Educating Second Language Teachers

Educating Second Language Teachers
Published in this series

BACHMAN: Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing
BACHMAN AND PALMER: Language Assessment in Practice
BACHMAN AND PALMER: Language Testing in Practice
BATSTONE: Sociocognitive Perspectives on Language Use and Language Teaching
BRUMFIT: Individual Freedom in Language Teaching
BRUMFIT AND CARTER (eds.): Literature and Language Teaching
CANAGARAJAH: Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in Language Teaching
COHEN AND MACARO (eds.): Language Learner Strategies
COOK: Language Play, Language Learning
COOK: Translation in Language Teaching
COOK AND SEIDLHOFER (eds.): Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics
DÖRNYEI: Research Methods in Applied Linguistics
DÖRNYEI: The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition
ELLIS: SLA Research and Language Teaching
ELLIS: Task-based Language Learning and Teaching
ELLIS: The Study of Second Language Acquisition (second edition)
ELLIS: Understanding Second Language Acquisition (second edition)
ELLIS AND BARKHUIZEN: Analysing Learner Language
FOTOS AND NASSAJI (eds.): Form-focused Instruction and Teacher Education
FREEMAN: Educating Second Language Teachers
HOLLIDAY: The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language
HOWATT WITH WIDDOWSON: A History of English Language Teaching (second edition)
HYLAND: Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge
JENKINS: English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity
JENKINS: The Phonology of English as an International Language
KERN: Literacy and Language Teaching
KRAMSCH: Context and Culture in Language Teaching
KRAMSCH: The Multilingual Subject
LANTOLF (ed.): Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning
LANTOLF AND THORNE: Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language
Development
LARSEN-FREEMAN AND CAMERON: Complex Systems and Applied Linguistics
MACKEY (ed.): Conversational Interaction and Second Language Acquisition
MURPHY: Second Language Learning in the Early School Years: Trends and Contexts
NATTINGER AND DECARRICO: Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching
PALTRIDGE, STARFIELD, AND TARDY: Ethnographic Perspectives on Academic Writing
PHILLIPSON: Linguistic Imperialism
SEIDLHOFER (ed.): Controversies in Applied Linguistics
SEIDLHOFER: Understanding English as a Lingua Franca
SELIGER AND SHOHAMY: Second Language Research Methods
SKEHAN: A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning
STERN: Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching
SWAN (ed.): Thinking About Language Teaching: Selected Articles 1982–2011
TARONE, BIGELOW, AND HANSEN: Literacy and Second Language Oracy
WIDDOWSON: Aspects of Language Teaching
WIDDOWSON: Defining Issues in English Language Teaching
WIDDOWSON: Practical Stylistics
WIDDOWSON: Teaching Language as Communication
WRAY: Formulaic Language
Educating Second Language Teachers
The Same Things Done Differently
DONALD FREEMAN
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6DP, United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by
publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in
certain other countries
© Oxford University Press 2016
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
eBook Edition
ISBN: 978 0 19 4427531 eBook (epub)
ISBN: 978 0 19 4427548 eBook (mobi)
First published in 2016
No copying or file sharing
This digital publication is protected by international copyright laws. No part of this digital publication
may be reproduced, modified, adapted, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, to any other person or company without the prior permission in writing of Oxford
University Press, or as expressly permitted by law. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the
scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not modify, adapt, copy, store, transfer or circulate the contents of this publication under
any other branding or as part of any other product. You may not print out material for any commercial
purpose or resale
Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided
by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims all and any
responsibility for the content of such websites
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University
Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above
should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any
acquirer
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford
disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this
work
Additional online resources are available at www.oup.com/elt/teacher/eslt

To Kathleen,
with thanks
Acknowledgements
If I knew then what I know now, I’m not sure I would have so blithely undertaken a project of
this nature. Gathering and organizing ideas from the last 25 years, and then making them useful
for others is a serious undertaking. It could not have happened without the help, support, and
input of many people (whom I will mention here alphabetically). At different points and
critical junctures, Kathi Bailey, Anne Burns, Courtney Cazden, Caleb Gattegno, Pam
Grossman, Karen Johnson, Jack Richards, Anna Richert, Katie Sprang, and Earl Stevick were
each key to the thinking that has yielded this project. Sophie Rogers and Tony Wright have
been critical in finalizing the ideas for publication. Kim Lier has been an indispensible
sounding board, reader, and tracker of detail. And the home team has stuck through it all—
many thanks.
I also want to thank my colleagues and students from the MAT Program at the School for
International Training (now the SIT Graduate Institute) for helping to gestate these ideas, and
at the University of Michigan for helping to hone the thinking. As always, the oversights and
mistakes are my own.
The author and publisher are grateful to those who have given permission to reproduce the
following extracts and adaptations of copyright material: p.8 Reprinted from “Teacher
Training, Development, and Decision Making: A Model of Teaching and Related Strategies
for Language Teacher Education” by Donald Freeman, TESOL Quarterly, Volume 23 (1)
1989: page 29; 10.2307/3587506. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
p.11 Figure from Teaching Teachers: Processes and Practices by Angi Malderez and Martin
Wedell, Practical Teaching Guides; © Angi Malderez and Martin Wedell, 2007. Reproduced
by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. p.16 With kind permission from Springer
Science+Business Media; “Phenomenography: Describing conceptions of the world around
us” by Ference Marton, Instructional Science 10 (1981) 177–200. p.26 “A critical look at
the Communicative Approach (1)” by Michael Swan, ELT Journal Volume 39 (1), 1985.
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. p.26 Abridged extract from “Against
dogma: A reply to Michael Swan” by H.G. Widdowson, ELT Journal Volume 39 (3), 1985.
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. p.28 Extract from “The Grammar-
Translation Method” by Nancy Thuleen, www.nthuleen.com, 24 October 1996. Reproduced
by permission of Nancy Thuleen. pp.29–30 Reprinted from “Language Teaching as
Sociocultural Activity: Rethinking Language Teacher Practice” by Russell Cross, The
Modern Language Journal Volume 94 (3) 2010; page 447; 10.1111/j.1540–
4781.2010.01058.x © The Modern Language Journal, 2010. Reproduced by permission of
John Wiley & Sons Inc. p.33 Reprinted from “Language moves : the place of “foreign”
languages in classroom teaching and learning” by Diane Larsen-Freeman and Donald
Freeman, Review of Research in Education Volume 32 (1) 2008: pages 161–162;
10.3102/0091732X07309426. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications. pp.44–45
Extract from “Are teachers born and raised (not trained)?” by Robert Bligh; The Washington
Post, 13 November 2012 © 2012 Washington Post Company. All rights reserved. Used by
permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying,
redistribution, or retransmission of this Content without express written permission is
prohibited. pp.45–46 Extract from “Op-ed: Good teachers are made, not born” by Jonathan
Knapp, www.seattletimes.com, 11 September 2012. Reproduced by permission of Jonathan
Knapp. p.50 Extracts from the JET Programme website, www.jetprogramme.org. Reproduced
by permission of Department of JET Programme Management. p.58 Extract from “Standards
for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the 21st Century” by National Standards in
Foreign Language Education, www.actfl.org, 2014. Reproduced by permission of American
Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). p.76 Abridged extract from
Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives: Situated Learning:
Legitimate Peripheral Participation by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger; © Cambridge
University Press, 1991. Reproduced by permission. p.77 Abridged extract from Translingual
Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations by Suresh Canagarajah © 2013 by
Routledge. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. pp.86–87 Reprinted
from Artificial Intelligence and Tutoring Systems: Computational and Cognitive
Approaches to the Communication of Knowledge by Etienne Wenger, © Morgan Kaufmann
Publishers, Inc, 1987; pages 133 and 134. Reproduced by permission of Elsevier. pp.90–91
Reprinted from “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning” by John Seely Brown, Allan
Collins and Paul Duguid, Educational Researcher Volume 18 (1) 1989: pages 32, 33 and 40;
10.3102/0013189X018001032 © American Educational Research Association, 1989.
Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications. p.91 Abridged extract from The
Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) Course Trainer’s Manual by
Scott Thornbury and Peter Watkins © Cambridge University Press, 2007. Reproduced by
permission. pp.100–102 Figure: Active Theory Model and extracts from Developing
professional vision for practice: Preservice teachers using students’ scientific ideas in
simulations of practice; doctoral dissertation by Amanda Benedict-Chambers, University of
Michigan, 2014. Reproduced by permission of Amanda Benedict-Chambers. pp.110, 111
Figure and extracts from Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to
developmental research by Yrjö Engeström © Yrjö Engeström 1987, 2015. Reproduced by
permission of Cambridge University Press. p.128 Reprinted from “Eclecticism in Language
Teaching” by Tony Deyes, World Englishes Volume 2 (1), 1982; page 16; 10.1111/j.1467–
971X.1982.tb00512.x. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p.133
Abridged extract from Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching: A description and
analysis by Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers © Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Reproduced by permission. pp.136–137 Reprinted from “The Postmethod Condition:
(E)merging Strategies for Second/Foreign Language Teaching” by B. Kumaravadivelu,
TESOL Quarterly, Volume 28 (1), 1994: pages 29 and 32; 10.2307/3587197. Reproduced by
permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p.140 Figure 8 “The Jargon Generator” from Ways of
Training: Recipes for teacher training (Pilgrims Longman Resource Books) by Tessa
Woodward; published in 1992. Reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Limited.
pp.141–142 Abridged extract from “Communicative language teaching: Making it work” by
David Nunan, ELT Journal Volume 41 (2), 1987. Reproduced by permission of Oxford
University Press. p.150,160 Reprinted from “What Is The Basic Teaching Skill?” by Richard
J. Shavelson, Journal of Teacher Education Volume 24 (2), 1973: page 144;
10.1177/002248717302400213. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications.
pp.152,160 Figure 9.1 “A model of teacher thought and action” from the chapter “Teachers’
Thought Processes” by Christopher C. Clark and Penelope L. Peterson; From Wittrock.
Handbk Research Teach 3E, 3E. © 1986 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. Reproduced
by permission. www.cengage.com/permissions. pp.156,160 Figure from The Cambridge
Applied Linguistics Series: Teacher Cognition in Language Teaching by Devon Woods;
Series Editors: Michael H. Long and Jack C. Richards © Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Reproduced by permission. pp.159–160 Figure from “Teacher cognition in language teaching:
A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do” by Simon
Borg, Language Teaching Volume 36 (2), 2003. Reproduced by permission of Cambridge
University Press. p.169 Table of Contents from Teaching Practice Handbook by Roger
Gower and Steve Walters; Original Copyright © Macmillan Education, 1983. Reproduced by
permission of Roger Gower and Steve Walters. p.179 Reprinted from “Content Knowledge
for Teaching: What Makes It Special?” by Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Mark Hoover Thames,
and Geoffrey Phelps, Journal of Teacher Education Volume 59 (5) 2008: page 389;
10.1177/0022487108324554. Reproduced by permission of SAGE Publications. p.182
Figure from Chapter 2 “Response to Tarone and Allwright” by Donald Freeman and Karen E.
Johnson; in Second Language Teacher Education: International Perspectives edited by
Diane J. Tedick © Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2005. Reproduced by permission of
Taylor and Francis Group, permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
p.207 Abridged extracts from The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in
Action by Donald A. Schon © Basic Books, 1983. Reproduced by permission of The Perseus
Books Group. pp.213–214 Abridged extracts from Early childhood teachers’ use of
information to reason about and enact moment-to-moment instruction; doctoral dissertation
by Rachel Erin Schachter, University of Michigan, 2014. Reproduced by permission of
Rachel Erin Schachter. p.216 Extracts from Cambridge Teacher Training and Development:
Training Foreign Language Teachers: A reflective approach by Michael J. Wallace ©
Cambridge University Press, 1991. Reproduced by permission. p.237 Extracts from Learning
in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives: Communities of Practice:
Learning, meaning, and identity by Etienne Wenger © Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Reproduced by permission.
Sources:
pp.79,80 “The CEFR Common Reference Levels: validated reference points and local
strategies” by Brian North, www.coe.int, 6 February 2007. p.84 “Training ESOL teachers:
The need for needs assessment” by Jack C. Richards and Nobuyuki Hino in Applied
linguistics and the preparation of second language teachers: Toward a rationale edited by
James E. Alatis, H. H. Stern, and Peter Strevens (Georgetown University Press, 1983). p.191
“Disciplinary knowledge as a foundation for teacher preparation” by W. Grabe, F. L. Stoller
and C. Tardy in The Sociopolitics of English Language Teaching edited by Joan Kelly Hall
and William G. Eggington (Multilingual Matters, 2000)
Although every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders before
publication, this has not been possible in some cases. We apologize for any apparent
infringement of copyright and if notified, the publisher will be pleased to rectify any errors or
omissions at the earliest opportunity.
Preface
This book traces the development of my thinking about the work I fell into as a language
teacher 40 years ago. That work could be distilled in the following statement: I have always
been interested in how people who teach second languages use what they know to do what
they do in the classroom. The statement brings together three elements: a group of people—
those who are teaching second languages—and two types of processes—a private one, using
what they know, and a public one, doing what they do, with a venue—the classroom in which
the content is a second language.
The statement also has several loose ends, and intentionally so. I am interested in people
who are teaching second languages; most may be formally trained as teachers, but some may
be people who have fallen into the job as I did. Speaking a language often creates teachers
out of teaching opportunities, as when a so-called ‘native’ speaker arrives and becomes a
teacher because she or he speaks the language to be taught. Certainly engineers become
mathematics teachers, and nurses or pharmacists become science teachers, but the process
and assumptions are not the same. The central difference is they have to convert knowledge
and understandings they have learned formally into content they teach from. Language, I will
argue, is different. Many who teach it, whether ‘native’ or ‘non-native’, need to take
something they know, often tacitly through experience, and use it to teach, which creates
fascinating and unique challenges.
(Second language) teacher education

Beyond this issue of content, there is the interplay of processes of thinking and doing, of the
private–public relation between thought and action that is central to any teaching. Sometimes
in the chapters that follow, I will drop the term ‘language’ from teacher or teacher education
when discussing these processes. This is because there is a level at which second language as
the content is less central, although it clearly still plays an important role. To give one
example: Socialization is part of any teacher’s learning; but socialization as a language user,
as a student in schools, and through professional training are woven together in learning to
teach languages. Language as the content modifies and influences this process, but it doesn’t
make it unique.
Borrowed ideas
This same–different process happens in other ways in our field. As in other fields, we
borrow concepts, sometimes uncritically, in pursuit of connecting second language teaching
and teacher education to teaching and teacher education in other subject-areas. These
connections are important because they place language teaching in the wider context of
schools and teacher preparation and professional development. But few people also focus on
how language as content may alter these borrowed ideas. Language is the subject matter I
know; I have studied and understand these teacher education ideas through it. I will argue that
some of the core constructs we use to understand knowledge and thinking, and how these
work in the classroom, need to be reworked to account for language as content in teaching.
This core problem—how second language teachers use what they know to do what they do
in classrooms—has both theoretical and practical dimensions. We need to grapple with both
dimensions in order to fully understand and work with the complexities and nuances of the
problem. On the conceptual side, we need to think through language teachers using what they
know to do what they do, and we need to understand how language as content fits into, and
perhaps changes, the conceptualization. On the practical side, we likewise need to design,
implement, and evaluate programs and activities to educate people to teach second languages.
This book is about both these dimensions.
The strategy is to situate this work in both second language teaching and in the research and
conceptualizations of teacher learning and in general education. The risk is that neither
community will be satisfied. But the potential benefits of placing the content of language
teaching within the wider landscape of theorizing and research in teacher education is worth
that risk.
A word on the structure of the book

The chapters that follow examine theories, concepts, and processes that help to understand
this core problem of how second languages teachers use what they know to do what they do in
the classroom. The book is set up in four parts. The first part frames the problem of teaching
language teaching as I see it. The second part examines ways in which learning to teach
languages has been conceptualized, and the implications for second language teacher
education. The third part is about the core ideas of thinking, knowing, and reflecting that
undergird the way we approach educating teachers in this field. The theories of teacher
learning help to frame the problem; the concepts and processes in Part Three help to unpack
it. Together they point to a set of ideas and considerations that need to be accounted for in
designing second language teacher education programs and activities, which I call a design
theory. It is laid out in Part Four. The appendices include some applications of this theory in
designing and assessing language teacher education activities and programs.
A word on perspectives
I use two perspectives to supplement and extend the book’s central argument. One is a series
of narratives from my own growing up as a language teacher. These passages are specific to
my experiences and do not assume any level of generalization; they are meant to offer
examples through a shift of voice. The other perspective is an historical one. This is tricky
because the book is not intended as a history of language teaching or language teacher
education. Nevertheless there are places in the argument where the perspective of how things
got to where they are is useful.
Signposting
Each chapter begins with a short statement of the point I mean to make in it. This introduction
lays out the logic in abbreviated form. Each chapter ends by ‘revisiting’ that initial argument
both by way of summarizing its key points and by amplifying the implications. In a similar
ways, each of the book’s four parts begins with a short introduction to explain the core
argument and how the chapters fit into it. The hope is that these signposts make the book more
usable and reader friendly. They may also serve to remind the reader that it all turns on a
central argument.
Language teacher education is different. Language is both the content that teachers teach
and the medium through which they teach it. This dual role reshapes many ideas that are
accepted from general teacher education as givens in our field; it also suggests new ways of
thinking about and doing that work. The central argument that runs through this book reflects
this difference. Educating second language teachers is, in the words of the subtitle, ‘the same
things done differently’. The purposes, borrowed ideas, and many of the processes make
language teacher education ‘the same’ as educating teachers in other content areas. But the
content, and the opportunities it creates and depends on, also mean those things get ‘done
differently’ in educating second language teachers.
D. F.
Ann Arbor Michigan

and Brattleboro, Vermont
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
PART ONE How people use what they know to do what they do in the language
classroom
Introduction to Part One
1 Teaching (language) teaching
The chapter argument
Prescriptive proposals and descriptive understandings
Teaching teaching: pronominal and nominal views
The isomorphic relationship
Social facts and thought collectives
The chapter argument revisited
2 The central challenges in second language teacher education

