Second Language Teacher Education Today
Jack C. Richards

One of the simple facts of life in the present time is that the English language skills of agood 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 know ledge 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. In this paper I want to examine trends insecond language teacher education and to identify some of the key issues that areshaping the way second language teacher education (SLTE) is conceptualised and realized
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 know ledge base and associatedinstructional practices through the efforts of applied linguists and specialists in the field of
second language teaching and teacher education. Much of the debate and disc ussion thathas appeared in the professional literature in recent years for example and which issurveyed 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 w ithin 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 asa language of international trade and communication, which has brought with it thedemand by national educational authorities for new language teaching policies, forgreater central control over teaching and teacher education, and for standards and otherforms of accountability. The Common European Framework is an example of theprofession 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 worldw ide and that methodologies such as Audiolingualism and Situational
Language Teaching emerged as the first of a wave of new methodologies to reinv igorate

1the field of English as a second or foreign language. The origins of specific approaches toteacher training for language teachers began with short training programs and certificatesdating from this period, designed to give prospective teachers the practical classroom
skills needed to teach the new methods. The discipline of applied linguistics dates fromthe same period, and w ith it came a body of specialized academic knowledge and theory
that provided the foundation of the new disc ipline. This know ledge was represented in the
curricula of MA programs, which began to be offered from this time that typicallycontained courses in language analysis, learning theory, methodology, and sometimes ateaching practicum.
The relationship between practical teaching skills and academic know ledge and theirrepresentation in SLTE programs has generated a debate ever since, although as we will
see in what follows 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 w ith entrylevel teaching skills linked to a specific teaching context, and the latter to the longer-term
development of the indiv idual teacher over time. Training involved the development of arepertoire of teaching skills, acquired through observing experienced teachers andpractice-teaching in a controlled setting, e.g. through micro-teaching or peer-teaching.
Good teaching was seen as the mastery of a set of skills or competencies. Qualificationsin teacher training such as the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults)
were typically offered by teacher training colleges or by organizations suc h as the British
Council. Teacher development on the other hand meant mastering the discipline ofapplied linguistics. Qualifications in teacher development, typically the MA degree, were
offered by universities, where the practical skills of language teac hing were often
undervalued.
By the present time the contrast between training and development has been replaced bya reconsideration of the nature of teacher learning, which is viewed as a form ofsocialization into the professional thinking and practices of a community of practice. SLTE
is now also influenced by perspectives drawn from sociocultural theory (Lantolf 2000) andthe field of teacher cognition (Borg, 2006). The know ledge 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) (F reeman 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 andthe demand worldwide for a practical command of English language skills.

2

The professionalization of language teaching
A common observation on the state of English language teaching today compared with isstatus 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 acareer in a field of educational specialization, it requires a specialized knowledge baseobtained through both academic study and practical experience, and it is a field of workwhere membership is based on entry requirements and standards. The professionalism ofEnglish teaching is seen in the growth industry devoted to providing language teacherswith 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 professional organizations,to attempts in many places to require non-native speaker English teachers todemonstrate their level of proficiency in English as a component of certification, to thedemand for professional qualifications for native-speaker teachers, and to the greaterlevel of sophisticated knowledge of language teaching required of English teachers.
Becoming an English language teacher means becoming part of a worldw ide communityof professionals with shared goals, values, discourse, and practices but one with a selfcritical view of its own practices and a commit ment 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 byinternational professional organizations and attaining standards mandated by suchbodies. 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 whena teacher is told to “teach to the test” rather than create his or 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 institutionally prescribed professionalism– a managerial approach to professionalism that represents the views of ministries of
education, teaching organizations, regulatory bodies, school principals and so on thatspecify 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 tomaintain 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.

