Lawrence Jun Zhang – författare

This volume gathers contributions from a range of global experts in teacher education to address the topic of language teacher education. It shows how teacher education involves the agency of teachers, which forms part of their identity, and which they take on when integrating into the teaching community of practice. In addition, the volume explores the teachers’ situated practice--the dynamic negotiation of classroom situations, socialization into the professional teaching culture, and "on the ground experimentation" with pedagogical skills/techniques.

This volume gathers contributions from a range of global experts in teacher education to address the topic of language teacher education. It shows how teacher education involves the agency of teachers, which forms part of their identity, and which they take on when integrating into the teaching community of practice. In addition, the volume explores the teachers’ situated practice--the dynamic negotiation of classroom situations, socialization into the professional teaching culture, and "on the ground experimentation" with pedagogical skills/techniques.

This book explores teachers’ cognitions about the teaching of writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) and their teaching practice, as well as factors influencing the formation and reformation process of their cognition. Taking stock of Bakhtin’s dialogism as the theoretical framework, the authors argue that the formation and reformation of teacher cognition is a dialogic process. A systematic analysis of participating teachers’ cognition formation and re-formation process suggests the highly individual nature of teachers’ cognitions. EFL researchers and teachers, teacher educators, teacher education policymakers, university administrators and EFL textbook writers could draw on the findings of the study to provide better resources to implement the teaching of EFL writing more effectively.

The study has adopted a mixed-methods approach, whose quantitative results show the patterns and differences of teacher cognition among teachers of different backgrounds and with different schooling, education and working experiences. The qualitative findings show in detail teachers'' cognition formation and reformation processes and the factors contributing to such processes, revealing convergence and divergence of teachers’ stated cognitions, with a focus on the discrepancy between teacher cognition and teaching practice. These are useful lenses through which researchers and teachers will find significant implications for offering EFL writing instruction more effectively.

This book addresses the validity of think-aloud protocols (TAPs) in L2 writing research through a mixed methods study and proposes effective approaches for their valid implementation. The book uncovers the reactive effects that TAPs have on L2 writing performance and processes, and examines how individual factors moderate this reactivity. It further presents and categorizes participants'' perceptions regarding reactivity and veridicality. To enhance veridicality, the book identifies incomplete TAPs using retrospective verbal reports as a reference point. Recommendations for utilizing TAPs include considering participants'' individual differences, recent experiences, and emotions.

This book will be valuable to educators teaching methodology in second or foreign language education, applied linguistics, or writing research, and to L2 researchers or graduate students with a broad interest in research methods, process-based research, or writing studies, or planning to incorporate TAPs into their research.