Preparing Foreign Language Teachers For Next Generation Education

The growth of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has changed the dynamics of education, as self-directed learning, especially on mobile devices, is as accessible as ever. Despite the near infinite amount of information available for students outside of school, the classroom remains the most critical aspect of student’s growth. Teachers now play crucial roles in engaging ICT’s full potential to create an environment of meaningful learning to develop students’ critical thinking skills. Preparing Foreign Language Teachers for Next-Generation Education concerns itself with the integration and study of new technologies in foreign-language education. Featuring theoretical and empirical chapters related to the confluence of teacher-education, teacher cognition, and innovative technologies, it provides engaging insight into foreign-language teachers’ perceptions and the influence of those perceptions. This publication is quintessential to foreign-language teachers, administrators, policy makers, students of education, programmers, and developers.

In this volume, language learning and professionalization are explored by addressing the existing gap between pressing needs for enhanced soft skills in work environments wherein technology-mediated, multilingual communication is increasingly the norm, and current foreign language teaching and learning offerings in higher education. Considering theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical perspectives for preparing language learners and teachers in/for the 21st century, this volume’s eight chapters underscore that research findings should inform the design of learning experiences so that people’s communication needs in fast-changing work environments are met and the link between language education and professionalization, within a lifelong learning perspective, is sustained.

When the internet became a viable instructional delivery medium, online learning began to rapidly expand. Shortly thereafter, the need for online teaching approaches promptly emerged. As web-based technologies evolve rapidly, online planning and teaching skills are becoming even more necessary prerequisites for online teaching. Utilizing a 5-Stage Learning Model for Planning and Teaching Online Courses: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a cutting-edge scholarly publication that combines the instructional system design approach (ISD) with the current and emerging instructional technologies for planning and teaching effective and successful online courses. It also offers recommendations that focus on best practice experiences for engaging online students and motivating them to be active participants in an online class. Highlighting a range of topics such as data analysis, educational collaboration, and student engagement, this book is essential for instructional designers, curriculum developers, educational software developers, academicians, teachers, administrators, researchers, and students. It can also be used by training specialists who are employed by universities, cooperation, or government agencies and charged to develop and teach online classes of professional development or web-based military training.

Visual multimedia applications integrate animation, sound, graphics, and video to create an engaging, interactive, and effective learning environment. Such software allows students to exercise more control over the pacing and sequencing of their own learning. With the availability of more sophisticated computers, the potential to employ multimedia has grown tremendously. Advanced Technology-Assisted Problem Solving in Engineering Education: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical scholarly publication that examines the development and use of interactive multimedia and mixed reality applications that are used to support engineering pedagogy and curriculum. Containing leading international findings, this advanced publication delivers quality research using learning and consultancy for developing tactics to decipher dilemmas within the field. Highlighting a range of topics such as data analysis, augmented reality, and multimedia, this book is ideal for educators, engineers, curriculum designers, educational software developers, IT consultants, researchers, academicians, and students.

The explosion of digital technologies in the 21st century provided access to multiple robust inquiry, communication, and collaboration applications. The enhanced capabilities provide educational opportunities for engaging students in deeper and more thoughtful learning. Implementation of knowledge-building communities in educational experiences, however, requires new pedagogical strategies that are vastly different from the predominant teacher-directed pedagogies of the 20th century. Today’s teachers now must identify, orchestrate, and manage activities in their content areas in ways that successfully support students through activities such as engagement in knowledge-building communities. Blended Online Learning and Instructional Design for TPACK: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential research publication that examines the implementation of knowledge-building communities in educational experiences and pedagogical strategies that encourage engagement. Highlighting topics such as active participation, digital technologies, and online learning, this book is geared toward educators, educational designers, researchers, administrators, and academicians.

Since the early days of formalized large-scale testing, there have been efforts to understand learners in order to provide better aligned learning opportunities and accommodations. What has been less explored has been how prospective and current target learners are profiled as target groups to adapt the learning to them, both statically (such as in pre-learning biographical profiling) and dynamically (on-the-fly as they interact with learning contents in online learning systems). This work takes more of a micro-scale and meso-scale approach, and these often involve both formal and informal means and creative teaching-and-learning accommodations. Profiling Target Learners for the Development of Effective Learning Strategies: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical scholarly resource that focuses on the practice of profiling prospective and current target learners through manual and computational means in order to better meet and improve their online and offline learning needs, as well as how those profiles influence the design, development, and provision of learning experiences. Featuring a wide range of topics such as diversity, curriculum design, and online learning, this book is ideal for educators, curriculum developers, instructional designers, principals, educational software developers, administrators, policymakers, academicians, researchers, and students.

Undoubtedly, teachers of this century should empower themselves both pedagogically and technologically to be able to teach more efficiently and enable efficient learning. Although there is extensive research on the way language should be taught, research on the use of technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) by teachers of English as a foreign language is still in need of more scientific support. English as a Foreign Language Teachers' TPACK: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential reference source that discusses the concept of TPACK and its related concepts to the knowledge base of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). Featuring research on topics such as computer-assisted language learning, the role of teachers, and teacher knowledge base, this book is ideally designed for educators, TEFL teachers, professionals, academicians, researchers, and students seeking coverage on more practical and research-based instructional designs for language classrooms.

Teacher candidates need authentic practice with language learners so that they can test and hone their skills based on the concepts learned in their teacher education programs with real students. These candidates need practice before and beyond student teaching and fieldwork. If they are given the chance to practice during as many teacher education courses as possible and have access to language learners throughout their programs, they can focus on applying the specific content of each class they take in a real-world context with real students. Engaging Teacher Candidates and Language Learners With Authentic Practice highlights strategies teacher educators can use to give their teacher candidates authentic practice attached to coursework. By focusing on ways that authentic practice has been integrated into teacher preparation programs and studies that have been realized, this publication will provide practical ways for others to provide this authentic practice, which is much needed in teacher preparation programs. This book highlights topics such as pedagogy, student engagement, and intercultural competence and is ideal for educators, administrators, researchers, and students.