3The second dimension to professionalism Leung refers to as independent 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 inthis paper above has addressed this dimension of individual professionalism and thecurrent literature on professional development for language teachers promotes a wide
variety of procedures through which teachers can engage in critical and reflective reviewof their own practices (see Richards and Farrell 2006), e.g. 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
focussing on classroom teaching skills and pedagogic issues, and the other focussing on
what has been perceived as the academic underpinnings of classroom skills, namely
know ledge about language and language learning. The relationship between the two has
often been problematic. One way to clarify this issue has been to contrast two differingkinds of knowledge – which may be thought of as knowledge about and know ledge how.
“Knowledge about” or content knowledge prov ides what has come to be the establishedcore curriculum of SLTE programs, particularly at the graduate level, where course work
on topics such as language analysis, discourse analysis, phonology, curriculum
development, and methodology is standard. The language-based courses provided theacademic 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 know ing the theory andprinciples 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 know ledge base of language teaching, observing, “The know ledge-base islargely 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 focussed 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 2006, Firth and Wagner 1997,
Norton 1997).
The distinction between explicit knowledge and implicit know ledge throws some light on
the dilemma of failed uptake, the former constituting the basis of “knowledge about” andthe latter of “knowledge how”. Implicit know ledge covers a wide range of terms that have4

been used in the literature to refer to the beliefs, theories, and know ledge that underlieteachers’ practical actions (terms such as “principles”, “practitioner know ledge”, “personal
theories”, “maxims”) (Richards 1996,Tsang 2004). Central to knowledge how areconcepts such as pedagogical content knowledge (the capacity to transform content into
accessible and learnable forms) and practical know ledge, all of which refer to theknow ledge and thinking that teachers make use of in facilitating learning in theirclassrooms and which belong to a third strand that has often been missing fromformulations 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 toinclude the processes of teaching and teacher-learning and the beliefs, theories andknow ledge which informs teaching. Rather than the MA course being a survey of issues inapplied linguistics drawing from the traditional disciplinary sources, course work in areas
such as reflective teaching, classroom research, and action research now form parts ofthe core curriculum in many TESOL programs and seek to expand the traditional
know ledge base of language teaching. Van Lier proposed a way to resolve the theorypractice 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 theteachers’ own sphere of activity… Within each theme, it is inevitable thatstraightforward linguistic phenomena of phonology, syntax, discourse, etc willneed 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 thatsuch study is now motivated by a real-life question that requires an answer.
Interestingly in this scheme of Language Awareness development, we treat “theteaching of linguistics” in a similar way to the way in which we treat “the teachingof 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: 1996
Kumaravadivelu proposes what he call “critical classroom observation” as a procedure forengaging teachers in the process of theorizing their ow n 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 comparedand the meaning of the lesson is interpreted and theorized.

The nature of teacher-learning
A focus on the nature of teacher learning has been central to a rethinking of both thecontent and delivery of SLTE programs. Teacher-earning 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 and5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 examinedteaching in terms of the learning outcomes it produced. Process-product studies
concentrated on the link, which was often assumed to be causal, between theteacher’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 teachers’ resistance to change (Singh andRichards 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 thisperspective, learning takes place in a context and evolves through the interaction andparticipation of the participants in that context. Teacher-learning is not viewed astranslating knowledge and theories into practice but as constructing new know ledge andtheory through participating in specific social contexts and engaging in particular types ofactivities and processes. This latter type of knowledge, sometimes called “practitioner
know ledge”, is the source of teachers’ practices and understandings.
While traditional views of teacher learning often viewed the teachers’ task as theapplication of theory to practice, more recent views see teacher-learning as thetheorization of practice, in other words, making visible the nature of practitioner
know ledge and providing the means by which such know ledge can be elaborated,
understood and reviewed. As Freeman (2002,11) puts it: “Teac her education must ten
serve two functions. It must teach the skills of reflectivity and it must provide thediscourse 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 community of learners engaged in social
practices and the collaborative construction of meanings. Transmission modes of teaching
are replaced with 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 theycreate and participate in, the activities that take place and the artefacts and resourcesthat are employed. All of these shape the nature of the learning that occurs (Singh and6Richards 2006). Learning is seen to emerge through social interaction within a communityof practice.
Johnson (2006,239) captures current views of teacher learning as arising from researchwhich 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 andschools, as participants in professional teacher education programs, and later asteachers in settings where they work. It described L2 teacher learning as sociallynegotiated and contingent on knowledge of self, subject matter, curricula, andsetting. It shows L2 teachers as users and creators of legitimate forms of know ledge
who make decisions about how best to teacher their L2 students within c omplex
socially, culturally, and historically situated contexts.