The first challenge: language in the world and language in the classroom
The language classroom—as microcosm or on ramp
How classrooms make language content
The second challenge: how classrooms (re)define language teaching
Language classrooms and teachers’ technical cultures
The third challenge: how people learn to teach languages
Language teaching identity
PART TWO Learning to be a language teacher

Introduction to Part Two
3 How people become language teachers: defining background
knowledge
Two views of background knowledge
The ‘born expertise’ position
The ‘made over time’ position
ELT programs and the notion of ‘born expertise’
Two theorizations of teacher learning
4 Disciplinary transmission in second language teacher education

Setting the terms—disciplinary hybrids
Disciplinary communities and their vernaculars
Putting the terms in circulation: a tale of two conferences
5 Learning-in-place: situating content and professional learning in

language teacher education
The dilemma of language as situated content
The dilemma of situated learning in teacher preparation
Pedagogical simplification
6 Socio-cultural views: understanding sense making and what

travels in learning to teach languages
Sense making
How actions become meaningful and activity works as a system
What travels
Equipment, tools, and activity
Levels of contradiction
PART THREE Core processes of second language teacher education

Introduction to Part Three
7 How teacher thinking got to be part of language teaching
Generation zero: thinking as behaving
The first generation: thinking methodologically
The second generation: thinking synthetically
The third generation: thinking heuristically
8 Four representations of teacher thinking

Horizontal connections (within educational research)
Idea 1: decisions and decision-making
Idea 2: teachers’ thought processes
Vertical connections (in language teaching)
Idea 3: an ethno-cognitive model of teachers’ decision-making
Idea 4: language teacher cognition(s)
9 Knowledge generations in language teaching

The first generation—defining what
The second generation—defining how
The third generation—defining who and where
The fourth generation—defining why
10 Knowledge-geographies: a socio-professional view of what is

worth knowing in ELT
The structural map: a geography of institutions
The implementational map: a geography of practices
The human map: a geography of participation
11 Reflecting: thinking and knowing in teaching situations

(Re)conceptualizing reflection: situations of practice and action-present
Implementing reflection
Reflection-as-repair
Reflection in situations of practice and action-present
PART FOUR A design theory
Introduction to Part Four
12 A design theory—Part one: social facts and communities
The same things done differently
A teacher education design theory (Part one)
Tools and opportunities
Social facts
Local and professional languages
Communities
13 A design theory—Part two: renaming experience to

reconstruct practice
A teacher education design theory (Part two)
Two forms of community
Articulation
Explanation
Why call this theory a design theory?
Appendix A
Using the theory in language teacher education activities
An ongoing example: the language-learning biography
Using tools to create social facts: an ongoing example
Pathways to content: converting time into social experience
Discussion
Appendix B
Using the theory in language teacher education programs
At the level of activity
At the level of a module or course
Summarizing design ideas
Appendix C
Thoughts on assessment
Analyses
Summary
References
Index
List of Figures and Tables
Table 1.1 Status-quo framing of second language teacher education

Figure 1.1 Language teacher education as training and development (after Freeman, 1989)
Figure 1.2 Glossary of terms (Malderez & Wedell, 2007)
Figure 1.3 Instruction as interaction (Cohen et al., 2003)
Figure 1.4 Isomorphic relationships in teacher education
Figure 2.1 German grammar-translation table (Thuleen, 1996)
Table 2.1 The IRF structure in Dan’s lesson
Table 2.2 The IRF structure—’It’s just erm’
Figure 2.2 Language teaching identity
Figure ii.1 How people become teachers: A rough continuum
Table 3.1 What language teachers need to know, how it is learned, and how that learning
is organized—Version 1
Table 4.1 The disciplinary hybrids of language teaching
Table 4.2 GURT presenters: 1983, 1990, 1991, and 1994
Table 4.3 Continuity in participation: Presenters at GURT Roundtables (1983, 1990,
1991, and 1994)
Table 4.4 Coherence in the new vernacular: A content overview of GURT Roundtables
(1983, 1990, 1991, 1994)
Table 4.5 City Polytechnic of Hong Kong Language Teacher Education Conferences
content overview (1992, 1994, 1996)
Table 4.6 What language teachers need to know, how it is learned, and how that learning
is organized—Version 2
Table 5.1 Summarizing key ideas of situated learning (after Brown, Collins, and Duguid,
1989)
Table 5.2 Collective arrangements: Practice teaching from a situated learning theory
perspective
Figure 6.1 A tennis match as an activity system
Figure 6.2 Walking through a science methods lesson (from Benedict-Chambers, 2014)
Table 6.1 Transfer vs. traveling
Table 6.2 Two tools for adding sums (summarizing Saljo, 1982)
Table 6.3 Levels of contradiction in activity summarized by rod story
Table iii.1 Generational parallels in teacher thinking and knowledge: A snapshot
Table 7.1 Teaching pronunciation: Three contrasting practices and their underlying
reasoning
Table 7.2 Correcting pronunciation: Two different languages of practice, explanations,
and social facts
Table 7.3 The second generation summarized
Figure 7.1 The jargon generator (Woodward, 1992)
Table 7.4 Evolving explanations for the gap between professed and observed teaching
(and its teacher education ‘fix’)
Table 7.5 Teacher thinking and role by generation
Table 8.1 Tracing the migration of ideas about teacher thinking
Figure 8.1 TOTE decision-making diagram (Shavelson, 1973)
Figure 8.2 Teachers’ thought processes (Clark & Peterson, 1986)
Table 8.2 Horizontal and vertical conceptual connections
Figure 8.3 Language teachers’ decision-making (Woods, 1996)
Figure 8.4 Language teacher cognition (Borg, 2003) –159
Figure 8.5 Four representations of teacher thinking
Table 8.3 Language teacher thinking: From decisions to cognition
Table 9.1 Four generations in language teaching knowledge: Focus and key issues
Figure 9.1 A language of practice: Table of Contents from The Teaching Practice
Handbook (Gower & Walters, 1987)
Figure 9.2 Mathematical knowledge-for-teaching (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008)
Table 9.2 The mathematical knowledge-for-teaching framework applied to language
teaching knowledge
Figure 9.3 A model of knowledge-for-teaching languages
Figure 9.4 English-for-teaching (Freeman et al., 2015)
Table 9.3 Movement across generations in language teaching knowledge
Table 10.1 The structural features of ELT knowledge-geography
Figure 10.1 Growth in TESOL by US and international affiliated associations (1970–2015)
Figure 10.2 The number of teachers’ associations that have affiliated with TESOL or
IATEFL by decade in which they affiliated (1970–2015)
Table 10.2 The pluralization of interests in TESOL and IATEFL (by decade from 1974–
2013)
Table 10.3 Specialized interests: Strands in the ELT knowledge base
Table 11.1 Linda and Beth: Situations of practice and action-present in their own words
Figure 11.1 Elements of a situation of practice that shape the action-present
Figure 11.2 Reflection: The dynamic between inner and outer worlds
Figure 12.1 A teacher education design theory: Part one (annotated)
Figure 13.1 A teacher education design theory: Part two (annotated)
Figure 13.2 Entering into activity through articulation and explanation: Aligning community
of activity (C/a) with community of explanation (C/e)
Figure 13.3 (Mis)alignment in communities of explanation (C/e) and of activity (C/a)
Table 13.1 Two summary examples of (mis)aligned explanations
Table A.1 Participatory pathways for generating social facts
Table A.2 Activity variations: Individual to collective engagement
Figure A.1 Ongoing training example
Table B.1 Organizing pathways of participation to catalyze learning
Table B.2 Using sub-groups to bring both emic and etic views to a learning experience
Table B.3 Different course; different social facts with same demonstration lesson
Table B.4 Contrasting the live demonstration with a video-taped demonstration
Table B.5 Summary of design ideas
PART ONE
How people use what they know to do what they do in the
language classroom
Introduction to Part One
This first part orients the book to the problem of teaching language teaching as I see it. It lays
out the elements of the central argument, namely that teaching (language) teaching differs in
important and useful ways from educating teachers in other content areas. For some readers,
depending on their backgrounds, some of the points will be familiar—even comfortable—as
a place to start. For others, particularly those who come from outside the field of language
teaching, the points may be new. In either case, this initial discussion is intended to create a
common ground from which to build the argument that follows in subsequent parts and
chapters.
How Part One is organized
The two chapters in this part bracket the central argument. Chapter One orients the overall
project to the contrasting nature of language in the world and in the classroom. The chapter
also examines the way terminology creates the landscape of the work in teacher education.
Chapter Two frames three core questions—about the nature of language as content, about how
classrooms make that content work, and about how people learn to teach it in classrooms.
These questions together introduce key ideas and anchor the book that follows.
1
Teaching (language) teaching
This chapter lays out the core ideas of the book: that learning to teach second languages is a
social process, which depends on a set of understandings (called ‘social facts’). Two
elements help to elaborate this central idea. The first is the distinction between prescriptive
views from the field of language teaching that, in effect, ‘wall in and wall out’ particular
ideas and descriptive understandings that reflect the kaleidoscopic nature of social
perceptions. The second is the interrelation of nominal and pronominal views, in which the
former labels the elements in teaching and learning while the latter describes the
interrelationships. These distinctions are used to unpack the central isomorphic relationship
in teacher education: teaching teaching.
Narrative 1.1: Starting out in language teaching

I got into second language teaching, as some people do, through the back door. I was hired
in mid-August, which in the northern hemisphere (where the academic year begins in early
September) generally means the school administration has discovered a staff shortage.
Perhaps their planning was faulty and there were more students than anticipated or
perhaps a teacher would not be returning. But however you look at it, ‘late-summer’ hires
are usually filling unplanned or unanticipated gaps.
The position was in a small rural high school. I saw the newspaper advertisement in the
city where I was living and, fresh out of university, I figured it was worth applying. I wrote
for the position of French teacher, and a week later was invited for a visit. The interview
was brief. As I remember it, we mainly talked about my experience and how I’d learned
French—that I’d spent time traveling and working in France, doing odd jobs. The fact that
I had no training or previous experience teaching the language did not come up. A few
days later, I was offered the position. It seemed I was hired based on the fact that they
thought I could speak the language and not on my background as a language teacher. As I
accepted the offer, the school principal added almost as an afterthought, ‘And you’ll be
teaching a first-year Spanish class. too. I see from your university record that you’ve
studied it.’
Although this may seem to be a story of casual, last-minute hiring or of a disorganized school
administration, it actually isn’t, as I have come to see through my career as a language teacher
and teacher educator. Rather the story goes to the heart of how we understand what it takes to
teach languages, and how we think people learn to do this work. This book is about these
core issues; it is about what people know in order to teach second languages, how they learn
to teach them, and how pre- and in-service professional education is organized to support the
process. The argument is not prescriptive; it is not about what ought to be, about what people
should study or demonstrate they know in order to teach languages. Such proposals assume
that how teachers teach is well understood and how their knowledge develops and functions
in teaching has been determined. For this reason, prescriptions are by definition limiting,
since they assume the importance, efficacy, and value of certain experiences, and they rule out
or devalue others. To paraphrase the American poet Robert Frost’s metaphor of stone walls
in northern New England, we might ask what is being walled in or walled out by our
prescriptions, and how these limitations might ‘cause offence’.
Prescriptive proposals and descriptive understandings

Prescription defines things by creating and justifying categories that distinguish what is
valued from what is not. In this basic way, prescription offends, but it does so for social and
professional efficiency. When, for example, a job announcement calls for a certain teaching
credential or a specific type of experience, it is an explicit statement of the knowledge and
skill, which the credential is meant to represent or the experience to capture, that is explicitly
valued. While this walling in or walling out can be useful to the efficiency and effectiveness
of the enterprise, it comes with a risk that the categories are taken as given and remain
unexamined. After all, as Frost famously observed, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
This is the situation in second language teacher education: There are a lot of fences, which
have served well but are due for re-examination. The prescriptive categories of what
language teachers should know and be able to do have supplanted descriptions of the work
they do and how they learn to do it. To continue with the example: because job announcements
call for certain qualifications, there is the assumption that these represent the knowledge used
in language teaching. But prescriptive categories may not match the actual work. Doctors
study biochemistry, but they diagnose particular illnesses in patients. Lawyers study
precedents in law, but they apply them to specific cases for their clients. Teachers are
prepared and credentialed, but they think and use knowledge in particular ways under
specific circumstances. This book examines what we know about how language teachers
carry out these processes. The challenge is to re-center our work on a descriptive
understanding of what language teachers know and do and how they learn these things, so that
we operate from more than simple prescription.
This re-centering requires a re-examination of the theory and the explanatory relationships
we posit about the basic processes of professional learning; and it requires closer scrutiny of
the core concepts in language teaching, since these are the elements on which the theories
have been built. In place of the imperatives and efficiency of the prescriptive categories we
regularly draw on, this examination provides a comprehensive theorization of the work of
language teaching and how it is learned. The aim of such a theorization is to work
heuristically to move our thinking forward, to be theoretically appropriate to the nature and
circumstances of the work of language teaching, and to have adequate explanatory power to
deepen and probe our understanding in useful and pragmatic ways.
Re-examining the status quo

The starting point is to elaborate the ideas that are taken for granted in educating second
language teachers. This process of intellectual review assembles the givens to examine the
basic operational thinking in second language teacher education. The review, which is fully
developed in Chapter 2, is organized around three questions: content (or what is taught), the
language classroom (or where it is taught), and professional learning, which combines issues
of who, when, and how the people learn to do what they do as language teachers in
classrooms. Each question aligns with conventional responses from the field, in Table 1.1.
Locus Question Status quo response (It’s …)

What What is the content? Language
Methodology
Where How does it function in the language Methodology
classroom? Planning, teaching,
assessing curriculum, materials
Who, when, how How it is learned? Formal preparation
Continuing professional development
Table 1.1 Status-quo framing of second language teacher education
These three questions raise challenges to the status quo by calling attention to what is taken
for granted by conventional prescriptive thinking. They suggest possibilities for descriptive
understanding. In the words of Frost’s poem, these three challenges ‘wall in’ some things and
‘wall out’ others, which is likely to give offense to what is assumed about what people do in
teaching second languages and how they learn it.
A word on terms
These walls are evident in the terms used to describe educating second language teachers.
Any field of professional activity uses many different terms; the use of specialized discourse
is a hallmark of a profession. Most terms in second language teacher education have been
coined from elsewhere, although they may have taken on specific meanings through their use
in this field. The term ‘teacher training’ is an example. While the term is widely used in
second language teacher education (often in contrast to ‘teacher development’), it is avoided
in general teacher education where it has a negative mechanistic connotation. In other
instances, versions of a term converge, as with ‘teacher development’ and ‘professional
development’. The first term has been favored in professional writing in English language
teaching, while the second is more common in writing about teacher education. However, it
has been brought into ELT recently with the term ‘continuing professional development’ (see
Hayes, 2015). This density and overlap in terms is one indication of a maturing discourse
community that is looking to make more refined distinctions and to argue for more nuanced
connections between them. Using one term over others also suggests alignment with particular
positions and the arguments that support them.
With this positioning in mind, it is worth laying my own terminological cards on the table
and to revisit the terms commonly in circulation in second language teacher education that
describe the key protagonists, the roles they play, and the processes in which they engage to
teach and learn teaching. In 1989, I argued for making an operational distinction between
‘teacher training’ and ‘teacher development’ as terms that could describe different processes
falling under the superordinate term of ‘teacher education’ (Freeman, 1989). The distinction,
represented in Figure 1.1 below, circulated widely and helped to distinguish types of teacher
learning that are often bundled together. I will continue to use the terms in this way in this
book, though I modify the term ‘teacher development’ to ‘professional development’.
Figure 1.1 Language teacher education as training and development (after Freeman, 1989)
Language teacher education needs to be functionally defined as the overall process. As I

argued then, and continue to believe, it 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’ (1989, p. 30). The ‘field’ includes the understandings and values of the
so-called parent academic disciplines of language teaching (discussed in Chapter 4) as well
as the local and national policy environments which often articulate them (discussed in
Chapter 10).
‘Language teacher education’ differs from ‘continuous professional development’,
mentioned earlier, as a superordinate, organizing term. It is used here to describe the
connecting, building, and refining of knowledge and know-how through formal processes of
professional preparation and further development. The term, ‘continuous professional
development’, proponents argue, is focused on the learner. They cite Day’s broad definition:
Professional development consists of all natural learning experiences and those conscious
and planned activities which are intended to be of direct or indirect benefit to the individual,
group or school, which contribute, through these, to the quality of education in the classroom.
(Day, 1999, p. 4)
Second language teacher education—domain and time frame

