Critical Approaches and Innovations in Language Teacher Education – Serie

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) sits at the nexus of constant change, which makes it vitally important for language teachers to engage in continuous development and keep abreast of the sociopolitical milieu in which they are embedded. However, most teacher education activities are often associated with what is perceived as best practices that are expected to be adopted(often uncritically) for classroom application and practice, with the intention of training teachers to become technicians in their respective classrooms. In reality, TESOL practitioners often find themselvesin situations that require them to be reflexive practitioners and to negotiate sites of political struggles and social injustice.Given that a socially situated understanding of TESOL teacher education is often overlooked, this volume highlights the sociopolitical dimensions of TESOL teacher education. In Part 1, the authors introduce the theoretical underpinnings of the sociopolitical agenda proposed by this volume. Building on these theories, Part 2 realizes the proposed agenda by situating it within actual TESOL teacher education contexts that are characterized by power imbalances and neoliberally inflected educational injustices.

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) sits at the nexus of constant change, which makes it vitally important for language teachers to engage in continuous development and keep abreast of the sociopolitical milieu in which they are embedded. However, most teacher education activities are often associated with what is perceived as best practices that are expected to be adopted(often uncritically) for classroom application and practice, with the intention of training teachers to become technicians in their respective classrooms. In reality, TESOL practitioners often find themselvesin situations that require them to be reflexive practitioners and to negotiate sites of political struggles and social injustice.Given that a socially situated understanding of TESOL teacher education is often overlooked, this volume highlights the sociopolitical dimensions of TESOL teacher education. In Part 1, the authors introduce the theoretical underpinnings of the sociopolitical agenda proposed by this volume. Building on these theories, Part 2 realizes the proposed agenda by situating it within actual TESOL teacher education contexts that are characterized by power imbalances and neoliberally inflected educational injustices.

This book explores the value and affordances of critical autoethnography, an established qualitative research methodology, for the construction of language teachers’ professional identities. Bedrettin Yazan responds to calls in recent scholarship for the incorporation of practitioners in the construction of their own professional knowledge and identities, the use of narrative as a tool for knowledge generation and identity construction, and the integration of identity as an explicit goal in language teacher education practices. He showcases examples of teacher candidates’ autoethnographic work from three different groups of language teacher candidates in two university-based teacher education programmes. Through the narration and analysis of the researchers’ own stories, the author discusses the potential of autoethnographic activity for the reconceptualization of language teachers as active agents in their own professional learning. He also discusses how these methodological procedures might be enriched by collaboration with colleagues, by potentially writing collaborative autoethnographies.

This edited volume showcases how teacher educators around the world engage with critical and dialogic approaches to prepare TESOL professionals. Language teachers are at the forefront of supporting the academic and social needs of increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse student populations around the globe, and preparing critical and dialogic TESOL teachers with social justice orientations is essential to helping language learners fulfil their academic and linguistic potential. Although more experienced TESOL teachers may be able to agentively implement critical and dialogic approaches to instruction, we know little about what TESOL teacher educators do to help train and prepare language teachers who can do exactly that. In this volume, TESOL educators from various contexts share their experiences on how they engage with critical and dialogic approaches to reimagine TESOL teacher education. Chapter authors engage with different aspects of critical and dialogic approaches to present their visions for reimagining curricula, pedagogies, online spaces, and the roles of students, teachers, and teacher educators.

This edited volume showcases how teacher educators around the world engage with critical and dialogic approaches to prepare TESOL professionals. Language teachers are at the forefront of supporting the academic and social needs of increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse student populations around the globe, and preparing critical and dialogic TESOL teachers with social justice orientations is essential to helping language learners fulfil their academic and linguistic potential. Although more experienced TESOL teachers may be able to agentively implement critical and dialogic approaches to instruction, we know little about what TESOL teacher educators do to help train and prepare language teachers who can do exactly that. In this volume, TESOL educators from various contexts share their experiences on how they engage with critical and dialogic approaches to reimagine TESOL teacher education. Chapter authors engage with different aspects of critical and dialogic approaches to present their visions for reimagining curricula, pedagogies, online spaces, and the roles of students, teachers, and teacher educators.

