Second Language Teacher Education and Future Directions

Abstract

As a relatively new profession, language teacher education has evolved and its knowledge base has greatly expanded over the past decade. We have moved from an initial behaviorist view of teacher learning in the 1960s toward a more sociocultural approach to teacher learning today (Freeman, 2016). As Freeman (2016) suggests, the term language teacher education is “a bridge that serves to link what is known in the field with what is done in the classroom, and it does so through the individuals whom we educate as teachers” (p. 9). He goes on to say that the field includes an understanding of the “so‐called parent academic disciplines of language teaching as well as the local and national policy environments which often articulate them” (p. 9). In the past few decades, Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE) has taken on a more global perspective and the knowledge base of SLTE has greatly expanded (some may say exploded) to include such topics as teacher cognition, identity, reflection, research, narrative, self‐development, philosophy, and expertise, to name but a few. However, despite these developments in SLTE and the growing publications reporting research on SLTE, we still have significant progress to make as we continue to define our goals, conceptual frameworks, and teaching methodologies, and as we respond to the growing demand for qualified language teachers. In this entry, some of the current issues related to SLTE as well as future directions of SLTE based on current trends are outlined.