‘Second language teacher education’ defines a domain of social activity. The definition makes
a distinction between the field of second language teaching and the work of second language
teacher education, which is central to reexamining what is taken for granted in the
prescriptive views that undergird the latter. I argued for this differentiation in the definition I
offered in 1989:
Language teacher education deals with the processes of language teaching; these other
[disciplinary] areas help to define and articulate the knowledge and skill base of language
teaching. It is inaccurate and misleading to imply, as we do in most pre-service language
teacher education … that knowledge of these areas alone will necessarily enable or equip
people to teach. We should not be so taken in by that relationship between the
knowledge/skill base and its possible uses in teaching that we miss seeing how these are
basically distinct.
(Freeman, 1989, p. 29)
This definition of 25 years ago anticipated a shift from prescription to description in
documenting and understanding what teachers know and how they use that knowledge in
classroom teaching. There is a fundamental difference between the academic disciplines used
to define the knowledge that language teachers should know and the knowledge that those
teachers use in the practice of classroom teaching (see Freeman & Johnson, 2005; Tarone &
Allwright, 2005). This point, which is now widely accepted in teacher education generally,
distinguishes between disciplinary knowledge and knowledge-for-teaching as interrelated yet
substantively different forms of knowledge, as discussed in Chapter 9.
As a domain name, second language teacher education covers a wide time frame, as Day’s
definition of professional development suggests. For example, the functions of ‘preparing’,
‘mentoring’, ‘supporting’, ‘developing’, and ‘assessing’, which are all part of educating
second language teachers, need to be teased apart, at least to some degree. These discussions
will refer to ‘preparing’ teachers as largely a function of pre-service teacher education
(sometimes referred to by the acronym PRESET), while ‘mentoring’, ‘supporting’, and
‘developing’ teachers come under the umbrella of in-service teacher education, (or INSET).
‘Assessing’ teachers and their teaching can and does happen in both the contexts.
Distinguishing the time frames of initial preparation and on-going development is useful in
locating certain functions, like initial teacher credentialing, and program designs (such as
supervised teaching or classroom internships), in the overall chronological trajectory of
second language teacher education. It is important to underscore that these time frames do not
necessarily reflect differences in the basic processes of professional learning, however.
Using binary distinctions like pre- and in-service teacher education can suggest that
participants may be learning in different ways at these points in their careers. In fact, it is
more likely that professional learning, like any learning, follows a trajectory that shifts with
experience, although its fundamentals remain.
Teaching teaching to teachers—sorting out terms

Determining an overall typography for second language teacher education, as in Figure 1.1,
provides a map, but the territory itself remains a terminological thicket. The nature of teacher
education itself contributes to the complexity, the principal task being to teach teaching to
teachers. The very wording seems redundant, which reflects the isomorphic character of the
task itself. Processes of learning and teaching run through this task at several levels: among
students and their teacher in the classroom, among teachers and those who are educating them,
and among this group, teacher educators and those who want to talk about the entire process
(as in this book). Using a stable, transparent set of terms for these various levels is a tricky
job that any writer in this field has to work through. The glossary outlined by Malderez and
Wedell (2007) at the beginning of Teaching teachers: Processes and practices, is an
example of this process of figuring out what to call things that illustrates the messy complexity
of educating teachers (see Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.2 Glossary of terms (Malderez & Wedell, 2007)
In distinguishing terms like ‘learner’ and ‘pupil’, Malderez and Wedell label roles and
levels of direct involvement in the teacher educating process. They also capture different
social processes in contrasting terms like ‘mentoring’, defined as ‘one-to-one’, with
‘ToTing’, which works with groups. But interestingly, they use an acronym—ToTing,’ to
represent the core isomorphism of teaching teachers.
Teaching teaching: pronominal and nominal views

While terms are messy in second language teacher education, specifying the domain itself is
equally tricky. The phrase ‘teaching teaching’ is more than a mouthful; it distills the
isomorphism inherent in describing how the process of teacher education relates to its
content, which is itself a process. There are several ways this relationship could be
represented. The focus here is in contrasting two views—from the inside–out and from the
outside–in. The former emphasizes the perspectives of participants; the latter, the relationship
of the elements.
Hawkins and the inside–out, pronominal view

In his classic essay on teaching and learning, science educator David Hawkins (1974) waded
into this thicket of terms and relationships making two proposals, one that has stuck and the
other that is often overlooked. The first was that he used pronouns, not nouns, to discuss the
interactions between teacher, student, and content or ‘It’. He sketched a triangular
relationship, arguing that teacher–student engagement comes about through some content, the
‘It enters into the pattern of mutual interest and exchange between the teacher and the child’
(p. 50). The point that is sometimes overlooked is that he noted this engagement happens in a
setting. Even if the teacher is not actively presenting material, simply by being put together in
the social context of the classroom, ‘The teacher has made possible this relation between the
child and It, even if it is just by having It in the class; and for the child even this brings the
teacher as a person, a Thou into the picture’ (p. 57).
It is a slippery conceptual undertaking to capture and label the spontaneous interaction and
engagement of a student in some bit of content in the presence—and perhaps in some ways
triggered by—a teacher. Hawkins used perspective as the building block of his analysis.
Because we each see the world from our own viewpoint, for the student as ‘I’, the teacher is
‘Thou’; but from the teacher’s point of view as ‘I’, the student becomes ‘Thou.’ The only
stable element within this changing equation is the thing they are engaging in, the ‘It.’ The
brilliance of Hawkins’ formulation lies in expressing this essential dynamism in a set of
pronouns, because it insists on keeping the point of view in the mix. The ‘I–Thou–It’
formulation captures key aspects of the isomorphism of teaching teaching, that it is not just the
relationship between the two processes, but also the dynamics of the shifting point of view. In
other words, where you stand—as teacher or teacher educator—defines what you see.
The outside–in, nominal view

Others have described teaching as a web of relationships some of which are instructional, all
of which are social or socially mediated. Cohen, Raudenbush, and Ball give a clear version
of this view:
What we casually call ‘teaching’ is not what teachers do, say, or think, though that is what
many researchers have studied and many innovators have tried to change. Teaching is what
teachers do, say, and think with learners, concerning content, in particular organizations and
other environments, in time. Teaching is a collection of practices, including pedagogy,
learning, instructional design, and managing organizations.
(Cohen, Raudenbush, & Ball, 2003, p. 124)
Like Hawkins, they picture the interaction of elements in a triangle, but unlike Hawkins, they
wall off the ‘It’ by distinguishing between the content and the environment.
In Figure 1.3, the roles are clearly labeled, but the point of view is omitted. The
subjectivity of the pronouns, which conveyed the essential dynamism in Hawkins’
formulation, gets lost in an omniscient view translated into the nouns, as ‘teacher’, ‘student’,
and ‘content’. This tension between what I will call the ‘pronominal’ view in Hawkins and
the ‘nominal’ view of teaching as represented in Cohen et al. (2003) takes on a particular
significance in classrooms where language is the content or the ‘It.’
Figure 1.3 Instruction as interaction (Cohen et al. 2003, p. 124)
The isomorphic relationship

Inside the isomorphism—the two triangles
In both formulations, the triangle is used to represent the elements of teaching and learning,
but it does not directly capture the isomorphism of teaching teaching. In teacher education, the
content or ‘It’ is a process that mirrors in many ways the parent, superordinate, teaching–
learning process in which it is embedded. In fact, this mirroring can become a vehicle for
teacher learning, as discussed in Part Two (Chapter 5 and Chapter 6), depending on how it is
focused on. The triangular structure can be used to represent the isomorphic relationships in
teaching teaching at the core of teacher education (Figure 1.4):
Figure 1.4 Isomorphic relationships in teacher education
The principal interactions and relationships are in triangle (A), in which the ‘teacher’ is a
teacher educator and the ‘student’ is a teacher-learner (perhaps a pre-service trainee or a
teacher-participant in professional development). Their ‘content’ is the set of relationships
and interactions in triangle B, but the roles change. In triangle (B), the teacher-learner (who is
the ‘studentA’ in triangle A) becomes the ‘teacherB’, and the ‘studentsB’ (fellow trainees,
peers, or perhaps actual language students) are (or play the part of) the learners in the
classroom in which the ‘contentB’ is the lesson. So the social processes of the embedded
triangle B are the content of the superordinate triangle A.
Inside the two triangles—a dynamic, pronominal view

This diagram offers a static depiction, a snapshot of how teaching can be the content of the
teaching-learning process. However, if the nouns, which label the roles, are read as pronouns
as Hawkins does, the relationships between the two triangles capture the complex shifts in
social perspective at the heart of teaching teaching. In Figure 1.4, the teacher educator
(teacherA) is ‘I’, who works with teacher-learners (studentsA) as ‘Thou’, which sets up ‘It’ as
the contentA from the teacher educator’s point of view. But if this triangular relationship is
seen from the teacher-learners’ perspective, they become the ‘I’ (studentsA) and the teacher-
educator (teacherA’) becomes ‘Thou’, which changes the perspective on ‘It’ (contentA).
Triangle B (which is contentA) looks one way to the teacher-educator as ‘I’, and another way
to the teacher-learners as ‘I’.
This phenomenographic shift in perspective goes to the heart of both designing and
researching situations in teacher education. As said earlier, where you stand in the triangular
relationship determines how and what you see in it. For example, a straightforward practice
teaching lesson from the teacher educator’s point of view may be a nerve-wracking,
mercifully brief, live teaching performance by the teacher-learner. It is the same ‘It’
experienced from different points of view. Conversely perhaps, the simple practice teaching
lesson, which is rich with possible insights from the teacher educator’s perspective, may be a
proforma 15 minutes of stand-up and talk teaching for the teacher-learner. These differences
in the content are represented by the shift in pronouns, which in turn makes clear a basic truth:
there is not a single content or ‘It’ in teaching teaching. The nominal triangle of teacher-
student-content can be misleading in offering an illusion of stability, suggesting that what is
taught is what is (or ought to be) learned. The pronominal view reminds us that the dynamics
of changing roles and positions in the basic triangular relationship shifts the nature of the
experience and what is taken from it. In other words, second language teacher education is
fundamentally a social proposition.
Each perspective contributes to understanding, with certain strings attached. The nominal
view offers a stable view of the elements that is helpful in developing teacher education
designs. But the stability can promote a prescriptive view of what teachers need to know and
predictable ways to act. The pronominal view, on the other hand, challenges this illusion of
stability by introducing the dynamism inherent in the shifting roles in teacher education
settings. Participants move between being students of teaching on the one hand, in the lecture
hall or training room for instance, and being a novice teachers of students on the other, in a
demonstration lesson or school placement for example. The pronominal view raises the
central issue of perspective in teaching teaching and how these shifts help (or impede)
participants in making sense of what they are doing. In taking perspective as the building
block of understanding, it is amenable to descriptive views of what teachers know and do.
This sense-making and meaning carry over when the roles, perspectives, and settings shift.
Phenomenography and practice teaching
The tension between the nominal and pronominal perspectives (what is sometimes also called
the ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ aspects in teacher education) is a central challenge in teaching
teaching. Teacher educators, who are teachers of teaching, have to work with how their
students, who are learners of teaching, make sense of the nominal elements of the job. The
main means for this sense-making are pronominal changes in perspective; these are the
experiential substance of the professional learning process. To give one example: in
conventional practice teaching, one novice teacher plans and teaches a group of students,
while a teacher educator supervises. This design operates from two perspectives—the novice
who plans and teaches, and the teacher-educator who observes and gives feedback. Their
exchange is based in the social dynamic, which delineates their respective roles.
In some short-term training courses, the conventional design is altered so that the lesson is
carried out by three people working together. The trio of trainees plans the lesson together,
but they teach parts of it sequentially, so that one starts the lesson, the second picks up a third
of the way through, and then the third trainee finishes the lesson. This training design
embodies the power of the pronominal view in orchestrating different perspectives on the ‘It’
of the lesson (which would be contentA in Figure 1.4). Although the three participants have
planned together, talking through the myriad details of the lesson to work them out, once it
goes live, facing actual language students to continue or finish the ongoing lesson as the
second and third teachers step in, creates an off-balance set of perspectives on the same
phenomenon. It is almost as if the practice lesson were designed to cause a collision between
the nominal view of teaching, in planning and preparing the lesson, and the pronominal view,
in implementing those plans and responding in real time to what is happening. By dividing the
role of teacher among three trainees, the lesson becomes a pronominal mix of perspectives,
which is the substance of professional learning.
First- and second-order perspectives 现象描述分析学

Balancing the nominal and pronominal makes second language teacher education
fundamentally a phenomenographic undertaking. As a research paradigm, phenomenography
has a rich tradition in educational studies. Marton (1981) defined phenomenography as
‘research which aims at description, analysis, and understanding of experiences’ (p. 180).
The approach turned on a distinction between two perspectives:
In the first and by far the most commonly adopted perspective we orient ourselves towards
the world and make statements about it. In the second perspective we orient ourselves
towards people’s ideas about the world (or their experience of it) and we make statements
about people’s ideas about the world (or about their experience of it). Let us call the former a
first-order and the latter a second-order perspective. (Marton, 1981, p. 178)
The nominal view in the instructional triangle (Figure 1.3) captures a first-order view of
teaching teaching with its etic typology of teacher, students, content, and context. The
pronominal view of Hawkins’ ‘I’–’Thou’–’It’ (Figure 1.4) reflects a second-order view and
the central importance of perspective-taking, understanding that things look different
depending on your point of involvement; Marton framed this difference as ‘people’s ideas
about the world (or their experience of it)’.
Social facts and thought collectives

Social facts—the facts of the matter and the facts that matter
What connects the nominal and pronominal views in teaching teaching? How are Marton’s
first- and second-order perspectives on the world interrelated? How can participants’
perspectives be reconciled with the stuff to be learned? My argument is that teachers’
professional learning functions through the perspectives they take to make sense of the
circumstances. In this sense-making process, social facts connect the perceptions of a group
of people and with a way of thinking. These are the two senses of the phrase: the social facts
are ‘the facts of the matter’—what is taken as true by a group or community—and they are
‘the facts that matter’ in that they are centrally important and definitional for that community.
The notion of facts being social has been widely discussed by theorists in various disciplines
(for example, Gilbert, 1992; Latour & Woolgar, 1979), and is central within sociocultural
approaches to studying learning (for example, Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Wertsch, 1985 and
1991) discussed in Chapter 6.
The two phrases—the facts of the matter and the facts that matter—encapsulate the key
dimensions of facts as social. They are facts in that they define phenomena (as the facts of the
matter) and social in defining the community that holds them (as the facts that matter).
Underlying this premise is the argument that, as Fleck (1935/1981) wrote in the 1930s,
‘Cognition is not an individual process … Rather it is the result of social activity, since the
existing stock of knowledge exceeds the range available to any one individual’ (p. 38). Fleck
described the interplay of thinking and community that explains how facts matter: ‘The
statement, “Someone recognizes something,” demands some such supplement as, “on the basis
of a certain fund of knowledge”, or better, “as a member of a certain cultural environment”,
and best, “in a particular thought style, in a particular thought collective” ‘ (1935/1981, p.
39).
话语共同体共享感知
思维集体
Thought collectives, discourse communities, and shared perceptions
Fleck’s thought collectives are another way to talk about discourse communities, or groups of
people who share perspectives on particular activities. It is critically important to
understand, for the purposes of this argument and the analyses in the chapters that follow, that
individuals do not arrive at or consciously negotiate the shared perspectives of facts; they
participate in situations using them. When, for example, the third trainee in the practice
teaching trio above says something like ‘I’m doing the production part of the lesson’, he or
she is using a specific social fact of language teaching—the Presentation-Practice-Production
framework for lesson planning (Read, 1985). The term invokes a set of reasons to explain its
purpose: ‘PPP … adapts well to the teaching of structures: aural exposure and teacher
modeling in P1 [presentation phase]; drills or controlled practice in P2 [practice phase]; and
the transference of the previously studied structures to different situations in P3 [production
phase]’ (Criado, 2013, p. 98). And it connects the trainees (and trainer) who understand and
accept the term. The trainee may not know all of this background, but by using the fact he
signals potential membership in that community.
Social facts are the glue that connects the nominal and pronominal views of teaching
teaching. The term ‘production phase’ of the lesson is nominal; the ways in which trainees
make sense of it through the practice teaching experience is pronominal; the sense-making
depends on participation, which creates a perspective. In effect social facts convert first-
order information that is in the world around us into the second-order facts with which the
community functions. Malderez and Wedell’s glossary of terms (Figure 1.2) is a set of social
facts. Even the use of acronyms in their typology highlights Fleck’s observation that the social
facts bring a domain of knowledge (as Fleck puts it, ‘on the basis of a certain fund of
knowledge’), a group of people who have or want to have that knowledge (in Fleck’s words,
‘as a member of a certain cultural environment’), and a way of thinking that produces it (‘in a
particular thought style, in a particular thought collective’).
The book
This book argues that educating second language teachers is a process of making meaningful
social facts that matter to the language teaching community. Neither the facts nor the
community are permanent in the sense that one does not exist without the other. Prescriptive
discussions in second language teacher education assume social facts, and that the facts matter
to the language teaching community. Many of these facts do; however, that makes them
functional, which is different from making them true. Prescription gives the air of
permanence; it reifies a nominal view of fluid social agreements. Descriptive understandings
do not solve the problem; as pronominal accounts, they simply correspond more accurately to
how people make sense of things. Descriptive understandings reflect the perspective taken; in
this sense they are always partial. That partialness is critically important because it reminds
us that educating teachers is about more than social facts, it has to be about how they matter,
to whom, and under what circumstances.
This chapter has laid out the issue of terms used to describe the people, roles, and processes
of learning and teaching in teaching language teaching. The question of terms involves more
than creating a glossary, however. At its core, it is about the social facts used to define and to
do the work of second language teacher education. These terms are the facts of the matter and
they are the facts that matter to the particular thought collective that is language teacher
education. Taken by themselves, the terms risk being static unless they are examined to see
what they assume and how they fit together. Left alone, the terms can be a set of labels that
camouflage an architecture of assumptions.
2
The central challenges in second language teacher education
This chapter introduces three issues that bear centrally on educating second language
teachers. Although these challenges are common to teacher education in all subject areas, the
way in which they are addressed and resolved in the field of second language teaching shapes
it as a unique form of teacher learning. The first challenge is defining the content: how
language in the world relates to language as content in the classroom. The second challenge,
which follows from the first, is how the classroom, with its social structures and
expectations, defines language teaching as a particular form of pedagogical activity. The third
challenge is how people, who are users of language and have been students in classrooms,
learn to teach language. These three challenges take the fact of teaching languages (in
contrast to other subject areas) as centrally important in shaping learning to teach it. Together
they frame how this consideration overrides and reshapes most other factors in educating
people to be second language teachers. Although they are listed sequentially, the challenges
are not hierarchical, however; they nest within one another as a sort of DNA for second
language teacher education.
Why three challenges?

