psychological development of two novice teachers as they progress through their teaching practicum during their MA TESOL Program in North America. Utilizing multiple data sources, including each novice teacher's dialogic reflective teaching journal, professional development plan, and final reflective essay, we qualitatively analyze instances of cognitive/emotional dissonance that emerged and the working over of these instances with the responsive mediation of the practicum supervisor. Our findings reveal how the practices of second language teacher education have the potential to create mediational spaces for novice teachers to work through and make sense of their emotional experiences as well as to foreground affect, feeling, and emotion as a shared social endeavor.

Probing pre-service language teachers’ emotional experiences through lesson study: a Macau study

ABSTRACT The present study investigates the emotional experiences of seven student teachers through the process of lesson study in a pre-service language teacher education course at a university in Macau. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews, individual reflections, and observational notes, the study reveals a variety of emotions experienced by the participants at different stages of the lesson study, including group lesson planning, micro-teaching, and collaborative and individual reflections. These different emotions served as a rich source of agency and activism for the student teachers, who developed both cognitively and emotionally in this process. In light of these findings, the paper calls for teacher educators to incorporate lesson study as a cognitively and emotionally contested site for pre-service teachers‘ professional learning. Different emotions and their regulation strategies should be considered for open discussion and explicit instruction in second language teacher education programmes. Research attention should be especially directed towards emotional dissonance among different participants (e.g., student teachers and teacher educators) in teacher education programmes.

Unpacking Novice English Language Teachers’ Cognitions about Global Englishes Pedagogy: An Activity-Theoretic Analysis

Within the last two decades, theorizing and research on language teaching and teachers have witnessed a fundamental shift of attention and orientation towards socio-cognitive aspects of teaching. This epistemic shift has been paralleled by the global reach of the English language, inspiring scholars to call for a paradigm shift in Applied Linguistics to drift away from Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) to Global Englishes (GE) Language Teaching (GELT). While the expanding body of the literature on GE pedagogy has focused on different aspects of this fundamental transformation, teachers’ voices and cognitions have been often neglected in such discussions, despite their being an important element involved in the process. Against this backdrop, and guided by an activity-theoretic perspective as its analytical framework, the present qualitative study explored two Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ cognitions about GE and GELT using semi-structured interview, stimulated recall protocol, and non-participant classroom observation. Despite differences in the cognitions of our participants regarding GELT, the results generally indicated that both teachers tended to prioritize the use of standard American or British English in their teaching practice, bearing testimony to the fact that there is still a theory-practice schism between disciplinary reality and folk reality when it comes to GE-related issues in the English language teaching (ELT) enterprise. Our analysis offers a depiction of the challenges related to introducing GELT into the curriculum. The results are deliberated in relation to the feasibility of GE-oriented pedagogy, questioning whether it is achievable or is merely an idealistic notion. Implications of the findings for second language teacher education are discussed in the end.

Advances in Research on Language Teacher Cognition: An Introduction to the Special Issue

An oft-cited conceptualization of teacher cognition couches it as “the unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching—what teachers know, believe and think” (Borg, 2003, p. 81). While the term “unobservable” in Borg’s definition implies, or even emphatically states, that a hidden body of knowledge, beliefs, and thoughts informs teacher behavior, this hidden dimension was “un-observable” in early conceptualizations of teaching (Borg, 2019; Burns, et al., 2015). Dominated for long by the process-product interpretation (Dunkin & Biddle, 1974), teaching was primarily viewed in terms of observable instructional behaviors (e.g., wait time practices, patterns of questioning) that were judged with regard to how effectively they influenced student achievement outcomes (Verloop, et al., 2001). Language teacher education also followed suit and as posited by Gatbonton (1999), formerly a major share of the theoretical base for language teacher education came from studies of overt classroom behaviors. However, teaching was subsequently recognized as cognition-backed and knowledge-informed performance. As best reflected in Borg’s (2019, p. 2) words, although teaching involves observable behaviors, it “is not a purely behavioral enterprise; in the same way that icebergs have an exposed surface beneath which lies a significant hidden mass, teachers’ behaviors are also powerfully shaped by a complex range of unseen influences”. [First Paragraph]