The role of context in teacher-learning
Sociocultural perspectives on learning emphasize that learning is situated, i.e. takes placein specific settings or contexts that shape how learning takes place. The location of mostteacher-learning in SLTE programs is either a university or teacher training institution, ora 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 andexperience of teaching. Both involve induction to communities of practice, Lave andWenger’s (1991) concept for learning that takes place within organizational settings,
which is socially constituted and which involves participants with a common interest
collaborating to develop new know ledge and skills. In the course room learning iscontingent upon the discourse and activities that course work and class participation
involve. In the school, learning takes place through classroom experiences and teachingpractice and is contingent upon relationships with mentors, fellow novice teachers andinteraction with experienced teachers in the school. Velez-Rendon (2006,321) points out
the crucial role cooperating teachers play in novice teachers’ professional development,
assisting their socialization into the profession an adjusting their role according to theteacher-learners needs, thus serving both as instructional models and as sources of
guidance
Typically the campus-based program (in the case of pre-service teacher education) isseen as the start of the teacher’s professional development, subsequent learning taking
place in the school through classroom experience, working w ith mentors and otherschool-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 co-operating schools, building meaningful co-7

operation with schools, developing coherent links between the campus-based and school
based strands, training mentor teachers, and recognizing them as an integral part of thecampus-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 theirunderstanding 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 areactive, thinking decision- makers who play a central role in shaping classroom event.
Couple with insights from the field of psychology which have shown how know ledge
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, andbrought with it a similar focus on teacher decision- making, on teachers’ theories ofteaching, teachers’ representations of subject matter, and the problem-solv ing andimprovisational skills employed by teachers with different levels of teaching experienceduring teaching. Constructs such as teacher’s practical knowledge, pedagogic content
know ledge, and personal theories of teaching noted above are now establishedcomponents of our understanding of teacher cognition. From the perspective of teacher
cognition, teaching is not simply the application of know ledge and of learned skills. It isviewed 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 alesson. At the same time teaching ref lects 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 cognitionand classroom practice, the impact of context on language teacher’s cognitions andpractices, the processes of pre-service teacher learning in language teaching, therelationship between cognitive change and behav ioural change in language teachers, andthe nature of expertise in language teaching.

8In SLTE programs a focus on teacher cognition can be realized through questionnaires
and self-reporting inventories in which teachers describe beliefs and principles; throughinterviews and other procedures in which teachers verbalize their thinking andunderstanding 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 ofjournals, narratives, 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 throughtheir interactions with lecturers and other students during the process of learning. Theseroles 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 culture. The concept of identity
thus reflects how individuals see themselves and how they enact their roles withindifferent settings. In an SLTE program a teacher-learner’s identity is remade through theacquisition of new modes of discourse and new roles in the course room. What is involved
is not simply “language acquisition”, but “discourse acquisition” (Miller 2006).Teacherlearning thus involves not only discovering more about the skills and knowledge oflanguage teaching but also what it means to be a language teacher. In a course room,
teacher-learners negotiate their identity through the unfolding social interaction of aparticular situated community, in relation to its specific activities and relationships (Singhand Richards 2006).
Native-speaker and non-native-speaker teacher learners may bring different identities toteacher 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 ow n country. In language institutes,
students may express a preference to study with native-speaker teachers, despite thefact that such teachers may be less qualif ied and less experienced that non-nativespeaker teachers. For non-native speaking teachers studying in SLTE programs, identity
issues may lead some to feel disadvantaged compared to native-speaker teachers in thesame course. While in their own country they were perceived as experienced and highly
competence 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

9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 theemergence of their professional identities and the struggles and issues that are involved.
Miller ( p.10) emphasizes the importance of understanding the context in which teachers
will work.
Knowing the school, the possibilities of the classroom space, the students, theirneighbourhoods, the resources, the curriculum and policy, the supervising teacherthese are all critical elements that affect what teachers can do, and how theynegotiate and construct identity moment to moment.
Miller (2006,130) also describes the use of personal journals as “an activity that opens up
a range of discursive practices to students, while and allow ing them to us their prev ious
Discourses and identities and to renegotiate, to translate and to transform these
Discourses and identities”.