Some issues distinguish educating second language teachers from other forms of teacher
education. These issues challenge the conceptual norms that define the types of knowledge
and pedagogical skills teachers need, and indeed use, in classroom language teaching. They
are, in this sense, fundamental to the nature of the work. The challenges are also operational
in that they structure and constrain how teacher education programs are designed, how they
are conducted, their outcomes assessed, and how teacher certification is determined. Together
the challenges implicitly or explicitly guide what is done in both research and practice in
second language teacher education. In the following chapter, each challenge—conceptualizing
language as content, how classroom teaching (re)shapes the content, and how people learn to
teach it—is taken up in turn. The argument is a cumulative one in which each challenge
widens and adds detail to the picture of the larger whole of how educating second language
teachers is conceived, studied, and practiced.
The first challenge: language in the world and language in the

classroom
Stevick on language
Stevick (1976) begins the Introduction of Memory, meaning, and method with a statement
about what language is and why it matters:
By speech we design great bridges and fight wars, we express our deep feelings and spiritual
aspirations, and even set forth our most subtle linguistic theories. We can talk, we can talk
about talk, we can talk about talk about talk, and so on forever. Language is the special
treasure of our race. It depends on what we call the mind, but it comes out of the entire
person. To learn a second language is to move from one mystery to another.
(Stevick, 1976, p. 3)
His statement distils three fundamental dimensions: purpose—that language is what we do
with it; reflexivity—that language has the capacity to refer to itself; and its connection to our
identities—that how we use language makes us who we are. These dimensions of purpose-as-
use, reflexivity, and identity interact—and even compete in the language classroom. They
provide a definitional springboard for understanding how language becomes classroom
content; since content and how it is taught are central, the three dimensions can also help to
outline the challenges of second language teacher education.
Purpose-as-use
Understanding how language becomes content in second language classrooms is a
complicated, messy, conceptual, and practical problem. The starting point of the argument is
that language use is a social process under any circumstance; ‘purpose’ is a way of labeling
the interrelation between the language and how it is used. When used as classroom content,
language purposes are embedded in—and reflect—the particular social processes of the
classroom. In this case, the social processes are educational ones; they circumscribe how the
participants—teacher and students—interact, what they do, and thus how and for which
purposes language gets used in the social context of the classroom. This dynamic, which is
abbreviated as purpose-as-use, happens in any classroom; but in those classrooms in which
language is the stuff being taught (and hopefully learned), the dynamic is altered in subtle and
important ways. Understanding how purpose-as-use works in the language classroom is
therefore the central challenge in second language teaching, and it is the starting point for
understanding second language teacher education.
Stevick’s statement outlines several layers of reasons for using language in the world in
general. Each of these embodies dimensions of interaction (with whom, to do what), and form
(how particular words are used). Designing bridges, expressing spiritual aspirations, or
proposing linguistic theories (to paraphrase Stevick) each entail using language in specific
ways; indeed the language itself differs, reflecting those uses. These purposes for using
language in the world intersect, and even sometimes contravene, the purposes of learning a
new language in the classroom. As teachers and students, we recognize these purposes for
language in the world outside the classroom intrinsically and experientially from growing up
in our first (or home or mother) language, and they carry over and shape what happens in the
classroom. Studying languages for specific purposes exemplifies this carry over of purpose,
as when, for example, people learn medical English to practice nursing or orthopedics. When
language becomes the content for classroom teaching however, when the learning becomes
‘instructed language learning’, the ecology of purpose-as-use shifts because the social context
of the classroom takes over. Therefore defining language as classroom content becomes an
educational problem as much as a linguistic one.
An educational problem
But ‘educational’ here does not simply equate to classroom methodology; it has a broader
meaning. Conceptualizing language in order to teach it to students in classrooms is an
educational problem that involves who, how, and why. It includes who is seen as capable of
teaching the content, which in language teaching introduces the misleading, geopolitical
categorizations of ‘native’ versus ‘non-native speaking’ teachers. It also includes how people
teach languages, as exemplified in debates over methodology and curriculum. And it includes
arguments over why teachers do (or don’t do) what they do in classroom teaching as well as
how they learn to do these things through second language teacher education. These aspects of
the educational problem can be summed up as follows: when a language becomes a second
language in the classroom, its purpose-as-use is circumscribed (and even defined) by
instruction.
The language classroom—as microcosm or on ramp

Purpose-as-use in the language classroom has been characterized broadly speaking in two
ways: ‘instructed language learning’ can be seen as providing the learner with a microcosm of
the wider social world or as an on ramp that provides social, academic, and professional
access to what follows for the learner. As a microcosm, language content is meant to capture
and mimic the wider world as when for example, students in communicative classrooms learn
situational language, do role-plays, and try to relate purposes for using the new language to
what they do (or want to do) in their first language. The underlying logic is that classroom
learning prepares students for using that language for their own purposes in the wider world.
In other words, since purposes in the classroom can capture those in the world, language
content can be organized and packaged instructionally according to those purposes. In the
microcosm view, the goal of the classroom is to represent general purposes of language use
through instruction and interactions. The ‘can do’ descriptors of the Common European
Framework (Council of Europe, 2001) are a contemporary case in point; they are now used to
sequence classroom materials, define curricula, and determine assessment level outcomes in
many contexts globally, based in the assumption that a language user who demonstrates a
certain CEFR level in the classroom will be able to do certain things with that same language
in the world.
When language content is seen as an on ramp on the other hand, the purpose is directly
connected to specific goals and uses beyond the classroom. The phrase ‘main streaming’,
which is commonly used in schools with reference to English learners, is an example of the
on ramp. When students are thought to be ready to move from English language support into
grade-level or subject-matter classrooms, they are ‘mainstreamed’. Other instances of the on
ramp view of content are found in languages for specific purposes, content-based instruction,
or content and language integrated learning (or CLIL).
The microcosm view versus the on ramp view actually forms more of a continuum than a
strict dichotomy, but it helps to frame the issue of purpose-as-use in language as classroom
content. If the purpose of language materializes in how and why it is used, then both views are
anchored in the same premise, namely that language use is a social process, which is where
this line of argument began. But the distinction captured comes in how ‘use’ is understood.
When language classrooms are seen as microcosms, the purpose-as-use connects the
activities in them to the wider world through a generic, transversal set of purposes (like the
CEFR, for example). When they are seen as on ramp, they project use into specified social
contexts (like mainstreaming ELLs, for example). But the social processes of classrooms as
educational settings are better suited to the on ramp than the microcosm view. Classrooms
operate in particular ways and language as content fits into those processes and interactions.
While the teacher can have students tell the time or role-play ordering in a restaurant, they are
still studying language in the classroom, and those specific social purposes underlie those
activities.
Narrative 2.1—’Je ne porte pas de montre’

I remember a brief glimpse of this dilemma of purpose-as-use while doing a regular
classroom exercise of telling the time. Students were asking each other the time—’Quelle
heure est-t-il?’—and since there was no clock in the classroom, they were consulting their
watches. The questioning came to a student who didn’t have a watch and he waved his
wrist. Without thinking, I muttered, ‘Mais, tu ne portes pas de montre alors …’ (You don’t
have a watch on …). He caught what I had said and responded somewhat smugly to the
questioner, ‘Je ne porte pas de montre.’ This response spread as perhaps easier, but
certainly more subversive to the class activity than giving the actual time. Soon other
students were taking off and hiding their watches, and saying, ‘Je ne porte pas de montre.’
Here student and teacher roles met briefly as people in a world in which you didn’t know
the time because you weren’t wearing a watch. Roles were gone and with them the social
dynamic of the classroom shifted ever so briefly. Students could avoid answering this
classroom language question, ‘Quelle heure est-t-il?’ by not having a watch. The response
was, of course, simpler since there was no need to fumble with French numbers for hours
and minutes when you could just answer, ‘Je ne porte pas de montre.’ (I’m not wearing a
watch.)
The dilemma of meaningfulness

Students, like those in my first-year French class, arrive knowing how to use language from
their first language experiences in the world, but language classrooms often seem to deny that
ability, or at least to circumvent it. Students routinely ask each other their names (although
they already know them); they ask about the weather (when they are inside the classroom), or
how to get to the post office (when they rarely post letters anymore). And they want to know
the time (when they can see the clock on the wall). These interactions take place because of
how language is conceived as classroom content. When a student circumvents a norm of
classroom interaction, which is to answer the question asked, by saying he doesn’t have a
watch, the lesson either skirts his reality by continuing to ask and answer about the time; or
perhaps the incursion is absorbed, which can alter the nature of the lesson. It is no longer
about telling the time; it becomes about whether you want to say what time it is in French. The
social purposes of the classroom suggest ignoring the incursion, but the norms of asking about
time in the world suggest incorporating it. Whichever course is taken, the actions are
characterized as pedagogical, but they are fundamentally about the content. They arise in
taking language from the world and defining it in order to teach it. This transposition from the
world to the classroom creates the dilemma of meaningfulness: on the one hand, language has
to work as content in the classroom; on the other it is supposed to simulate how it is used in
the world.
Meaningfulness is circular; it depends on the context. Social context makes language
meaningful, and language is meaningful because of how it comes about and is used in a
particular social context. In other words, what is meaningful in the classroom is meaningful
because of how that language works in the classroom. Which leads to a dilemma: the
language needs to be the content and it needs to work as language usually does. And it can’t
fulfill both these functions simultaneously. When the student replies ‘Je ne porte pas de
montre’, he avoids having to give a more complicated numerical response in French. By using
language as it works in the world, he is breaking the question–answer pattern, which is the
substance of the lesson. But the phrase itself could be useful in the world, in order not to
answer when asked for the time, or because you actually don’t have a watch.
Of the world, not in it

The classroom and the world are different social contexts for using language, and what is
meaningful depends on each one independently. The fact that the same reply can work in both
places shows an overlap of purpose-as-use in the classroom on the microcosm to on-ramp
continuum. The tension comes in the fact that the student is meant to answer the question
appropriately, which would mean giving the actual time; he is not meant to evade the query by
not having (or pretending not to have) a watch, even though the response would work. Both
responses are meaningful, but the latter contravenes the former to create a sort of circular
logic that it is right to say (you don’t have a watch), but it is wrong to do so (in the classroom
activity); however, it is right to do so in the world (when you don’t have a watch), but wrong
to say (in this activity). This circularity is the core of purpose-as-use when language is
content. The classroom, its social processes, and context, and its language are all part of the
world, but they are separated from it by pedagogical purpose; they are of the world but
somehow not in the world.
In one sense, language classrooms are not unique. The distinction—that content which is
derived from the world but works differently when it is being taught in classrooms—applies
to other subjects as well, the content of elementary science or secondary history, for example,
is taken from those disciplines in the world. There is a major difference, however. These
content areas are often taught as on ramps, as rehearsals for using the knowledge and skill in
the world. For example, in inquiry-based science lessons, elementary students might observe
aquatic life in an aquarium or a pond to make their own hypotheses, which they can then
investigate using the experimental method. Or in a high school history class, students might
examine primary historical sources to document factors that shaped a period or event, and
then write about these sources as fledgling historians. These on-ramp lessons use content to
rehearse the procedures of each discipline, with the intention that the procedures themselves
will travel beyond the classroom long after the specific findings are forgotten. But language
doesn’t work that way. The content and the procedures in the language classroom are
isomorphic; the social interactions between teacher and student, the procedures of being
students, make the language into classroom content.
How classrooms make language content

Classrooms define language as content; methodologies provide the vehicle for that definition.
The fundamental social processes in language classrooms—the relationship between teacher
and students and how they interact—have remained remarkably stable and consistent,
although the purposes have been refined from time to time. The stability is evident in how
little the content has actually changed from a classroom point of view throughout the major
methodological eras in second language teaching. These eras are generally described in terms
of how language pedagogy has changed (for example, Larsen-Freeman, 1986; Richards &
Rodgers, 1986), but this perspective overlooks the central issue of how language continues to
fit into the classroom. Although each methodological era has referred to the teacher’s role
somewhat differently (and therefore has redefined what teachers know and how they think, as
discussed in Part Three), language has continued to function as classroom content in much the
same way. Throughout each major era—grammar translation, Audio-lingual Direct Method,
and communicative language teaching—content has continued to be conveyed according to the
norms of the classroom as a social setting even though the particular methodological
definitions have changed.
In the grammar translation era, the second language provided the subject matter; the first
language shared by students and teacher was the means of teaching it. The methodology wove
the two languages together so that the content became how the first language could explain the
second. With the advent of the Audio-lingual Direct Method teaching in the late 1960s, this
distance between first and second languages was removed and classrooms were supposed to
operate entirely in the target language. This would have seemed to be a radical change, and
indeed it was pedagogically, but in terms of participation structures, classroom content
survived in the pattern practice drills that were based on the basic Inquiry-Response-
Feedback discourse structure of student–teacher interactions (Cazden, 1988; Sinclair &
Coulthard, 1975). In this change of methodology, the language content moved from teacher
explanations at the blackboard (in grammar translation) to student utterances triggered by the
teacher (in ALDM teaching), but it was still anchored in the usual social structures and
processes of the classroom in which the teacher managed the lesson.
The era of communicative teaching brought a progressive–constructivist view of teaching
and learning to the language classroom, in which students engaged with new language based
on their experiences, interests, and backgrounds. In other words, the students were meant to
bring the substance for which the classroom (and the teacher) supplied the new language.
Methodologically however, it is still a classroom, and as such the teacher and curricular
materials organize how students engage with and use the target language. When asked what
time it is, the student ought to respond with the time and not complain that he or she doesn’t
have a watch. But by vesting the substance of the lesson in students’ perceptions and
experiences, communicative teaching has introduced a level of ambiguity into how language
classrooms operate because what students want to say or talk about may not easily fit the
fundamental social structure and processes.
Communicative purpose in the classroom