Teacher Appraisal Systems of Critical Incidents Experienced in Iranian EFL Classroom Context

<p><em>This study sought to solicit, through the Geneva Appraisal Questionnaire (GAQ), Iranian EFL teachers’ emotional experiences and their ensuing control and authority practices. In so doing, a total of forty university instructors in Iran were recruited to participate in the study by filling in the instruments, of which thirteen were returned back. The content analysis of the data was quantitatively and qualitatively done to pinpoint the frequency of the occurrences of the emotional events and to scour the teachers’ feelings, behaviors, and reactions to the encountered situations. The data gleaned from both female and male teachers in this study disclosed the recalling of the negative events more than the positive ones. The teachers’ reservations and expectations and the lack of dexterity to confront the unprecedented behaviors were witnessed to be the main causes of experiencing negative emotions. However, the teachers’ commiseration and empathetic teaching styles were reported as the reasons for their experiences of positive feelings. The results of this study may have some practical implications and suggestions for language teacher education.</em></p>

Cognition-in-interaction: A Discursive Psychological Perspective of Novice Language Teacher Cognition

Teacher cognition has been an important agenda of language teacher education in recent decades, and it has advanced the field’s understanding of L2 teachers’ work. Thus far, language teacher cognition has been understood from different epistemological perspectives and researched with different methodological approaches. Given that teacher cognition is social and situational, more research is needed from an emic perspective to understand how teachers develop and renew their cognitions in their professional context. This paper adopts a discursive psychological perspective on teacher cognition, investigating novice teacher cognition using applied conversation analysis. As part of a more extensive study, the study offers an in-depth analysis of novice Chinese EFL teachers’ thinking, knowing, understanding, conceptualising, and stance-taking regarding language teaching. The teachers were recruited through a combination of convenience and snowball sampling strategies. The dataset includes 330 minutes of classroom teaching, 217 minutes of interviews, and 605 minutes of video-based guided reflection on teaching. The data revealed the key theme in teachers’ understanding of 1) focusing on linguistic knowledge, 2) establishing teacher authority, and 3) developing practical pedagogical knowledge. The findings reveal teachers’ moment-by-moment cognition-in-interaction and multiple roles in facilitating learning. Substantial implications are put forward for teacher learning and teacher education.

Asset-based Approach Community Service for Developing Digital Textbook in Secondary Language (L2) Teacher Education

ABSTRACT
 Service learning embedded in the course plays a vital role in transforming theoretical knowledge into practical one. It provides students with the concept and brings them in contextualizing their concept that they have already learned in the classroom. This study explores the process of enacting service learning using asset-based approach to university-community engagement. This study employed multiple data sets from observation, semi-structured interviews with teachers and principles, focused group discussion with students, and students’ products of digital textbooks. The findings revealed that service learning using the asset-based approach empowered all the stakeholders and contributed to emergence of the equitable partnership between university and community. The students’ product of a digital textbook represents collaboration between English teachers, the teacher educator, and the university students who successfully designed learning resources that meet the academic level and interests of students of the school partners. 
 Keywords: Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), Service Learning, Digital learning resources, Digital literacy

Emotion labor and professional identity construction of TESOL teacher educators

Recent discussions on TESOL teacher education have underlined the importance of further research on teacher educators' emotional experiences. In response to this emerging line of research, the present study explored emotion labor (i.e., the clash between internal feelings and external discourses/expectations) and professional identity construction of Iranian language teacher educators (LTEs). Grounded in a narrative inquiry methodology, the study investigated how contextualities of practice in Iran contributed to LTEs' emotion labor and professional identity construction by collecting data from an open-ended questionnaire, narrative frames, and semi-structured interviews. Our data analysis revealed three themes in relation to the Iranian LTEs’ emotion labor and professional identity construction: (1) emotional clashes regarding the marketization of teacher education, (2) ethical challenges as a site of emotional tensions in institutional work, and (3) disciplinary credentials and institutional affiliations imposing vulnerability on LTEs. Our findings demonstrate that while LTEs face various educational-sociocultural challenges that impose emotion labor on them, they can develop emotionality by exercising agency and promoting praxis in their institutional settings. Based on the findings, we provide implications for such agency-praxis promotion that can benefit various educational stakeholders.