This book showcases how teacher educators from diverse backgrounds, contexts, and realities approach English language teacher education with a critical stance. Organized into nine parts that explore different facets of English Language Teaching, each section opens with theoretical considerations chapters and features 24 practical application chapters.Written by renowned scholars including Graham Hall, Lili Cavalheiro, and Mario López Gopar, among others, the theoretical considerations chapters offer concise insights into current issues and controversies in the field, point out opportunities for criticality, and discuss implications for teacher education.Written by critically-oriented teacher educators/researchers from various parts of the world including Brazil, Germany, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and the USA, among others, the practical application chapters exhibit various ways to incorporate critical approaches in reshaping current teacher education practices (ranging from critical and queer pedagogy to translanguaging to multilingualism) along with a critical reflection of the potentials and the challenges involved in their application.

This book showcases how teacher educators from diverse backgrounds, contexts, and realities approach English language teacher education with a critical stance. Organized into nine parts that explore different facets of English Language Teaching, each section opens with theoretical considerations chapters and features 24 practical application chapters.Written by renowned scholars including Graham Hall, Lili Cavalheiro, and Mario López Gopar, among others, the theoretical considerations chapters offer concise insights into current issues and controversies in the field, point out opportunities for criticality, and discuss implications for teacher education.Written by critically-oriented teacher educators/researchers from various parts of the world including Brazil, Germany, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and the USA, among others, the practical application chapters exhibit various ways to incorporate critical approaches in reshaping current teacher education practices (ranging from critical and queer pedagogy to translanguaging to multilingualism) along with a critical reflection of the potentials and the challenges involved in their application.

This volume looks at the preparation of future critical language teachers in the face of an increasingly multilingual and transcultural contemporary world. This is seen through the lens of the collapse of Nation-State borders that crumble in the face of migration and the intense flow of languages that comes with it. It brings together international research that problematizes, theorizes, re-positions and re-conceptualizes myriad structural, systemic, ideological, political and pedagogical issues that intersect with the possibilities and impossibilities of the development of language teachers’ agency.The volume examines the needs of linguistically diverse student populations and considers the socio-cultural and socio-political barriers that interfere with the exercise of teacher agency for social justice in language classrooms. It offers a theoretical and empirical overview of how language teacher education has addressed multilingualism and transculturalism in critical approaches in many complex countries in their diversity and/or postcolonial history, including Brazil, Qazaqstan, Scotland, and Thailand.

This volume looks at the preparation of future critical language teachers in the face of an increasingly multilingual and transcultural contemporary world. This is seen through the lens of the collapse of Nation-State borders that crumble in the face of migration and the intense flow of languages that comes with it. It brings together international research that problematizes, theorizes, re-positions and re-conceptualizes myriad structural, systemic, ideological, political and pedagogical issues that intersect with the possibilities and impossibilities of the development of language teachers’ agency.The volume examines the needs of linguistically diverse student populations and considers the socio-cultural and socio-political barriers that interfere with the exercise of teacher agency for social justice in language classrooms. It offers a theoretical and empirical overview of how language teacher education has addressed multilingualism and transculturalism in critical approaches in many complex countries in their diversity and/or postcolonial history, including Brazil, Qazaqstan, Scotland, and Thailand.

This book presents a model of transformative, empowering and critically oriented language teacher education to prepare English teachers to implement Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT). GELT’s importance to learners’ needs for communication in the globalized world means that it receives tremendous interest from language teacher educators worldwide, underlining the risks posed by gaps in teachers’ knowledge of how to implement it. This book fills in those gaps, with accessible theoretical foundations and practical examples drawn from the successful work of the M.Ed. in Teaching English as a Global Language (TEGL) at Burapha University, Thailand.Through critically oriented frameworks, the TEGL program equips in-service English teachers with a critical lens to examine their current practices, challenge the sociocultural and educational backgrounds that teachers bring into teacher education, and empower them in transforming their classroom practices to correspond with the GELT paradigm.The book highlights how the global spread of English impacts language teacher education, discusses the theoretical foundations underlying the design of teacher education for GELT, addresses the knowledge base for preparing teachers to use GELT and examines the applications of teacher education for GELT. It is vital reading for graduate students, teacher educators, and researchers in language teacher education and beyond.