The advent of communicative language teaching did not resolve the dilemma of
meaningfulness and purpose in how language functions as classroom content, however. While
the methodology assumed the learner would have a personal sense of purpose for engaging in
communicative activities, the patterns of social interaction in classrooms usually
circumscribed those purposes and continued to define how language operated as content. An
exchange early in the era between Widdowson (1985) and Swan (1985a,b) reflected
competing views of classroom versus student purpose in how the then-new communicative
classroom would operate. Swan argued the classroom-purpose position, critiquing how the
doctrinaire aspects of communicative teaching altered definitions of language use:
A basic communicative doctrine is that earlier approaches to language teaching did not deal
properly with meaning. According to the standard argument, it is not enough just to learn what
is in the grammar and dictionary. There are (we are told) two levels of meaning in language:
‘usage’ and ‘use’, or ‘signification’ and ‘value’, or whatever. Traditional courses, it appears,
taught one of these kinds of meaning but neglected the other.
(Swan, 1985a, p. 3)
In raising the issue of meaningfulness, Swan questioned the basic premise of the classroom as
a possible on ramp to language use. He challenged how communicative teaching advocates
(Brumfit & Johnson, 1979; Widdowson, 1978; Wilkins, 1976, and others) had elaborated
levels of meaning to bridge the classroom and the world outside. These proponents
distinguished between language ‘usage’, which focused on linguistic form, and ‘use’, which
focused on meaning. Studying ‘usage’ was largely the province of the traditional language
classroom they said, while ‘use’, which was something speakers of a language did in the
world, could become the focus. This usage–use dichotomy, which Swan was skeptical of,
made it the job of communicative language teaching to somehow bring the natural capacity for
‘use’ pedagogically into classrooms. Widdowson responded, arguing for the communicative
view:
The Swan dogma amounts to essentially … a reassertion of the traditional view that what
learners need to be taught is grammar, lexis, and a collection of idiomatic phrases: their
effective use for communicative purposes can be left for them to work out for themselves by
reference to common sense and the experience they have of using their own language.
(Widdowson, 1985, p. 159)
The classroom was still needed to help students sort out uses of the new language, as
Widdowson (1978, p. 118) had explained in earlier writing, ‘Not until he [sic the learner] has
had experience of the language he is learning as use will he be able to recognize use
potential.’ [italics added]
The two positions lay out the fundamental dilemma of communicative purpose. Is the role
of classroom as content to provide the linguistic raw material that students will then use
according to their own purposes and what they already know how to do with language, as
Swan argued? Or, does classroom content need to simulate how language is used in the world
in general under other circumstances, as Widdowson continues their debate, saying:
Swan tells us that we need ‘to make sure that our students are trained to become fluent in
whatever aspects of speaking, understanding, reading and writing relate to their purposes’.
But, according to the dogma, students already know how to do these things: all they need is a
knowledge of English structures and lexis and these abilities will come of their own accord.
(ibid., 1985, p. 159)
He ends by asking rhetorically about the role of classroom teaching, ‘So why do they
[students] need any training? Why indeed do we need to bother with teaching these abilities at
all?’ (p. 159). In other words, why teach language in classrooms if students already know
how to do what they need to use it in the world?
These debates over how language as content reflects purpose-as-use in the classroom
endure. In essence, they pit the fluidity of language use in the world against the social
processes and structures of the classroom. For just this reason, they are essential to educating
second language teachers who need to learn to navigate using language and teaching it.
Reflexivity
A second key attribute mentioned in Stevick’s statement at the start of this chapter is the self-
referential nature of language, ‘We can talk, we can talk about talk, we can talk about talk
about talk, and so on forever’ (1976, p. 4). The quality, which is usually associated with
metalanguage and the use of language to talk about itself in terms of grammar, is central to its
role as classroom content. This type of reflexivity permits language to be made into the
content of lessons, as it is in grammar translation lessons for example.
Figure 2.1 demonstrates a sample grammar-translation lesson. The content is represented in
the table of German pronouns to be written on the board; the accompanying explanation
suggests the teacher focus on the form and ‘any discrepancies between English and German
usage.’ This is the reflexive quality of language, which permits—and indeed supports—its
representation as classroom content, and contributes to the enduring power of grammar
translation teaching in spite of this being broadly seen as an outdated methodology.
Figure 2.1 German grammar-translation table (Thuleen, 1996)
Metalanguage is one dimension of this reflexivity of language; reflecting on use is another.

The former makes possible the function of language in classroom presentation and
explanation, as in the example above, and facilitates the norm of teacher–student interactions,
which underscores what
Widdowson called ‘usage.’ The latter—reflecting in the lesson on how language works
outside—underscores its ‘use’ and the role of the classroom as a microcosm of the world.
The distinction between ‘usage’ and ‘use’, as Widdowson and Swan debated the terms,
highlights the second kind of reflexivity. Unlike grammar translation lessons, the reflexivity in
communicative language teaching is not about usage and form but about how the new language
relates to the wider social world and how it can potentially be used there. In a sense, then, the
metalinguistic reflexivity of grammar translation is swapped in the communicative classroom
for a functional reflexivity of use. This change depends on the notion of meaningfulness
discussed earlier. Language is used outside the classroom to get things done, as Stevick says,
‘to design great bridges and fight wars’; those uses are instrumental and, by definition,
meaningful to those who do them. To realize a similar level of meaningfulness in the
classroom, students need to think about why they are learning particular language forms, and
what they ‘can do’ with them outside the classroom. This ‘can do’ thinking entails the second
kind of reflexivity about the potential use that is meant to bridge the language classroom and
the world.
Tensions between form and use
The Widdowson–Swan debate frames the tension between reflexivity of form and of use as an
instructional problem of how to balance teaching usage and use in the classroom. Although it
is manifested in disagreements over methodology, the problem is not fundamentally
pedagogical; it is actually conceptual. The issue is not how to teach the content; it is how to
conceptualize language as content so it can be taught in the first place. The tension surfaces
most clearly in what teachers and students do in classrooms, which is why the focus is often
on methodology. However, this focus skirts the more fundamental question of how to define
the content to be taught, which is why the issue is a central challenge in second language
teacher education.
Characterizing content as a function of methodology ensures that it will fit smoothly into the
social patterns and interactions of the classroom, and not disrupt them. But classrooms are not
benign places linguistically; their organization circumscribes, and ultimately defines,
language teaching as a social activity. Savignon (1991), another proponent of communicative
teaching, observed:
The constraints of language classrooms are real. Tradition, learner attitudes, teacher
preparation and expectations, and the instructional environment in general all contribute to
and support teachers’ technical cultures. Recommendations for methods and materials must
take into account this reality.
(Savignon, 1991, p. 274)
This section has outlined the first challenge—how language is defined as classroom content,
and what happens to its purpose in that process. The next section is about the second
challenge, how teachers’ technical cultures shape the nature of the language classroom and the
teaching that takes place in it.
The second challenge: how classrooms (re)define language teaching

Language classrooms create content by how they are organized and what happens in them;
language teachers learn how to make these things happen. Some of that learning comes
through explicit training; but much of it comes from socialization as students. The second
challenge in educating second language teachers is understanding how classrooms define
content. In the following excerpt, Cross (2010) describes an Australian secondary school
classroom in which a teacher, ‘Dan’, is teaching Japanese as a Language Other Than English
(LOTE). Dan is ‘in his mid-twenties, a native speaker of English and in his second year of
teaching Japanese and Humanities at Blackvale Secondary School’ (p. 443–44).
Japanese class—recording quiz grades

Dan is making notes in his lesson book of the numerical grades that students got on a recent
quiz. He calls on students, records the grade, and confirms it in Japanese.
1 DAN: Jill-san? [Jill?]
2 J: Nineteen.
3 D: juukyu. hai. Nick-kun? [Nineteen. Okay. Nick?]
4 ν: Eleven
5 D: juuichi. hai. Mark-kun? [Eleven. Okay. Mark?]
6 M: Twenty.
7 D: Twenty … out of twenty? yoku dekimashita. Mick-kun? [Well done. Mick?]
8 M: Seventeen.
9 D: hai. juunana. Natalie-san? [Okay. Seventeen. Natalie?]
10 ν: Twenty.
11 D: Twenty. hai. yoku dekimashita. Jenny-san? [Okay. Well done. Jenny?]
12 J: Eighteen out of twenty.
13 D: juuhachi. hai. yoku dekimashita. Richard-kun? [Eighteen. Okay. Well done.
Richard?]
14 R: Twenty.
15 D: hai. yoku dekimashita [Okay. Well done.]
(Cross, 2010, p. 447)
There are several aspects of the technical culture of language teaching on display here. The
activity is a routine, predictable one in which the teacher is noting down student’s quiz
grades. Dan uses it as an opportunity to practice Japanese numbers receptively. The
exchanges appear to be one-sided: Dan uses the target language, Japanese, while the students
use their mother tongue, English. From the standpoint of communication, the exchanges work.
The students tell the teacher their grades, which he records, and as he does he indicates that
he has understood by saying the number in Japanese, sometimes with a passing comment, ‘hai.
yoku dekimashita. [Okay. Well done.]’
The Japanese fits into this pattern of social interaction; students say the numbers in English,
and Dan then repeats them in Japanese. But in two exchanges (lines 6–7 and 10–11), Dan
breaks the pattern and does not use Japanese to rephrase the quiz grade. Both scores are
twenty, which happens to be the maximum possible score (‘Twenty … out of twenty?’; line
7). Instead, he congratulates the student (line 7) as he has others, saying ‘yoku dekimashita’
and moves on. Which raises the question of why he doesn’t use—and even seems to avoid
saying—the number twenty in Japanese? Dan’s response in an interview about the lesson
reveals his reasoning: ‘I could’ve said ‘nijuu’ [20], but the students would have confused that
with twelve because of those sound combinations … They’re more familiar with hearing
‘juuni’ [twelve] rather than ‘nijuu’ [twenty]’ (p. 447).
Dan’s response illustrates how classrooms shape that content through the activity of
teaching. If the function of the target language is to communicate, Dan would have said
‘nijuu’, which would confirm his role and identity as a Japanese user in this context. But the
context of the classroom and his role as teacher alter things so that he feels compelled to keep
to the Japanese numbers he knows the students are familiar with. As he explains in the post-
lesson interview, ‘Not that I’m saying I never use numbers in the LOTE [Japanese] over
twenty. I do. But I would only do it in a context where the students explicitly know that
they’re the numbers I’m targeting’ (p. 447). As a teacher, his pedagogical reasoning, which is
anchored in this instance of classroom interaction, overrides the inclination to use the
language as he would anywhere else.
This example illustrates Savignon’s observation about teachers’ technical cultures, and
how the pull of the role and context creates the content students hear. The technical culture is
enacted in the moves Dan makes, and on this level the Japanese content seems minimal. The
explicit regularity of the activity—calling on students to record their grades, and recasting
their English responses in Japanese—can look repetitive and even mundane to the observer.
But focusing on the observed behavior, as so often happens in classroom research and teacher
supervision, and overlooking the reasoning that underlies it, creates a misleading sense of
routine in teaching. When Dan’s reasoning becomes accessible through the researcher’s
questions, the subtle variation in this regular pattern of interaction takes on a different level of
significance. What could have been an oversight—not saying ‘twenty’ in Japanese—becomes
a reasoned teaching move.
Language classrooms and teachers’ technical cultures

The idea that schools manufacture subject matters through the way content is enacted in
classrooms is not a new one (see, for example, Anyon, 1981). Classrooms turn language from
the world into content that teachers teach and students learn, as in the example of Dan’s
lesson. The teacher is the principal instrument of this process, which is why the idea matters
so centrally in teacher education. The concept of teachers’ technical cultures describes the
larger dynamics at work in the process. The term refers to how schools create the work of
teaching through the relationships between teachers and students, and through how pedagogy
enacts subject matter. Introducing the term into the field of foreign language teaching,
Kleinsasser (1993) drew from Rosenholtz’s (1988) work, saying that ‘a school’s technical
culture represents how teachers perceive their work is to be accomplished.’ He elaborated
the definition, ‘The … technical culture attempts to capture the essence and nuance of
teachers’ thoughts, beliefs, and actions in their workplace … to describe how teachers define
and go about their work in their particular school context’ (p. 374). Most importantly, the term
is intended to describe, which is why it can be both powerful and unsettling, as Kleinsasser
noted, ‘A technical culture mirrors what the organization is and not what it professes to be’
(p. 374).
At the classroom level, the technical culture is most visible in the patterns of teacher–
student interaction. The Inquiry-Response-Feedback (IRF) structure of classroom talk, which
was mentioned earlier in connection with ALDM teaching, is the basic building block of
these interactions. It provides stability of expectations and predictability in performance,
which is evident in Dan’s lesson.
Inquiry 1 Dan: Jill-san? [Jill?]

Response 2 J: Nineteen.
Feedback 3 D: juukyu. hai. [19 … yes]
Table 2.1 The IRF structure in Dan’s lesson
While the IRF sequence can be easily identified in an activity like recording quiz grades, it
is not limited to such formulaic interactions. The pattern underlies most talk in language
classrooms.
Talk-written-down: The example of ‘erm’

There is a freer ebb-and-flow of activity in the following example, but the IRF is still the
basic pattern. In this excerpt, the teacher is finishing up an activity in which students have
listened to an interview and have arranged the text, which is on strips of paper, to match what
they heard:
T: Finished? Perfect. What does this—mean? [She writes on the board ‘Erm’] (Erm) ‘Erm’
is that a word?
S: No
T: Erm. Why’ve we got that there? (Nunan, 1996, p. 47)
As the teacher pushes towards the point she wants to make about the difference between
spoken and written language, the same IRF interaction pattern is operating:
Inquiry T: It’s because we’re listening to it. Listening to what’s written down.
So don’t worry, don’t think ‘oh what does erm mean?’ It’s just erm.
And how do they say ‘yes’? Do they say ‘yes’?
Response S: Yeah (Yeah—Australian accent)
Feedback T: Australian accent do you think? (Nunan, 1996, p. 47)
Table 2.2 The IRF structure—’It’s just erm’
In this interaction, the teacher is constructing the content. Using the transcribed language on
the strips of paper, she calls students’ attention to what they hear—the filler ‘erm’ or the
Australian pronunciation of ‘yes’—but wouldn’t usually see written. This listening activity, in
which students organize strips of paper to represent what they hear, is a common one in
language classrooms. It creates content by converting what would simply be listening in the
world, to reading and comparing oral and written text in the classroom. The technical culture
of language classrooms allows for these aspects of talk to be written down so that oral
language can function as content.
Subject-languages
Larsen-Freeman and Freeman (2008) called the socio-pedagogical conversion process that
turns language in the world into language as a school subject creating ‘subject-language’. We
defined a ‘subject-language’ as ‘a language that has been designated as subject matter within a
school curriculum and therefore has certain teaching practices and learning expectations
associated with it’ (p. 148). The technical cultures of schools and classrooms attribute certain
qualities to language, as in the talk-written-down example:
The imposition of certain conventions through the written language and social norms that
prescribe and proscribe certain forms may give the appearance of stability. We refer to this
sense of stability in language as its grammar, which in effect helps to create the content of
language as a school subject
(Larsen-Freeman & Freeman, 2008, pp. 161–62)
In the technical cultures of schools, subject matters depend on stability and predictability so
that classrooms, in essence, have to freeze content through materials, methodologies, and
formulaic interactions.
In the case of language, this conversion process, which Wenger (1998) described as
moving from ‘participation’ to ‘reification’, creates a fundamental tension. Teachers and
students know implicitly how language works; they know what Widdowson (1985) called in
the earlier debate its ‘use potential’. When they meet language as a subject-language, teachers
present it and students encounter it through its reified attributes—parts of speech, grammar,
language skills, proficiency levels, and so on. These attributes, which are intended as
descriptive, literally make the language teachable in the classroom, just as the teacher does in
explaining the filler, ‘erm’, in the interview. The attributes of subject-language stabilize it as
classroom content, making it amenable to the predictable interactions of the technical cultures
of classroom language teaching.
Subject-languages are the content of second language teacher education. Trainees learn
these reifications of content in their preparation as tools of language teaching, and they use
them in the classroom according to the norms and conventions of the technical cultures of
schools. Learning how to distinguish subject-languages from language in the world and how
to act on that difference in teaching is central in second language teacher education. The
learning involves teacher identity as much as it does methodology and classroom procedure,
and this is the third challenge.
The third challenge: how people learn to teach languages

Learning to teach languages involves people recognizing and developing two strands of
identity. One is related to language; it comes from being a user of languages, generally a first
language and the one being taught (and these can be the same, as in a so-called ‘native
speaking’ teacher, or they can be two different languages). The other strand is a professional
one in the sense that it is related to the work of teaching. It comes from experiences as a
student and develops through explicit training. These two strands comingle in the learning
process to define a language teaching identity.
Narrative 2.2: The night before the first day of teaching

I don’t actually remember my first day in front of a class. After I was hired that late August,
I didn’t have much time to prepare. I did what I could, or what I knew how to do. I ordered
some books and some materials; I prepared some general plans even though I had not had
any formal preparation as a teacher. As early September approached, I tried not to worry,
although in my bleaker moments I doubted what I had gotten myself into. When I thought
about standing in front of a group of students in the classroom, it was hard to feel
confident about what I would do. But then when I thought about France, my recent
experiences there, the work I’d done and the friendships I’d made, I got excited about the
prospect of trying to pass some of these possibilities along to my new students. I was
increasingly filled with this push-pull of anxiety and excitement as the first day of school
approached.
I can’t remember the first day of teaching, but I do remember the night before, vividly.
Unable to sleep, I wondered how I would be able to survive. (Later as a teacher educator, I
would hear the same concerns from new teachers as I had had about getting started in the
classroom.) For me, with no formal preparation to refer to, I was lost. As I lay there that
night trying to get to sleep, I realized that the first day of classes might not be that hard: I
could just do what I remembered from my first day of French as a student. I could do what
my teacher had done and—for better or worse—things might work out.
This night-before-the-first-day-of-teaching brought together three aspects of a fledgling

identity as a language teacher: knowledge (what I knew and didn’t know), activity (what I
needed to do), and experience (my background and growing up). Of the three, experience is
particularly complex because it involves two streams, one as a student and the other as a user
of the target language. Gee (2008) summarizes the interrelation among the three aspects: Any
actual domain of knowledge is first and foremost a set of activities (special ways of acting
and interacting so as to produce and use knowledge) and experience (special ways of seeing,
valuing, and being in the world) (p.82). These aspects accumulate and are synthesized into an
identity as someone who can do certain work. As Gee puts it, ‘Physicists do physics. They
talk physics. And when they are being physicists, they see and value the world in a different
way than do non-physicists’ (p. 82).
Language teaching identity