Language Teacher Identity and Emotions in a Duoethnographic Narrative: The Perspective of Teacher, Parent, and Teacher Educator

Teacher identity building rather than learning teaching in terms of skills and subsystems has recently been acknowledged as a priority in future teacher preparation. Several teacher identity models have been offered, including the 3A Language Teacher Identity Framework (3ALTIF) (Werbińska, 2017a) in which teacher identity comprises affiliation (teachers’ willingness to teach), attachment (teachers’ beliefs related to their teaching) and autonomy (teachers’ agentive, reflective, and resilient powers). With hindsight, it seems that the 3ALTIF, which drew on other identity models available at the time of its conception, does not address the affective side of language teacher identity explicitly enough and therefore can hardly embrace the uniqueness of this profession. That is why we decided to explore the issue of emotions more deeply and conduct a lengthy duoethnographic narrative to consider the 3ALTIF’s ‘missing’ component for the future ‘improvement’ of the 3ALTIF. Duoethnography was chosen as a qualitative research method thanks to its novelty, its suitability for investigating identity issues and the opportunity it provides for us to explain and express ourselves. In our duoethnographic dialogues we focused on our own emotions from three perspectives: former school language teachers, language teachers as parents, and language teacher educators, all of which are the roles we have played. The findings reveal our experience of emotions that once affected us and also suggest that emotions are not only psychological constructs but have social dimensions as well.

A Call for Raciolinguistic Epistemologies: Transnational Languaging of Immigrant Literacy Teacher Educators

ABSTRACT Twenty-first century literacy teacher education in and beyond the United States continues to reinforce standardized languages – often English, and knowledges based on these languages in their preparation of literacy teachers. Despite literacy research informed by a largely white monolingual population of teacher educators, most of whom are predominantly English-speaking and rely very often on best practices in literacy research largely and historically conducted with monolingual (i.e., standard-English speaking) students, there is an expectation that research on diversity in literacy will change the practices of teachers amidst a concomitant failure to examine intentionally, the racial, linguistic, and cultural diversity of language and literacy teacher educators who have been deemed so central to changing teachers, ideologies and practices toward languaging. To address these concerns, this conceptual essay argues that immigrant teacher educators (of Color) possess epistemologies critical to teaching literacy and language to prospective and practicing teachers in teacher education programs within the United States. I present and discuss three epistemological bases of immigrant literacy teacher educators of Color racialized epistemologies – steeped in their racialized languaging, as a paradigmatic shift from Minority World to Majority World knowledges in literacy and language research, policy, and education.

WRITING IN BRAZILIAN LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION: POSSIBLE ADVANCES IN FUTURE TEACHERS’ LANGUAGE CAPACITIES

This research is related to foreign Language Teacher Education based on the study of genres. It aims at investigating the types of correction used by the teacher-researcher and their role in the development of future teachers’ language capacities through writing taken as social action. It is grounded on Socio-discursive Interactionism and the procedure of didactic sequence. The data collecting was constituted by three versions of a Comment written by a future teacher in the English Language III course, during the implementation of a Didactic Sequence and the teacher-researcher’s correction types on their texts. The data analysis techniques were based on the identification of the correction types and the language capacities. Considering the three steps of writing in the didactic sequence implemented: i. initial production; ii. revising and rewriting; iii. final production and the correction types identified; this investigation presents an alternative to provide future teachers with a unique experience that can contribute to the process of English learning as well as to the student’s language capacities development.