Mediating Innovation Through Language Teacher Education

This Element examines how pedagogical innovation in language classrooms can be mediated through language teacher education (LTE) by subjecting the author's own practices as a teacher educator to scrutiny. Starting from the premise that implementing innovation can be a challenging enterprise, effective LTE is framed as being built on helping practitioners to recognise and confront often deeply-rooted beliefs and adjust subsequent practices through critical reflection on what an innovation may look like both theoretically and practically. A critically reflective lens is then applied to the author's own work as a teacher educator over several years through a research approach known as self-study of teacher education practices or S-STEP. The approach highlights changes to the author's beliefs and practices as lessons emerged from beginning teachers' engagement with innovative ideas. These are presented with the aim of better understanding how teachers' beliefs and practices with regard to innovation can be enhanced effectively.

This volume addresses innovations in language teacher education, offering a diversity of personal/psychological perspectives and topics in the theory and/or practice in language teacher education. The text deals with innovations in teaching for learning, teacher autonomy, dynamic self-reflection, peace education, professionalism, action research, socio-emotional intelligence, embodiment, professional development, NeuroELT, and more. Organized in three sections, the chapters inspire readers to reflect upon what it means to grow as a teacher as they navigate the intra- to inter-personal continuum. The editors draw the main themes together and discuss them in light of an innovations framework developed by Rogers (including relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability) in order to express, in concrete terms, the ways in which each idea can be considered innovative. Throughout the anthology, the reader will find specific, novel ways in which to work towards good practice in language teacher education.

The chapters in this volume outline and discuss examples of teacher educators in diverse global contexts who have provided successful self-initiated innovations for their teacher learners. The collection suggests that a way forward for second language teacher preparation programs is through 'reflective practice as innovation'.

Initial Language Teacher Education provides language teacher researchers, as well as teachers of teachers, with an introduction to research on how language teachers learn to teach before they begin practicing. Theoretical work is organized into the author’s original framework, which fosters the exploration of student teachers’ experiences as learners, while helping them develop core concepts, practices, and dispositions that encourage excellence in teaching. This innovative framework also provides mediated learning experiences designed around student teachers’ professional development, an approach that helps them to theorize their own practices and take ownership of their own professional development at an intellectual level. By combining a strong and updated research base with practical classroom tools that have been extensively piloted, Initial Language Teacher Education bridges the gap between theory and practice in teacher education and is a key resource for students, researchers, and instructors in language teaching.

Questions about what to teach and how best to teach it are what drive professional practice in the English language classroom. Innovation and change in English language education addresses these key questions so that teachers are able to understand and manage change to organise teaching and learning more effectively. The book provides an accessible introduction to current theory and research in innovation and change in ELT and shows how these understandings have been applied to the practical concerns of the curriculum and the classroom. In specially commissioned chapters written by experts in the field, the volume sets out the key issues in innovation and change and shows how these relate to actual practice offers a guide to innovation and change in key areas grounded in research relates theory to practice through the use of illustrative case studies and examples brings together the very best scholarship in TESOL and language education from around the world This book will be of interest to upper undergraduate and graduate students in applied linguistics, language education and TESOL as well as pre-service and in-service teachers, teacher educators, researchers and administrators keen to create and manage teaching and learning more effectively.

This volume demonstrates how various methodologies and tools have been used to analyze the multidimensional, dynamic, and complex nature of identities and professional development of language teachers in digital contexts that have not been adequately examined before. It therefore offers new understandings and conceptualizations of language teacher development and learning in varied digital environments. The collection of pieces illustrates a field that is recognizing that digital environments are the contexts of teacher learning, not simply the object of it, and that issues of identity and agency are central to that learning. As an excellent resource on digital technologies, CALL, gaming, or language teacher identity and agency, the book can be used as a textbook in various applied linguistics courses and graduate seminars.

This book uncovers the challenges posed by globalization to Asian jurisdictions in English language teaching and teacher education.

This book examines how and what teachers think in their practice of language teaching.