This book presents a model of transformative, empowering and critically oriented language teacher education to prepare English teachers to implement Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT). GELT’s importance to learners’ needs for communication in the globalized world means that it receives tremendous interest from language teacher educators worldwide, underlining the risks posed by gaps in teachers’ knowledge of how to implement it. This book fills in those gaps, with accessible theoretical foundations and practical examples drawn from the successful work of the M.Ed. in Teaching English as a Global Language (TEGL) at Burapha University, Thailand.Through critically oriented frameworks, the TEGL program equips in-service English teachers with a critical lens to examine their current practices, challenge the sociocultural and educational backgrounds that teachers bring into teacher education, and empower them in transforming their classroom practices to correspond with the GELT paradigm.The book highlights how the global spread of English impacts language teacher education, discusses the theoretical foundations underlying the design of teacher education for GELT, addresses the knowledge base for preparing teachers to use GELT and examines the applications of teacher education for GELT. It is vital reading for graduate students, teacher educators, and researchers in language teacher education and beyond.

This open access book provides practical and theoretical perspectives for thinking about and promoting activism in language teaching and language teacher education.Featuring work from a range of global contexts, this edited volume showcases the innovative ways language education professionals engage in and embrace activism. Contributions detail practices and pedagogies to foster curricular innovation and activist stances within teacher education, professional development, and language teaching. Collectively, these chapters illuminate how educators engage with and enact activism to forge an equitable and socially-just education landscape.Readers will find theoretical frameworks and practical approaches to catalyze both reflection and action towards social change in language education.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

This open access book provides practical and theoretical perspectives for thinking about and promoting activism in language teaching and language teacher education.Featuring work from a range of global contexts, this edited volume showcases the innovative ways language education professionals engage in and embrace activism. Contributions detail practices and pedagogies to foster curricular innovation and activist stances within teacher education, professional development, and language teaching. Collectively, these chapters illuminate how educators engage with and enact activism to forge an equitable and socially-just education landscape.Readers will find theoretical frameworks and practical approaches to catalyze both reflection and action towards social change in language education.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

An exploration of how criticality can be developed among language teachers. This book is designed for teacher educators who are preparing teachers to work in a variety of global language education settings including pre-kindergarten through 12 bilingual classrooms and Sheltered English Immersion (SEI), as well as adult and community TESOL courses. Through vignettes that highlight their own journey as critical teacher educators, Christine Montecillo Leider and Johanna M. Tigert provide insight into how they address various challenges of language teacher education, including a banking model approach to language education and the need to de-center both the English language and American approach to language education.Each chapter offers a variety of reflective activities that both early career and veteran teacher educators can use to enhance their own development as critical teacher educators. Further, the authors provide a roadmap for how these reflective activities can be adopted to foster criticality among language teachers. Grounded in critical pedagogy and critical friendship, this book translates critical theory to praxis, providing a guide for teacher educators who seek to transform their approach to teacher education practice.

This exploration of telecollaboration (or virtual exchange) studies in language teacher education considers its potential role in preparing teachers to work in linguistically and culturally diverse settings. More and more language teacher educators are using telecollaboration as an essential component in their courses in order to connect teacher candidates from different geographical locations and ethnolinguistic backgrounds. Part I looks at the foundation of telecollaboration in language teacher education. Part II includes empirical evidence and global case examples related to telecollaboration to illustrate the benefits and challenges of incorporating telecollaboration to support interaction between the non-native speakers. Finally, Part III provides insights into employing telecollaboration for intercultural professional development. This book explores teacher candidates’, teachers’, and teacher educators’ professional learning, identities, and ideologies during their participation in transnational telecollaborative projects.

This open access book argues that language teacher agency is not simply a matter of individual choice, but is also shaped by the complex social, political and educational contexts in which language teachers work. It provides a framework for understanding the complexities of language teacher agency in a wide range of language. It offers practical advice on how to support language teachers in developing and enhancing their agency towards social, cultural, political and linguistic discourses and practices that have an impact on language teachers’ efficacy, intentionality, self-reflectiveness and identity. Through a wide range of methodological approaches such as (duo)ethnographic work, pedagogical interventions, narrative case studies, dialogic approaches and curriculum innovations, this book critically examines the individual and collective efforts of languages teachers as they build and exercise their agentic capacity within and across the contextual conditions in which they are situated.Part I considers the socio-cultural and socio-political factors which facilitate, or interfere with, the exercise of teacher agency in language classrooms, and the ways language teachers can exercise their agency to design locally relevant pedagogies. Part II examines the structural, systemic, ideological and pedagogical transformations needed in order for language teachers to be empowered to displace dominant pedagogies with more socially-just pedagogies to meet the needs of diverse students and of the curriculum. Finally, Part III looks at what dialogic practices can assist language teachers in mitigating dominant discourses and structural procedures, as well as what professional support is needed to assist language teachers in developing a sense of agency.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of New England, Australia; University of Melbourne, Australia; and Monash University, Australia.

