Second language (L2) teacher education describes the field of professional activity through which individuals learn to teach L2s. In terms commonly used in the field, these formal activities are generally referred to as teacher training, while those that are undertaken by experienced teachers, primarily on a voluntary, individual basis, are referred to as teacher development. I return to this issue of nomenclature later on (see 'the role of input'); at this point, however, the reader should understand that the term teacher education refers to the sum of experiences and activities through which individuals learn to be language teachers. Those learning to teach - whether they are new to the profession or experienced, whether in pre- or in-service contexts - are referred to as teacher learners (Kennedy 1991).

1. SLTE BY DONALD FREEMAN
MA ELT 1 Unit 4
English Department,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

2. SECOND LANGUAGETEACHER
EDUCATION AS SHIFTING CONSTRUCT
teacher
training
teacher
development
teacher
education
teacher
learners

3. SECOND LANGUAGETEACHER
EDUCATION AS SHIFTING CONSTRUCT
subject-matter
('second language')
professional process
('teacher education')

4. SECOND LANGUAGETEACHER
EDUCATION AS SHIFTING CONSTRUCT
By 1990, some in the field had begun to
argue that it was important to examine
how people learned to teach languages.
Thus, the emphasis began to move to the
relationship between L2 as the content or
subject matter, and teacher education
(Bernhardt and Hammadou 1987)
comprising the complementary processes
of teacher training and teacher
development (Freeman 1982; Larsen-
Freeman 1983)

5. SECOND LANGUAGETEACHER
EDUCATION AS SHIFTING CONSTRUCT
The field of teacher education is a relatively underexplored one
in both second and foreign language teaching. The literature on
teacher education in language teaching is slight compared with
the literature on issues such as methods and techniques for
classroom teaching. (Richards and Nunan 1990: xi)

6. THE GAP BETWEENTEACHER EDUCATION
ANDTEACHER LEARNING
It is ironic that L2 teacher education has
concerned itself very little with how people
actually learn to teach. Rather, the focus has
conventionally been on the subject matter -
what teachers should know - and to a lesser
degree on pedagogy - how they should teach it.
The notion that there is a learning process that
undergirds, if not directs, teacher education is a
very recent one (Freeman and Johnson 1998)

7. TEACHER EDUCATION FROM KNOWLEDGE
TRANSMISSIONTO KNOWLEDGE
CONSTRUCTION
• General theories about language learning
pre-service teacher
education programmes
• prescriptive grammatical information about language
• pedagogical methods
certain knowledge
• Learning to teach has meant learning about teaching
• The bridge to practice has come in observing teachers
practising classroom
teaching

8. BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH
 From the 1960s to 1980s, the process-product paradigm which dominated educational
research focused researchers on how specific classroom or curricular processes
generated particular learning outcomes or products (Dunkin and Biddle 1974).
 In language teaching throughout the 1970s, process-product research combined
behaviourism to emphasise a view of teaching that focused on activity and technique.
Effective classrooms were those in which teachers successfully applied learned
behaviours to condition their students' mastery of language forms (see Chaudron
1988).
 Teacher education, if it was thought of at all, was viewed as a technicist undertaking
of transmitting knowledge to modify teachers' classroom behaviours and thus
improve student learning. Indeed, most teacher preparation in language teaching
concentrated on literature; little attention was paid to classroom pedagogy.
 Thus, L2 teacher education was in many senses an invisible undertaking, unframed by
its own theory and undocumented by its own research.

9. THE QUESTIONS AT STAKE ARE
SUBSTANTIAL:
What is the nature of teaching and of
teachers' knowledge?
How is it most adequately documented and
understood?
How is it created, influenced or changed
through the interventions of teacher
education?

10. BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH
Although there were hundreds of studies
reported which sought to assess the impact of
training teachers to do particular things, very
few researchers actually looked at the process
of teacher education as it happened over time
and at how teachers and student teachers
interpreted and gave meaning to the pre-
service and professional development program
they experienced. (Zeichner (1998: 5), Teacher
Education Review)

11. UNDERSTANDINGTEACHING ASTHE
RESEARCH BASE FORTEACHER EDUCATION
Research in teacher education has depended,
with increasing explicitness, on research on
teaching. To put it simply: how you understand
teaching will shape how you educate others to
do it. Process-product research, which defined
teaching as behaviour, clearly played a role in
the improvement of teaching. However, many
contended that it also overlooked, and even
downplayed, the individual experiences and
perspectives of teachers (Shulman 1986)

12. Process-product research tended to
generate abstract, decontextualized findings
decontextualised findings which reduced teaching to
quantifiable sets of behaviours.

13. The tension between researchers and practitioners, which could be
termed 'colonialist', fueled changes in research paradigms and agendas
in education. In the mid-1970s new directions in research started to
surface which sought to describe the cognitive processes teachers used
in teaching.Variously labelled thoughts, judgements and decisions, these
processes were examined for how they shaped teachers' behaviours,
interactions and curriculums (see Shavelson and Stern 1981; Clark and
Peterson 1986)

14. CURRENT ISSUES AND PRACTICES
 This brief review of research leads to current issues and practices in L2 teacher
education. As stated at the beginning of this chapter, in the following discussion
the term teacher-learner refers to the person who is learning to teach.There is no
implication that this person is a beginning teacher; the term simply focuses on the
learning process in which he or she is engaged

15. THE ROLE OF INPUT:TEACHER
EDUCATION STRATEGIES
teacher training
teacher development
teacher education

16. THE ROLE OF INPUT:TEACHER
EDUCATION STRATEGIES
content
processes
impacts
outcomes

17. It is important to note that some research on
classroom teaching has raised complications
with casting content and process - or subject-
matter and teaching method - as independent
of one another, by pointing out that from the
students' perspective the content or the lesson
and how it is presented are often largely
inseparable (see McDiarmid et al. 1989;
Kennedy 1990)

18. TEACHERTRAINING &TEACHER
DEVELOPMENT DIAGRAM

19.  THE ROLE OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE: BEFORE FORMALTEACHER EDUCATION
BEGINS
 THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT:TEACHER EDUCATION IN PLACE
 THE ROLE OFTIME:TEACHER EDUCATION OVERTIME

20. CONCLUSION
 There has been an assumption in teacher education that the delivery of programmes and
activities is the key to success.
 In this view, learning to teach is seen as a by-product of capable teacher learners and teacher
educators, and well-structured designs and materials.
 Thus, in a broad sense, teacher education has depended largely on training strategies to teach
people how to do the work of teaching.
 Underlying these aspects of delivery, however, lies a rich and complex process of learning to
teach. Focusing at this level on the learning process, as distinct from the delivery mechanisms,
is changing our understanding of teacher education in important ways (Freeman and Johnson
1998).
 This shift is moving L2 teacher education from its concern over what content and pedagogy
teachers should master and how to deliver these in preparation and in-service programmes to
the more fundamental and as yet uncharted questions of how language teaching is learned and
therefore how it can best be taught.
 We know that teacher education matters; the question is how, and how to improve it.

21. KEY READINGS
 Chaudron (1988) Second Language Classrooms
 Freeman and Johnson (1998) Reconceptualizing the knowledge-base of language
teacher education
 Fullan (1991) The New Meaning of Educational Change
 Gebhard (1996) Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language
 Johnson and Johnson (1999) Teachers UnderstandingTeaching
 Richards and Nunan (1990) Second LanguageTeacher Education