The same process goes on for language teachers. They teach languages; they talk about
teaching languages (particularly in their initial preparation), and in that teaching identity, they
differ from users of the target language. To paraphrase Gee’s statement, ‘when they are being
language teachers, they see and value the world in a different way than do speakers of that
language.’ This identity is not simply the outcome of initial training; it is the process of
becoming and being a language teacher throughout a career. Developing the language and
professional strands of this teaching identity is a continual process that starts with
socialization. The dynamic of socialization is mutually constitutive; as Bolster (1983) puts it,
‘People must be considered as both the creators and the products of the social situations in
which they live’ (p. 303). These interactions between people and social situations happen in
school, as students, and as users of the target language. They form the new language teaching
identity as well as understanding of the technical cultures of teaching.
The hybrid socializations of language teaching identity are rooted in two social situations:
as a student in the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie, 1975)—the time spent
participating in classrooms and teaching as a student—and as a language user in the
individual’s experiences with the target language both in and out of school. These strands of
experience, represented in Figure 2.2 below, reinforce and extend one another, a point that is
discussed further in Chapter 3.
Figure 2.2 Language teaching identity
Professional socialization in the experience of growing up in and through school has been
well documented; Lortie’s (1975) phrase ‘the apprenticeship of observation’ distils that
process of acculturation. This apprenticeship is where individuals learn how to be and act in
classrooms, a process sometimes referred to as ‘studenting’. Studenting—’what students are
thought to do to learn as well as [the] work negotiating and managing being in schools’
(Goldin, 2010, p. 1)—creates a functional role through schooling; but this experience does
not convert directly into teaching knowledge. As Lortie observed, the apprenticeship of
observation is from the ‘other side of the desk’, which makes activity and social processes
look very different. In Dan’s Japanese class for example, the students may have noticed that
he didn’t repeat ‘twenty’ in Japanese as he was recording their quiz grades. They would be
familiar with the public side of his actions; they would not know his reasoning at the moment.
In this sense then, the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ establishes the behavioral side of
teaching, what teachers do and how they usually do it, but it leaves inaccessible the hidden
side of the work, the underlying thinking and reasoning.
These studenting experiences become the basis of learning to teach. We learn to teach in
relation to how we ourselves were taught. As students, there are few opportunities to hear or
probe the reasoning behind the teacher actions we experience. We may figure that teachers
have reasons for what they do (however fickle or unjust a particular action may seem at the
time), but those reasons are not generally explained to us because the teacher’s thinking and
reasoning remain tacit and largely inaccessible.
This reasoning is an amalgam of social experience, but it is not disinterested or benign.
Social dynamics like class, and political and economic power, can shape how teachers
reason through these socialization processes, and thus reasoning can replicate the dynamics of
schools and classrooms as they are. The question becomes how teacher preparation can
interrupt or change these social patterns of the classroom.
Socialization and social facts

As Gee said, language teaching identity involves ways of being, talking, and experiencing the
world. The means for all this are the social facts that are valued by the professional
community. Second language teacher education, like any other form of activity, has its
particular social facts that express recognizable shared meanings and understandings. Using
these facts creates mutually accepted, shared identities. The facts are social in two ways:
They belong collectively to the people who accept and believe them as facts of language
teaching, and they are exchanged among people in these professional discourse communities
and with newcomers who are looking to join the club and to take part in its reasoning and
ways of seeing the world.
Socialization as a student and as a language user is a key process through which language
moves from what we know it to be in the world into how we experience it as content in the
classroom. In the case of most school subjects—mathematics, the sciences, history, literature
—language is principally a vehicle for something else. The content shapes how language is
used in those disciplines, so part of learning the content involves learning the particular
discourse of the discipline (for example, Moje, 2007). In the case of foreign or second
languages as subject-languages, the content is about itself; it is entirely reflexive. That
reflexivity is captured in different ways methodologically. In grammar translation classrooms,
it became metalanguage; in communicative classrooms, the reflexivity focuses on
‘recognizing use potential’ (to use Widdowson’s phrase) that one will be able to use the new
language as one does the first.
Content in language classrooms is essentially social but it has a language dimension, which is
what is usually focused on. The conventional view that content is language with a social
dimension needs to be recast. In the language classroom, the content is social processes,
which have a language dimension. The social processes are fundamental to the classroom as a
classroom; the new language fits into that ecology. Methodology is meant to repackage the
classroom’s social processes according to particular views of learning and teaching; more
often than not it is absorbed by those processes. Learning to teach languages involves
recognizing and developing two strands of identity, as a knower of classrooms and as a user
of language. In most cases, second language teacher education addresses the language
dimension of content and focuses on training methodology and development of reflective
analysis to manage the social processes of the classroom. This approach to professional
learning overlooks—and often denies—that participants have been socialized in classrooms
and as language users, which facts shape how and what language teachers learn and what they
ultimately do in teaching.
PART TWO
Learning to be a language teacher
Introduction to Part Two
Part Two presents three views of how people learn to be language teachers, each of which
has implications—either explicit or suggested—for the role of second language teacher
education. The three views form a loose continuum from seeing learning to teach as an
informal and contextually based process to seeing it as explicitly structured.
Figure ii.1 How people become teachers: A rough continuum
Two of the positions on this continuum (1 and 2) are tacitly held. They are embedded in
different approaches to how language teachers are recruited and selected, and if (or how)
they are trained. The third position (3), which is made explicit in educational policies and
practices, depends broadly speaking on the mechanisms of academic disciplines and
transmission models of teacher education. None of these three positions has a theory directly
associated with it that describes how people learn to teach languages. However, underlying
these positions are two theorizations—of learning-in-place (situated learning theory) and of
learning-in-practice (social practice theory)—that can inform the assumptions and describe
the processes on which the views are based.
How Part Two is organized
Chapter 3 looks at how background knowledge figures in learning to be a language teacher.
There are two alternative positions on how background knowledge develops (positions 1 and
2 in Figure ii.1): that it comes from natural born expertise or that it is learned over time
through professional training and support. Examples of policies and practices in language
education based on the born expertise position and the concept of the native speaker are
discussed as reflections of this position.
The alternative (position 3)—that people learn consciously and explicitly to do the work of
teaching—is the position held by most educational and political organizations in what could
loosely be called the ‘industry of language teaching’ (this includes training institutions,
certifying bodies, professional associations, teachers’ unions, and so on). This position,
which essentially formalizes the ‘know-how made over time’ view (position 2), is that
learning to teach is based on formal professional preparation. Chapter 4 examines this
position from the standpoint of the academic disciplines on which language teaching is based,
and the learning processes associated with disciplinary learning. These ideas are
complicated by the fact that language teaching knowledge draws from several disciplines as a
hybrid, which affects the normative assumptions and designs in second language teacher
education.
Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 introduce two explicitly theoretical perspectives, situated learning
and socio-cultural theory, into the discussion of formal preparation (position 3). Theoretical
presumptions about learning-in-place (Chapter 5) underlie the clinical and practice teaching
arrangements that are central to current teacher preparation, including in second languages.
Theories about learning-in-practice (Chapter 6) complicate notions of place to account for
how people learn through participating in social practices, settings, and institutions over time.
These theories help to anchor the different views, from contextual to formal, across the
continuum of how people learn to be language teachers.
3
How people become language teachers: defining background
knowledge
Teacher personality traits mean much more than mere academic ability.
(Bligh, 2012)
Two views—that people are ‘born’ with the qualities that make them ‘good’ teachers or that
‘teachers are made’ through professional study and preparation—are broadly held opposing
social opinions about how people become teachers. They are complicated by the fact that
people teach languages that they have learned through social participation and growing up;
they likewise teach languages that they have formally learned in school. This chapter uses
these two positions to frame issues of background knowledge in language teaching. Three
national teacher-recruitment initiatives—the Japan English Teaching Program, the English
Program in Korea, and the Chilean Centro de Voluntarios—are taken as examples of how
background knowledge features in policy interventions in English language teaching.
Two views of background knowledge

The debate over whether people are born or made as teachers underlies many social and
policy debates about how people learn to teach. Stripped of the rhetoric of newspaper
opinion pieces and internet blog posts, these are two views of the nature of background
knowledge—what people have and bring to the teacher learning process. Teacher education
plays a different role depending on how this background knowledge is defined and
understood. The two positions, born and made, become more complex in language teaching
because of how language can be learned, and its nature as a classroom subject, discussed in
Chapter 2.
The ‘born expertise’ position

At its core, the ‘teachers are born’ position is that teaching is a matter of personal qualities, of
disposition and attitude, of openness and engagement, combined with interpersonal attributes
like empathy and humor. The argument is that some people seem to be more naturally
equipped with these qualities than others. The ‘teachers are made’ position is that preparation
and training are the only way individuals develop the knowledge and skills needed to teach
effectively. In the ‘born’ position, background knowledge is something individuals have and
bring to the classroom to make them successful as teachers. In the ‘made’ position, the
knowledge has to be developed over time with training and support. This dichotomy has
echoes of the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debates in the social sciences, and the role of heredity and
innate qualities versus learning. Both dichotomies help to tease apart what individuals bring
to a social practice, in this case teaching, by distinguishing between idiosyncratic, individual
capacity and learned ability.
Generally speaking, the ‘born’ versus ‘made’ debate is not particularly noteworthy. The
debate reflects some of the popular perceptions that underlie policy debates about quality in
teaching and teacher education, as well as assumptions about how teachers are selected,
prepared, and supported. However, it does connect to language teaching and to teacher
education in several ways. In language teaching, the ‘born’ position embeds ‘nativeness’ and
caring as attributes of teachers’ background knowledge, while the ‘made’ position counters
that teacher preparation and development are critical. Each position can play out in hiring
decisions and new teacher induction, and each can be found in national policies on ELT
recruitment.
‘Teachers are born’

The following column from a major American newspaper outlines the ‘teachers are born’
position:
(1) I suspect that a successful teacher-training program produces good teacher candidates
because of the personal characteristics of the prospective teachers it admits and graduates.
Indeed, I have begun to suspect that most of what goes into making a successful K-12 teacher
is in place before the teacher-to-be becomes a kindergarten student. I would say that a good
teacher is born (with the right genes) and raised (in the right household), rather than ‘trained’
or ‘educated.’
(2) Pure academic intelligence (whatever that might be) is probably the least important
characteristic in an effective K–12 teacher. Certainly there are plenty of extremely bright
teachers, but teacher contributions to K–12 students are not influenced much by pure teacher
academic ability.
(3) Teacher personality traits (humane motivations, patience, sensitivity, tolerance for many
circumstances that most people cannot tolerate) mean much more than mere academic ability.
K–12 teaching is more of a nurturing role than an intellectual role.
(Bligh, 2012)
These are central features of the ‘teachers are born’ view: that key qualities are innate (point
1), that academic knowledge is less important than these qualities (point 2), and that
personality is the main attribute (point 3). Background knowledge in this view comes from
who the individual is.
On this basis, the writer argues that selection—choosing who can enter and who can
graduate from teacher preparation programs—is key to teaching quality:
(4) I wish that all teacher training programs would simply acknowledge that the most
important thing they do to produce effective teachers is deciding (a) who they let into the
program and (b) who they let graduate. If well-chosen teacher candidates are able to
demonstrate that they are smart enough to graduate from college, their success in the K-12
classroom will be directly proportional to the quality of students they are given to teach.
(Bligh, 2012)
If background knowledge in teaching is a matter of innate personality, then it follows that
selection is the critical decision. The final assertion—that teacher success is a function of
‘the quality of students they are given to teach’—offers an out though, by saying in essence
that in spite of the qualities of personality, teachers may achieve ‘proportional’ results.
There are several interesting aspects to the construction of this argument. It begins with the
assumption that birth and upbringing, ‘a good teacher is born (with the right genes) and raised
(in the right household)’, provide the basis of teaching. On its face, this seems to be a rather
preposterous assumption; however the second point, that teaching does not depend on
‘academic intelligence’, operationalizes and reinforces the first point. If ‘the right genes and
the right household’ qualify a person to teach, then it is who you are and not what you know as
a teacher that leads to effective instruction. Which leads to the third assertion, the most
central to the ‘teachers are born’ argument, that ‘personality traits mean much more than mere
academic ability’ in making ‘effective’ teachers.
The ‘made over time’ position

The counter-argument, that ‘teachers are made’, is generally articulated in print and in the
blogosphere by people connected to education, which is probably not surprising. In a
newspaper opinion piece titled ‘Op-ed: Good teachers are made, not born’, a teachers’ union
president writes:
Some people think that good teachers are born; educators know that good teachers are made.
They are made over time, through education, perseverance, practice and guidance. Newly
minted teachers may be shiny and bright, but teachers with experience connect with students.
They are the coin of the realm for student achievement. It takes time to get from here to there.
(Knapp, 2012)
The writer goes on to assert that classroom teaching improves by ‘Supporting teachers in the
tough job of continuously learning the craft of teaching.’
This is the ‘teachers are made’ position: Teaching takes time to learn well; it requires
personal commitment and application to do so and thus the learning process needs
mechanisms of socio-professional support. It follows from this position that training
continues from induction into ongoing professional development, as a new teacher coach
describes:
‘Effective teachers are indeed MADE.’ Even those who are born with the talent to teach have
to be provided numerous opportunities for … reflection. Quality induction programs
proactively address the challenging realities that teachers face … [and] are a catalyst for the
… growth of beginning teachers even when obstacles persist. (Monteiro, 2013, original
emphasis)
In this view, since knowledge is developed from experience over time, logically teacher
education must be a continuing process matched to the individual’s evolving needs for input
and support. Therein lies the crux of the difference between the two opinions about how
people become teachers. In the ‘born’ view, background knowledge comes from who the
person is; it is brought to teaching. In the ‘made’ view, background knowledge comes from
doing the work; it is developed through professional feedback and reinforcement.
The shared premise of experience

These are the two competing positions. If teachers are born, teaching becomes fundamentally
a matter of personality assembled through life experience. This ‘born expertise’ is largely
beyond the reach of professional training, which proponents say may even interfere with its
innate character and natural development. If on the other hand, teachers are made, teaching
becomes a complex set of knowledge and skills, which are assembled through experience
with training as well as professional support. As polemical as the two positions can be, they
share a common core premise: that background knowledge is connected to experience. Both
positions take experience as the basis of effective classroom teaching practice; they differ
over what is meant by ‘experience’ and how that experience is gained.
In the born expertise view, experience is a by-product of living, starting from birth and
rearing, and continuing through schooling and growing up. In school, it is the experience of
the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie, 1975); in life, experience equates to who you are
and what you have done (as it did when I was first hired to teach French). Alternatively,
experience is a term for the know-how that is made over time. It is the experience of doing the
work of teaching coupled with the experience of learning from it. Experience does not simply
convert into pedagogical knowledge by itself, however. Preparation, training, and on-the-job
support all contribute to the process of locating and learning from experience. In fact, the
made over time position traces problems in teaching quality to gaps or deficits in training and
professional support, while the born expertise position attributes these problems to selecting
teachers with the wrong kinds of life experience, and permitting them to teach.
Dewey and experience

Arguments about experience as background knowledge in teaching are usually traced to John
Dewey, who argued that there are two dimensions: one is acting which creates experience;
the other is undergoing or ‘experiencing’ something (1916, p. 163). But he notes, ‘A
separation of the active doing phase from the passive undergoing phase destroys the vital
meaning of experience’ (p. 177). As Dewey’s point suggests, the ‘born/made’ dichotomy blurs
how people learn from acting and undergoing experience, which both play a part in
background knowledge. Those, like the newspaper writer quoted earlier, who favor innate
qualities in the making of teachers would probably allow that people do learn from the
experience of teaching over time. By the same token, those who argue in favor of professional
learning, like the Op-ed writer, would agree that there are some aspects of teaching and the
teacher’s persona that probably cannot be explicitly trained. However, they would not accept
that ‘good’ teachers stand or fall simply on the basis of these aspects of personality and
background.
The difference becomes salient in how the two positions view teacher education. The born
expertise position would not accept that learning from experience is an efficient or effective
way to improve what a teacher does. Individuals cannot be taught to teach because conscious
preparation cannot take the place of what proponents see as the basic human qualities that
undergird teaching. The opposite is the case for the know-how made over time position.
People learn to teach through formally organized teacher education that starts with
preparation and induction, and continues throughout the individual’s teaching career through
continuous professional development. Ironically perhaps, I experienced both points of view
in my own entry into the field.
Narrative 3.1: A personal perspective