This open access book argues that language teacher agency is not simply a matter of individual choice, but is also shaped by the complex social, political and educational contexts in which language teachers work. It provides a framework for understanding the complexities of language teacher agency in a wide range of language. It offers practical advice on how to support language teachers in developing and enhancing their agency towards social, cultural, political and linguistic discourses and practices that have an impact on language teachers’ efficacy, intentionality, self-reflectiveness and identity. Through a wide range of methodological approaches such as (duo)ethnographic work, pedagogical interventions, narrative case studies, dialogic approaches and curriculum innovations, this book critically examines the individual and collective efforts of languages teachers as they build and exercise their agentic capacity within and across the contextual conditions in which they are situated.Part I considers the socio-cultural and socio-political factors which facilitate, or interfere with, the exercise of teacher agency in language classrooms, and the ways language teachers can exercise their agency to design locally relevant pedagogies. Part II examines the structural, systemic, ideological and pedagogical transformations needed in order for language teachers to be empowered to displace dominant pedagogies with more socially-just pedagogies to meet the needs of diverse students and of the curriculum. Finally, Part III looks at what dialogic practices can assist language teachers in mitigating dominant discourses and structural procedures, as well as what professional support is needed to assist language teachers in developing a sense of agency.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of New England, Australia; University of Melbourne, Australia; and Monash University, Australia.

This edited volume explores how language educators and other stakeholders wrestle with notions of being, becoming and belonging in and beyond educational spaces in Japan. The volume contends for critical, transformational approaches to “language education” to be contextualized, sociohistorically sensitive and community-based. As such, the volume challenges critically-oriented stakeholders in language teacher education to revisit how they conceptualize and approach identity, experience and injustice manifesting in communities and language education (including theory, research, teacher education, policy, curriculum, materials development, teaching, assessment and hiring practices). The volume serves as a catalyst for readers to revisit what frames their own “seeing,” and as a foundation to engage with their own contexts and communities.

This book interrogates language teacher identity construction, negotiation, and meaning-making in today's ever-changing global contexts. By exploring language teacher identity through a critical lens and drawing on insights from language teachers and language teacher educators, it provides a deep understanding of how identity construction unfolds and transforms teaching practices.Its chapters use a wide range of methodologies and theoretical perspectives, including World Englishes, raciolinguistics, postcolonial theory and auto-ethnography. This wealth of international case studies moves beyond simply contrasting native and non-native speaking teachers to instead highlight their intersectional identities. This approach foregrounds and problematizes the power imbalances woven into language teaching and teacher education, documenting ways in which language teachers can advocate for themselves, their profession, students, families, and their communities. It also suggests ways of sharing innovative critical approaches at the intersection of LTI, agency, and today's complex socio-political and socio-historical contexts.

This pioneering collection provides a space for Latin American English language teacher educators and leaders to share their innovative professional practices. Their autoethnographic contributions adeptly intertwine personal trajectories with wider societal and pedagogical narratives, elucidating crucial themes across the region’s terrains.Latin America’s English language pedagogy still trails behind on the global stage despite countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia bolstering their English teacher education and enhancing the delivery of English as a foreign language. This landscape demands a deeper scholarly inquiry, particularly at the crossroads of innovative pedagogies and their real-world applications within the distinctive milieu of Latin America. Spanning the entire continent and a vast variety of teaching and learning contexts, this book’s contributors tackle challenges including collaboration, professional identity and development, queer texts, democratizing access, social justice and materials design.Gathering perspectives and experiences through auto-, duo- and trio-ethnographic chapters, this collection of personal and deeply collaborative reflections is a powerful account of first-person lived experiences in TESOL teacher education in Latin America.