A rethinking of teaching methods and strategies
Wallace (1995) identifies three models of teacher education that have characterised bothgeneral teacher education and also teacher education for language teachers, which hecalls the craft model, the applied science morel, and the reflective model. Barduhn andJohnson (in press) characterize 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 andtraining 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 anddevelopment, envisions as the final outcome of the training period that the novice
teacher become as autonomous reflective practitioner capable of constant selfreflection 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 knowledge and unravel the hidden
dimensions of his or her own teaching and views learning as a social process. Rather thanteaching being viewed as the transfer of knowledge, a sociocultural perspective views it
as creating conditions for the co-construction of knowledge and understanding throughsocial participation. There are several forms such participation may take. One strategy isknow n as dialogic teaching, that is, teaching which centers around conversations withother teachers focussing on teaching and learning issues during which teachers examine

10their own beliefs and practices and engage in collaborative planning, problem solving, anddecision- making. It is often through dialog that teacher- learners create and experience
different representations of themselves. This may take the form of both spoken dialog ingroup conversations as well as through journals or on-line dialogs.
Of learning through talking w ith other teachers, a teacher-learner comments:
Talking in a seminar provides you with time to talk about your teaching andhear about the teaching of others and this in itself becomes confidence
inducing. You know, you think stuff about your teaching all the time, butwhen you talk about it in public, with people who know you and where you
are coming from, it becomes real. Through this talk, we know what we aredoing, we know w hy we are doing it, we know what we do, and we can tellothers why we are doing it.
(Quoted in Freeman and Johnson 2005, p.85)
For student-teachers used to more transmission-oriented teaching styles however,dialogic modes of teaching raise issues of identity, power, and agency. Johnston suggeststhat 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 ifeither one is missing. Next dialogue is fundamentally contingent. Becauseof the complexity of what the teacher and teacher-learners bring to theclassroom, 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 aconstant moving to and fro between participants in the domains both ofcontent (what we are studying) and process (how we go about it). (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 likeother 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 participants together with thecourse content and the course-room artifacts, provide the resources through which theylearn. Danielew icz comments (2001, 141):
Collaborative learning creates a social context that helps students negotiate
entry into the academic discourse community and acquire disciplinary
know ledge. But, at the same time, their joint efforts will produce newknow ledge, and eventually lead to a critique of accepted knowledge,

11conditions, and theories, as well asknow ledge.

of the institutions that produce

Johnston (in press) 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 andlearning – administrators, parents, superv isors etc. Key concepts in a collaborative
approach to learning are Vygotsky’s notions of the zone of proximal development (ZPD)
and mediation. These two constructs present a view of 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 ofinteraction 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. Johnson comments:
At the course level, collaborative efforts emerge among cohort groups ofteachers as they engage in the meaningful exchange of ideas andexperiences based on their understanding of themselves as teachers, oftheories and pedagogies presented in their acade mic course work, of thestudents they teach, and of the day to day realities of their teachingcontexts. …. Whether occurring in face-to-face or via computer- mediatedcommunication, such exchanges foster the emergence of a professional
discourse, heighten a feeling of membership in a professional community,and lessen the isolation and irrelevance often associated with universitybased professional course work (2000, 2-3).
In addition to collaborative forms of teacher development, professional development isalso 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 superv isors,
university researchers, or other teachers. This often takes the form of action research orother 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 ofcampus-based teaching (e.g. internet-based resources) as well as for distance teaching
through on-line learning. These new forms of delivery allow for the development ofteacher-networks that cross regional and national boundaries, establishing globalized
communities of teachers who can bring their own cultural, social, professional andpersonal experiences into the SLTE process.