In retrospect, I can see how the ‘born or made’ debate characterized my start as a
language teacher. I was initially hired, as I explained in the first chapter, based on who I
was and the experiences I brought to the job and not on the basis of any kind of teacher
preparation. I had studied and worked in the country where the language I was to teach,
French, was spoken. In this sense, I entered teaching based on my attributed ‘born
expertise’. That background knowledge was not enough, however. What kept me in the job
was the possibility that I could get better at what I barely knew how to do when I started.
This learning was feasible because there was some sort of know-how involved in teaching
that I could make my own over time. While I had no formal induction as a new teacher, I
was fortunate to work with colleagues who were deeply interested in teaching. From those
interactions, I began to dissect my experiences, to build my know-how, and to make
teaching my own.
These arguments about whether teachers are ‘born’ or ‘made’—like so many generic
education debates in the popular sphere—can seem separate from language teaching and
second language teacher education; they are not, however. The debate anchors central
assumptions about who is employed to teach English, how their qualifications are
documented and assessed, and how teacher preparation and development can improve
classroom language teaching. The debate is helpful in exposing some of what tends to be
taken for granted in policies and practices in English language teaching, in particular,
assumptions that connect to how teaching language differs from teaching other content areas.
How does the content, and its perceived availability and value, figure in the ‘born or made’
argument? For many people, teaching calculus or auto mechanics or Renaissance history, for
example, do not depend entirely on the teacher’s personality; a person is not simply born into
teaching these things. So even in the popular mind, content does matter to some degree, and it
is fair to argue that teachers of these (and other similar subjects areas) are made through
mastering the content they teach. In contrast, there are certainly widespread perceptions that
minding young children or helping adults learn to read, or giving swimming lessons, for
example, are teaching that can be done fairly well by someone with the proper disposition
and commitment to the work. Someone who is caring and nurturing can mind young children;
someone who is able to read can help others do so; a person who is able to swim is able to
give swimming lessons. These types of teaching seem to reinforce the ‘born’ position. The
question is where does teaching language fall on this spectrum? Is it like teaching someone
how to repair cars or to swim? Is it more like teaching someone calculus or caring for
children? Language, as a content to be taught, blurs these distinctions because it can be both.
Language content, ‘nativeness’, and ‘born expertise’

In language teaching, the ‘born expertise’ perspective surfaces in notions of ‘nativeness’ and
of being a ‘native speaker’ as the primary qualification for teaching. In recruitment
advertisements, hiring policies, job entry criteria, and selection processes for teacher training
courses, the term ‘native-speaking ability’ is used as a proxy for content expertise. The term
‘native-speaking’ stands for a complex set of social experiences that are seen as background
knowledge one is born into. These attributes of being a so-called ‘native’ to a particular
language are a function of the sociolinguistic environments in which a person grew up and
was educated, in other words, of the individual’s life experiences. To paraphrase the
columnist who argued that teachers are ‘born’: ‘a good teacher is born (with the right
[language] genes) and raised (in the right [linguistic] household’ [italics added]. In this
sense, ‘nativeness’ is a social perception, a de facto qualification attributed through
experience. It is a geopolitical judgment that cannot be measured in a psychometric sense.
The fact that individuals come by languages in various ways, through undergoing
experiences, to use Dewey’s distinction, is central to the complexity of content in language
teaching. Although the majority of those teaching languages, including English, have learned
them directly, usually through formal education, the idea of ‘nativeness’ continues to impact
many levels of policy and practice, particularly in English language teaching. The
sociopolitics of this concept of ‘nativeness’ have been well addressed elsewhere (see Braine,
2010; Davies, 1991; Phillipson, 1992; Singh, 1998); the issue here is how the ‘born’ vs.
‘made’ debate takes on a particular nuance and meaning in language teaching, particularly in
the case of English.
ELT programs and the notion of ‘born expertise’

In language teaching, and particularly in ELT, ‘nativeness’ can function as an ideology to
establish policies for reform (Hutton, 2010). Three national programs, which share the policy
goal of improving public-sector English language teaching, illustrate this point. The programs
have the common aim of bringing fluent, usually young, English-speakers most of whom are
not formally trained as teachers, into the national school system for a limited period of time.
‘Nativeness’ is a central criterion for selecting these individuals in the Japan Exchange and
Teaching (or ‘JET’) Program, the English Program in Korea (‘EPIK’), and the Chilean
government’s Centro de Voluntarios. Features in the procedures for identifying, recruiting,
and selecting participants for these three programs demonstrate the complexities and
contradictions of implementing the notion of born expertise at the level of national policy.
Japan English Teaching (JET Program)

Established in 1987, the JET Program is the oldest of the three and has had the largest number
of participants (some 55,000 to date). The program also has the broadest educational remit:
… [to] help enhance internationalization in Japan by promoting mutual understanding between
Japan and other nations. The program also aims to improve foreign language education in
Japan and to encourage international exchange at the local level by fostering ties between
Japanese youth and foreign youth.
(JET Program, 2014a)
The other two programs have a narrower remit, focusing exclusively on English language
teaching. The EPIK Program was started in 1995; its goal is to ‘improve the English speaking
abilities of students and teachers in Korea, to foster cultural exchanges, and to reform English
teaching methodologies in Korea’ (English Program in Korea, 2014). The Chilean
government’s Centro de Voluntarios, which was started in 2004 as part of the English Opens
Doors Program and has hosted 1,822 ‘volunteer’ teachers, has a similar aim.
Program entry criteria

English language proficiency is central to each of these governmentally sponsored teaching
programs. In the JET Program, participants can apply for one of three roles (Assistant
Language Teachers, Coordinators for International Relations, or Sports Exchange Advisors),
but only the application for Assistant Language Teachers (known as ‘ALTs’), ‘who provide
language instruction in elementary, junior and senior high schools,’ includes eligibility
criteria related to the applicant’s mother tongue. These criteria are stated in linguistic terms:
Be adept in contemporary standard pronunciation, rhythm and intonation in the designated
language (e.g. English for those applying from English-speaking countries) and possess
excellent language ability that can be applied accurately and appropriately; have ability to
compose sentences logically. (JET Program, 2014a)
These linguistic criteria are geographically defined. An ALT applicant must:
Be a national … of the country where the recruitment and selection procedures take place… .
Those who possess dual nationality with Japan must renounce their Japanese nationality
before [applying]. Applicants who have dual nationality with countries other than Japan may
only apply as a national of one of those countries.
(JET Program, 2014a)
Part of this rather elaborate requirement seems to be administrative, based on the fact that the
program is a governmental one and its recruitment is administered through Japanese
embassies and consulates on behalf of Japanese municipal governments and sponsoring
organizations. Nevertheless, these interlocking criteria illustrate the gymnastics of basing
program recruitment on nativeness. Achieving this definition of born expertise in this instance
seems to depend on residency rather than linguistic criteria.
Selection
In 2013, the JET Program listed 4,372 participants from 40 countries, just under half of which
have English as an official language. As the top five sending countries, Australia, Canada,
Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States accounted for 89 percent of the
participants. In 2013, 91 percent (4,000 people) of these were listed as Assistant Language
Teachers, making it the main focus of the program. Of those 4,000 Assistant Language
Teachers, 3,723 (93 percent) were listed as coming from the five countries listed above.
The JET Program requires tertiary education to the Bachelor’s degree level, though ‘a
Bachelor’s Degree in any field is sufficient to meet the eligibility criteria’, but ALT
applicants are not expected to have preparation in language teaching although it ‘will be an
asset during the selection process’. (JET Program, 2014b) These selection criteria illustrate
the tension in ‘born vs. made’ views of background knowledge as based on the applicant’s
life experience, but ‘improved’ with some formal training. The selection process for Assistant
Language Teachers in the JET Program has attempted to express a judgment of nativeness in
broadly linguistic terms, while also using geographical and educational background criteria
as a baseline.
English Program in Korea (EPIK)

The EPIK Program in contrast appears more straightforward. By combining geography and
citizenship with specific educational experience, the program defines its eligibility criteria
purely in terms of ‘born expertise’. Applicants must hold citizenship of:
[A] country where English is the primary language; … [which includes] one of the following
countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States or South
Africa; [and] must have studied from the junior high level (7th Grade) and graduated from a
university in one of [these] seven … countries.
(EPIK, 2014)
These criteria, which are expressed in geographic terms, are arguably much clearer. There is
a certain geo-linguistic naiveté in assuming that all citizens of these countries are fluent in
English by having attended university there, however. That an applicant might have gone to a
French-medium university in Canada or studied in one of other national languages in South
Africa for example, and more importantly might consider a language other than English as
their first language, does not seem to be part of the selection calculus.
Centro de Voluntarios
Like the EPIK Program, the Chilean Centro de Voluntarios program uses nativeness as the
proxy for background knowledge, although their selection statement acknowledges blurriness
in the criteria. The goal of the Chilean program is described as ‘bring[ing] native and near-
native English speakers, between the ages of 21 and 35 years, into Chilean public and
subsidized schools to develop the listening and speaking skills of young Chileans as well as
to encourage cultural exchange’. (EOD, 2014) The program is part of a larger educational
policy initiative known as English Opens Doors Program, which aims to ‘increase the
English proficiency of Chilean students and teachers of English as an indispensible skill to
aid in Chile’s continued development in our globalizing world’ (EOD, 2014). The website
offers details of the roles that volunteers can play, which interface with other student-focused
activities such as summer and winter intensive English language camps and national speaking
contests.
Implementing ‘born expertise’ as a policy

These three national programs aim to introduce English language and cultural resources into
the public-sector system to improve student outcomes. They are instances of designing and
implementing national policies based on the notion of ELT background knowledge as ‘born
expertise’. These national policies are not isolated in valuing nativeness in this manner,
however. The programs also are part of efforts to maintain a competitive position for public
education vis-à-vis the private sector ELT industry. (Both the JET and EPIK websites include
information to potential applicants about how their programs compare to private sector
employment in their respective countries.)
The three programs are based on two interrelated premises. As stated in each programs’
goals, the background knowledge needed to support and improve English-language learning
outcomes comes from teachers socio-geographic identities; in other words the expertise these
individuals are ‘born into’. This goal is implemented through eligibility criteria expressed in
primarily geographic terms. This background knowledge is developed through the applicant’s
life experiences. Separating geography and life experience can be tricky as, for example, in
the EPIK Program’s caveat concerning ‘Ethnic Koreans’ who wish to apply: ‘Koreans with
legal residency in a country where English is the primary language can apply, but must
provide proof of English education beginning from the junior high school level’ (EPIK,
2014). None of the programs explicitly seeks individuals with ELT preparation; ‘know-how
made over time’ is here understood as life experience, not as professional training.
The entry criteria for these three programs show how the notion of background knowledge
as ‘born expertise’ survives in language teaching; English is a particular example. The proxy
for this expertise is the idea of nativeness, which, as the criteria for these programs show, is
basically indefinable and therefore contradictory to implement.
Two theorizations of teacher learning

Knowledge propositions and implicit theorizations
As views of how people learn to teach languages, born expertise and know-how made over
time shape second language teacher education although they are rarely fully described. To use
a metaphor from computing, each view is like an operating system that runs programs—
commonly adopted policies and practices in language teaching and second language teacher
education. As operating systems, the views of born expertise and know-how made over time
can cross over, but they mainly function independently as sociopolitical views of background
knowledge and teacher learning.
As implicit ways of defining background knowing in language teaching, the views share
key features (see Table 3.1 below). Each one starts from a knowledge proposition, which
defines what a language teacher knows in order to teach. Each view has a learning
proposition that describes how people come by the background knowledge. And each has a
delivery proposition about how professional learning works for teacher education. These are
propositions in several meanings of the word. They take positions, grounded in opinions and
judgments of social practice and experience, on what language teachers know and how they
come to know it. They remain opinions, however, because even though each proposition
could be investigated, none of them has been comprehensively tested.
Knowledge needed to How it is learned and How learning/teaching
teach taught is delivered
Born expertise ‘Nativeness’ ‘Born (the right genes) Social and individual
and raised (the right experience in training
household)’ (Bligh, and teaching settings
2012)
Know-how made over Particular knowledge, ‘Through education, Sequenced instruction
time skills, and dispositions perseverance, practice and evaluation
and guidance’ (Bligh,
2012)
Table 3.1 What language teachers need to know, how it is learned, and how that learning is
organized—Version 1
As a typology, the three propositions—about the knowledge needed to teach, how it is

learned and taught, and how that learning/teaching is organized and delivered—make visible
the underlying thinking in these views.
There are always risks and limitations in summarizing complex ideas in a few words in a
table, but laying these two views out in a comparative typology can help to identify how each
contributes to defining educating second language teachers. Beyond teasing out what may be
underlying problematic thinking and assumptions (the presumption of nativeness for instance),
this greater explicitness can contribute to stronger, more coherent research and more efficient
program design.
Language as content knowledge comes through two forms of experience: a person can be born
and socialized into it or can learn it through school. These two types of experiential
foundation pit an accidental trajectory against an intentional path. They are two views of
background knowledge in teaching: people grow into it through born expertise, or the
knowledge is consciously developed through formal training as know-how made over time. In
language teaching, the born expertise view leads to what is colloquially called nativeness or
being a native speaker, a concept that is inherently indefinable in either epistemological or
psychometric terms, as the policies of the three national teaching programs discussed above
demonstrate. The know-how made over time argument, which emphasizes learning language
content as a schooled subject, reflects the realities of the majority of the ELT teachers
globally. However, it foregrounds issues of how that content is defined and disseminated that
center on the role of academic disciplines and institutions in these processes.
4
Disciplinary transmission in second language teacher education
Education is a field of study, a locus containing phenomena, events, institutions, problems,

persons, and processes which [are] the raw material for inquiries of many kinds. The
perspectives and procedures of many disciplines can be brought to bear on the questions
… in … education as a field of study.
Shulman (1996, p. 3; original italics)
This chapter examines two aspects of second language teacher education: how disciplinary
terms are set and how those terms are put in circulation. Setting the terms involves the role of
academic disciplines in defining the content and the processes of language teacher
preparation. Circulating them involves how the professional communities that articulate and
use these ideas come about. Together these aspects are referred to here as disciplinary
transmission.
Setting the terms—disciplinary hybrids

The word ‘terms’ is used in two senses. It means a group of labels or words and it also means
the conditions or bases of an activity. It is used here in both senses, first to refer to the terms
or social facts of second language teacher education and then to ways in which those social
facts have become a professional vernacular, which is the basis of ELT. This play on the
word ‘term’, is part of a larger argument about education as a field or a discipline that starts
from Shulman’s point above. He argues that since education is a field of study and not itself a
discipline, it depends on academic disciplines for its terms, its social facts. This relationship
with disciplines in turn shapes both the what and the how of teacher education.
Conventionally, new teachers need to learn their content area, which comes from a parent
academic discipline like mathematics, the natural sciences, or history, and they need to learn
how to teach that content to students. The conventional process does not map particularly
well onto second language teacher education, however. Since language as a classroom
subject matter does not have a parent discipline, the process of defining a set of social facts
as the basis for second language teacher education is complex and murky. Language teaching
has had to develop hybrid or specialized disciplinary bases, a process that starts with
determining its terms.
The terms of established academic disciplines are usually clearly recognizable. Biology,
economics, or history, for instance, each have specific ways of developing and presenting
knowledge, and each has its particular discourse—a way of talking, writing, and acting (Gee,
1990). Part of learning that content is accepting how the discipline works; this is, in a sense,
apprenticing in the discourse. School curricula are now emphasizing disciplinary literacies
(Ford & Forman, 2006), so that in science or history for example, students learn to think like
scientists (for example, Ford, 2008) or read and write like historians (for example, Wineburg,
Martin, & Monte-Sano, 2012). This approach works if the discipline is an established one,
which languages are not. They are associated with disciplines (their literatures and literary
studies) and they are subjects of common forms of analysis in linguistics, but English, French,
and Arabic are not themselves academic disciplines. Instead, languages depend on a hybrid
combination of discourses drawn from several areas.
Hybrid or specialized disciplines need specific terminology, which makes the process of
articulating ideas in extra- or interdisciplinary areas fraught with issues of borrowing
language to express them. The ideas themselves represent new or reworked approaches to the
core issues, but the terms need to come from somewhere, usually from the parent disciplines.
So interdisciplinary areas such as ecology, media studies, or neuroscience build new
discourses using terms and ways of thinking drawn from established disciplines. In language
teaching, the process is similar. Freudenstein writes about this process as he describes
translating Lado’s book, Language Teaching, into German in the early 1980s:
I opened a book entitled Language teaching, and I studied it literally word by word,
surrounded by dictionaries. These were not … helpful because Lado’s ideas and concepts,
his linguistic and psychological terminology, his pedagogical and methodological statements
could not always be expressed in the prevalent professional language …
(Freudenstein, 1985, p. 1)
Finding new words for new ideas