12The need for accountability
The scope of English teaching world-wide and the subsequent growth of SLTE programs
has created a demand for greater accountability in SLTE practices. What constitutes aquality SLTE program in terms of its curriculum, the teaching methods that it gives rise
to, and the kinds of teachers that the program produces? What competencies do thegraduates of such programs possess? These kinds of questions are very difficult toanswer since there are no widely-accepted definitions of concepts of “quality” in SLTE andlikew ise 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 theidentif ication of standards for SLTE programs. The standards movement has taken hold inmany parts of the world and promotes the adoption of clear statements of instructional
outcomes in educational programs as a way of improv ing learning outcomes in programsand to provide guidelines for program development, curriculum development, andassessment. In the US the TESOL organization has developed the TESOL/NCATE
Standards 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 theyshould have reached in their teaching language. Critics of such an approach argue thatthe standards themselves are largely based on intuition and are not research based, andalso that the standards movement has been brought into education from the fields ofbusiness and organizational management and reflects a reductionist approach in whichlearning is reduced to the mastery of discrete skills that can easily be taught andassessed.
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 invest ment 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 suchinvest 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, understandings, know ledge, and13

practices. However research often confirms that there is often little immediate evidence
for change in teacher’s practices as a result of training (Waters and Vilches 2005).
Individual and contextual factors can impede adoption of educational innovations,
including 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 culturalcontext in which the change is being attempted. An important collection of papers editedby Bartels (2205) explores how teachers are affected by the academic know ledge theyreceived in their graduate courses and the extent to which they are able to access anduse this know ledge in their subsequent teaching.
SLTE programs can of course be evaluated in much the same way as another educational
program is evaluated, i.e. in terms of content, instruction, relevance and so on but thesefactors may have little influence on the extent to which the program and its activities
initiates a deeper self-awareness of teaching. Typically professional development isintended 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, thatenable them to monitor their growth and development over time through the use of selfdirected activities such as portfolios, narratives, and journal w riting, rather than
measures 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 towhich the social processes of the course room serve to inhibit or enhance teacher
learning.

Critical language teacher education
The field of SLTE as with other areas of language teaching has also been influenced byissues posed by critical theory and critical pedagogy, prompting ref lection on the hidden
curriculum that sometimes underlies language teaching polices and practices. English
language teaching is argued, is not a politically or morally neutral activity. Mastery ofEnglish, it is claimed, often enhances the power and control of a privileged few and in
addition, English language teaching often consumes an inordinate amount of the scarceeducational resources of many countries. Globalization and the spread of English raise theneed for SLTE programs to engage teachers in an exploration of the political status ofEnglish in today’s world, the role it can play in maintaining positions of privilege andinequality, and the role the notion of “native speaker” has played in TESOL theory and14practice. Hawkins and Norton (in press) argue that language teachers have a particularrole to play in promoting their learners’ fuller participation in classrooms andcommunities.
Because language, culture, and identity are integrally related, language teachers
are in a key position to address educational inequality, both because of theparticular learners they serve, many of whom are marginalized members of thewider 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 isassociated. 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 hav ing the potential to disrupt potentiallyharmful 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 inreflecting upon the ideological forces that are present in their classrooms, schools andcommunities and in empowering their learners w ith the language knowledge and skills
they need to be able to function as moral agents in society. At the practical level criticalpedagogues would argue that this involves choosing developing curricula and choosing
materials and activities that raise students’ awareness of sociopolitical as well as ethicalissues and problems (Giroux 1988).
But if this is critical language teaching, what is critical language teacher education?
Haw kins and Norton (in press) identify three key practices that they suggest areassociated with critical language teacher education. Critical awareness activities seek toraise teachers’ awareness of “the way power relations are constructed and function insociety, 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 awareness and meaning ofsuch identities as “non-native speaker” or “female” and whether such identities impose
limits on the teacher’s abilities to fulfil their potential. Activities that address criticalpedagogical relations are those in which “teacher educators reflect on their attempts torestructure power relations between themselves and their teacher learners, not only tomodel critical educational practices, but to encourage teacher learners to consider ways
in which their own teaching can enhance opportunities for language learners in theirclassrooms.”

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Conclusions
As this survey has illustrated, the field of Second Language Teacher Education has
expanded considerably both in breath 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. And on the other hand, grow ing
demand for effective SLTE programs in response to worldwide expansion in the use ofEnglish has highlighted the need for a co-ordinated organizational response, which has
lead to the demand for greater accountability through standards, curriculum renewal,
professionalism, and the development of internationally recognized qualif ications forlanguage teachers. SLTE today is consequently a vital component of the field of TESOL
and makes a vital contribution to our understanding of what lies at the core of thisenterprise, namely, teachers, teaching, and the nature of teacher education.

16

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