Although he writes about translating a text from English into German, Freudenstein is
describing a process of creating a vernacular for ELT as a new form of professional practice.
Developing a lingua franca out of terms from parent disciplines is challenging under any
circumstances. Conceptually it involves piecing together ideas to capture the activity—how
do concepts from psychology relate specifically to learning another language, for example?
Or how do models from structural linguistics connect to language as lesson content?
Semiotically, the process involves choosing the right words, as Freudenstein describes. There
are no direct referents in these disciplines for these things; it is a matter of finding the terms
that work.
Hybrids of a hybrid
Language teaching, and its counterpart second language teacher education, are hybrid
discourses; in a way, they are hybrids of a hybrid. As forms of education, and because
education is a field of study, they depend on parent disciplines. The disciplinary referents of
education are hybrids, as Shulman (1996) points out. They are sub-fields within the parent
disciplines—the economics, sociology, history, or philosophy of education for example.
Each of these hybrid fields uses the disciplinary lenses and warrants of evidence of the parent
to examine its particular aspects of education: ‘As each of these disciplinary perspectives is
brought to bear on the field of education, it brings with it its own set of concepts, methods,
and procedures, often modifying them to fit the problems or phenomena of education’
(Shulman, 1996, p. 3). This is how education as a field borrows from other disciplines to
create its social facts. For example, the notion of ‘valued-added measures of student
learning’, which looks at the comparative contribution of teaching in ‘adding value’ to student
learning from one grade level to the next, is a hybrid term taken from economics that has
become a social fact in education as a way to explain student progression over time.
This first hybridity of education is compounded by a second one, the fact that language as
content is also a hybrid. Language does not translate easily or directly into content for
classroom teaching; when it goes to school, language is given attributes (grammar, levels,
skills, as argued in Chapter 2) to make it more teachable. These attributes come from parent
disciplines. Language teaching has drawn on several disciplines to establish itself as a formal
field of study and activity and to define its knowledge-base. The first of these were linguistics
and the literature of the target language. As a parent discipline, linguistics has played the role
of primary definer of content of language teaching, so that the conventional path of foreign-
language study, particularly at the tertiary level, has included studying grammar, vocabulary,
and language skills initially. Then, if language study continues at advanced levels, it usually
focuses on the language’s literature, and perhaps the history and culture of its speakers.
Linguistics and literature have been used to define language content from a disciplinary
perspective. Psychology has been the parent discipline that frames and articulates the
language learning process. However, neither parent fits particularly easily with language
teaching as an educational process, so that the translation process has led to new sub-areas
within these disciplines; to applied linguistics in the case of the content and to second
language acquisition in the case of the processes of language learning. Other disciplines have
contributed as well, for example history and anthropology in defining the content of language
teaching, and anthropology and sociology in understanding the language learning process. But
language teaching depends, as Table 4.1 summarizes, on a hybrid knowledge base to define
its content and explain how it is learned.
Content of language teaching How content is learned

Disciplinary bases Linguistics and Literature of/in Psychology
the language
Contributing disciplines History Anthropology Sociology Anthropology
(culture) (social learning)
Disciplinary hybrid Applied linguistics Second language acquisition
(application, see Application (specialization, see Application
and specialization) and specialization)
Table 4.1 The disciplinary hybrids of language teaching
The ACTFL standards as an example of disciplinary hybridity

Hybrid disciplinary definitions run through language teaching policy documents of all kinds.
An example is the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) statement of
foreign language standards, which begins by describing the learner and purposes for learning
a foreign language in school:
The purposes and uses of foreign languages are as diverse as the students who study them.
Some students study another language in hopes of finding a rewarding career in the
international marketplace or government service. Others are interested in the intellectual
challenge and cognitive benefits that accrue to those who master multiple languages. Still
others seek greater understanding of other people and other cultures. Many approach foreign
language study, as they do other courses, simply to fulfill a graduation requirement.
(ACTFL, 2014, p. 3)
Students have diverse reasons for studying any content (history as a prelude to the law;
mathematics or the sciences as a prelude to medicine, etc.) What makes language as content
different is that it can be immediately usable for any of the purposes listed in the ACTFL
document (and more besides); it is not a socio-professional prologue for further study.
Acknowledging and corraling the diversity of learners’ purposes sets the stage for articulating
standards for language as classroom content:
Regardless of the reason for study, foreign languages have something to offer everyone. It is
with this philosophy in mind that the standards task force identified five goal areas that
encompass all of these reasons: Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and
Communities—the five C’s of foreign language education.
(ACTFL, 2014, p. 3)
The ambiguity and multiplicity of purposes for learning drives the hybrid approach to using
the parent disciplines to frame the content. For example, the first area, Communication, draws
basic ideas from psychology, sociology, and anthropology (italicized below) and national
literatures (underlined below) to define the domain as content: ‘Communication is at the heart
of second language study, whether the communication takes place face-to-face, in writing,
or across centuries through the reading of literature’ (ACTFL, 2014: p.3). Similarly, the
second domain, Culture, draws from anthropology (italicized) and sociology (underlined):
‘Through the study of other languages, students gain a knowledge and understanding of the
cultures that use that language and, in fact, cannot truly master the language until they have
also mastered the cultural contexts in which the language occurs’ (ACTFL, 2014, p.3).
The ACTFL standards illustrate, on the level of disciplinary terms, the same process of
finding and borrowing words that Freudenstein (1985) described in translating Lado’s book
into German. It is how hybrid disciplines like language teaching and second language teacher
education have operated to establish themselves and their content.
Institutions, disciplines, and transmitting social facts

The first disciplinary hybrid in language teaching is defining language as content, as in the
ACTFL standards (or the Common European Framework of Reference, discussed in Chapter
5); the second is teaching itself. As part of education, teaching takes on the characteristics of
educations’ hybrid definitions. Trainees are asked, for example, to write about their
philosophies of teaching; they learn about the history of methods or the psychology of
language learning. In each instance, the terms of the first word (in italics) are applied to the
second terms in both senses, as specific concepts and as ways of thinking. This process
creates social facts—agreed upon explanations—for language teaching. As a new teacher, I
ran into these two levels of disciplinary hybridity, when I had to decide on classroom
materials.
Narrative 4.1: Glimpsing hybridity—which book to use?
After I was hired, one of my first tasks was to choose textbooks for the various levels of
French I would be teaching. Here again I ran into problems due to my lack of formal
training. The only textbooks I knew were the ones I’d used when I was in secondary school,
and these were infused with memories of irrelevance and lack of connection to the French
I’d needed and used when I went to France. I spent many hours in a well-known bookshop
in Boston that specialized in foreign language books. (This was well before the internet
and online research.) I also came across an educational materials catalogue from Quebec,
which included textbooks in mathematics and science, published in French. As I looked
over the textbooks I recognized in the bookshop, they seemed so dry and disconnected that
I was pretty discouraged and also a bit panicked. So I ordered samples from the Quebec
publisher in the hopes these would be more ‘realistic’ linguistically.
When the boxes arrived; they were enormous, packed full of student books for Grade 3
mathematics, a teacher’s guide, and various ancillary materials. They were fascinating,
but I immediately realized I had no idea how to use them to teach language. I was sure my
students would know the mathematics involved (after all it was from elementary school),
but how could I use these materials to help them to learn French? After wrestling with this
problem over several days, and facing the imminent start of the school year, I put the math
materials back in the box and ordered Mauger, Voix et Images de France (1953), the classic
text from the Alliance Française that I had used as a student in Grade 7. Lesson One
began, ‘C’est un stylo. Ce sont des stylos’ [This is a pen./These are pens.] and went on
from there. It wasn’t innovative, but at least I could recall how it was taught to me.
The struggle to choose curricular materials is emblematic of the challenges of hybridity. The
experience shows the levels of the challenge, defining language as classroom content, and
then defining how to teach it. On one level, the challenge is about how the content is
represented. The Mauger book is an example of the hybrid version of language content; it is
language that is essentially about itself. The Quebecois materials on the other hand are
disciplinary. They were about mathematics; the French language is about something else. On
another level, I saw the materials as a choice in role, between teaching French and using
French to teach mathematics, and I felt I knew how to teach French. My ‘apprenticeship of
observation’ (Lortie, 1975) in Grade 7, the socialization as a French language student,
equipped me (at least in my own mind) to be a teacher with the Mauger book. The experience
embodied the two levels of hybridity, in the book as content, and choosing it because I felt I
knew how to use it, which captured the ill-defined nature of teaching. The irony is that had I
been formally prepared as a French teacher, I might well have made the same choice. I might
have decided that I could teach language with the Mauger book. The difference being that I
would have had social facts of language teaching at my disposal to explain the choice and
how the carefully structured and sequenced French content would help my students to master
language patterns.
Institutions
In the midst of this hybridity, coherence comes from educational institutions: how they are
organized around disciplines, how they sustain them through research and dissemination, and
how they teach them. Arranged by academic department, with faculty dedicated to research
and service, tertiary institutions are the epistemological homes and social drivers of
disciplinary knowledge; teaching is a form of dissemination. The knowledge which is
presented to students in curricular sequences from beginning to advanced courses, can seem
immutable and permanent, but it is not. Disciplines are themselves dynamic social
agreements, communities of explanation that change over time:
Like any other social fact, disciplines are subject to change, albeit usually gradually and at
long intervals. Their relative stability is the precondition for societies to be able to
accumulate knowledge and at the same time to select and forget what is no longer relevant
when conditions have changed. Disciplines, like any other classificatory principle of
knowledge, have the function of mediating and directing social change.
(Weingart, 2010, p. 4)
Application and specialization

Scholars of higher education (Storer, 1967; Weingart, 2010) describe two processes through
which disciplines extend themselves: application, in which the knowledge is related to
phenomena outside the core of the discipline, and specialization, in which sub-areas are
defined within the parent. Both processes are ways of creating new disciplinary homes for the
knowledge needed in language teaching. Applied linguistics, as the name suggests, was an
‘applied’ version of the ‘pure’ science, linguistics. Second language acquisition came about
through specialization. Ellis (2008, p. 41) describes the drivers, ‘One concerned the need to
investigate the claims of competing theories. The other concerned the desire to improve L2
pedagogy.’ To develop the specialization, proponents took the sub-area in psychology of first
language acquisition as the point of departure (see Wong-Filmore & Snow, 2000). That sub-
field focused on children learning their home or mother tongue, outside instructed settings;
second language acquisition shifted the focus over time to adult learners who were studying
second languages in classrooms.
Knowledge transmission/knowledge construction

The contribution of parent disciplines to defining what teachers need to know is a dynamic
and messy one in all subject areas. In language teaching, the process has been one of
application and specialization, driven by the hybrid nature of the content and the goal of
teaching it. The academic communities, their social structures and interactions, shape the
process of definition as much as the ideas themselves. The end game is dissemination, and
transmission is the main mechanism. As a term, ‘knowledge transmission’ comes from studies
of organizational behavior, although it is associated with didactic forms of teaching in
schools as well. Defined broadly, knowledge transmission, also called ‘knowledge transfer’,
is ‘the process through which one unit is affected by the experience of another. This definition
is similar to definitions of transfer at the individual level of analysis in cognitive psychology’
(Argote & Ingram, 2000, p. 151). The definition differs somewhat from the way in which
transmission is used in education, where it describes a process of conveying information or
content to learners, and tends to be contrasted with knowledge construction.
The contrast between transmitting versus constructing is instructive. The term ‘knowledge
construction’ refers to the work of psychologist Jean Piaget, who argued against behaviorist
views of learning prevalent in the 1950s, like the Audio-Lingual Direct Method discussed in
Chapter 7. In studying young children, Piaget concluded that portraying their learning simply
as mastering patterned behavior through stimulus and response was inadequate; rather it
seemed clear that learners were contributing in the process by constructing their individual
understandings. Piaget’s followers, and others in cognitive psychology, referred to this
process as ‘knowledge construction’.
The differentiation between knowledge transmission and knowledge construction has
persisted in educational thinking, with an interesting twist. Usually knowledge transmission
is used about forms of teaching like lecturing and other types of highly directive, didactic
presentation of material; by extension the term is applied to the institutional teaching–learning
structures that facilitate this type of teaching. Knowledge transmission is used about teaching.
Knowledge construction is used, in contrast, about how people learn either individually,
after Piaget, or within social contexts (as discussed in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6). It describes
learners and their activities. In this equation then, teacher learning is often referred to as a
process of knowledge construction; teacher education designs, as the flip side, often depend
on knowledge transmission.
Teacher education
As a view of how teachers are taught, knowledge transmission has two parts. First, there
needs to be a recognized set of agreed-upon knowledge and skills (and more recently also of
dispositions), which is the knowledge base. Broadly speaking, this foundation defines
teaching as a social, professional, and educational form of activity. In teaching language,
these definitions have changed over time, as communities have used language for different
ends, as discussed in Chapter 9 and Chapter 10. Underlying the knowledge base is the
premise that preparing teachers according to its contents will support more effective
instruction. Teachers who explicitly know and draw from the knowledge base, so the
argument goes, are likely to be more effective in teaching and therefore in creating desired
student learning outcomes.
The second part is that this knowledge base can best be learned through explicit instruction
or training, the outcomes of which can be documented and evaluated. To educate teachers, and
other professionals like doctors, architects, lawyers, etc., the knowledge base is taught
through a mixture of transmission and organized practice. Induction into the profession
depends on individuals mastering its knowledge base and demonstrating that mastery in
practice. Together these ideas—of a socially established knowledge base that is learned
through professional training and can be demonstrated in practice—structure
professionalization in a field; teaching languages operates in basically the same way.
Disciplinary communities and their vernaculars

Both the processes of knowledge transmission and construction depend on social facts, truths
about the world that are shared by certain communities. Academic disciplines function as
communities to generate and sustain social facts, which they use to explain what they do. Each
discipline is, in this way, its own community of explanation. Individuals enter a community by
learning its disciplinary vernacular, so that they can talk, write, and act as its other
participants do. Being a member means talking the walk and walking the talk of the discipline
as a community of explanation. Knowledge transmission is a way to induct new members into
the community; knowledge construction is a way to describe the flip side of the induction
process, how participants learn the vernacular of the disciplinary community. The vernacular,
and the processes of transmission and construction, depend, however, on there being an
established set of social facts, which depends on there being a recognized discipline that
defines the knowledge base. This is the challenge for language teaching and for second
language teacher education as its means of induction.
It is the challenge Freudenstein describes of trying to find terms in German to translate
Lado’s Language Teaching. The social facts, ‘Lado’s ideas and concepts, his linguistic and
psychological terminology, his pedagogical and methodological statements’, Freudenstein
(1985, p. 1) said, ‘… could not always be expressed in the prevalent professional language
of that time.’ He is describing the evolution of general language into a professional discourse,
which involves recasting knowledge according to new or changing disciplinary needs and
constraints, what Weingart (2010, p. 4) described earlier as ‘mediating and directing social
change.’ Developing a disciplinary vernacular, while it may feel somewhat random, is a
powerful process; it determines what counts (and therefore what doesn’t count) as the social
facts in the community of explanation. As participants in the evolving discourse community,
the users of the vernacular put new social facts into circulation to articulate the core concerns
of the new area of activity.
This vernacular development process can seem more theoretical than concrete, however.
One place to see it happening is in the ebb and flow of topics and speakers at professional
meetings. Bazerman took this approach in researching the evolution of scientific discourse
through the Proceedings of the British Royal Society in the middle of the 19th century.
I found that I could not understand what constituted an appropriate text in any discipline
without considering the social and intellectual activity which the text was part of… .
Moreover, the rhetorical gist of entire texts evoked the larger framework of meanings within
the active disciplines… . I couldn’t see what a text was doing without looking at the worlds
in which these texts served as significant activity.
(Bazerman, 1988, p. 4)
New social facts emerge, as Bazerman describes, when participants come together in
conferences or other meetings, which create socio-professional occasions to use the new
language (or familiar language in new ways). The people using new vernacular are visible in
the conference proceedings, but the language itself is more difficult to capture and to track.
The participants offer a concrete trail to locate the new community as it develops.
Putting the terms in circulation: a tale of two conferences
Two sets of professional meetings, which played seminal roles in building the knowledge
base and social facts of second language teacher education, offer such concrete trails. The
Georgetown University Roundtables on Languages and Linguistics have convened annually
since the late 1940s to address topics in linguistics, education, and language teaching. During
the 1980s and 1990s, teacher education was the topic of a series of these Roundtables. The
Hong Kong Conferences on Second Language Teacher Education convened biannually in the
early 1990s as specialized meetings focused on research and theorizing in the field. These
two conferences shared three key characteristics that underscore how the proponents and the
vernacular are interwoven in an emerging knowledge base. Both conferences were convened
at universities under the leadership of senior academics, each widely recognized in the field.
These individuals organized the topics and played a key role in choosing the conference
speakers. The curated nature of these events made for continuity in participation, which
strengthened the community of explanation generating and using the new vernacular about
second language teacher education. The third shared feature is that each conference resulted
in published proceedings, usually within a year after the meetings. Publication in the pre-
electronic times of the early 1990s, was key to wider dissemination of the ideas, and one year
was a very rapid turn around. All of the presented papers could—and usually did—appear in
the conference proceedings, which meant that once accepted to speak, there was minimal
editorial vetting of content.
The Georgetown University Roundtables on Languages and Linguistics

Started in 1949 under the auspices of Georgetown University’s School of Languages and
Linguistics, the GURT Roundtables are held annually to ‘bring … together distinguished
linguists from around the world to explore the newest trends and theories in linguistics and
language education’ (Georgetown University Round Tables on Languages and Linguistics,
2014). They are relatively small meetings, often of no more than a few hundred people, and
are usually organized as plenary sessions so that everyone could hear from all the speakers.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the Roundtables were organized, and primarily curated, by the
School’s Dean, James Alatis. Alatis was at the time also the first executive director of the
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), discussed in Chapter 10. In
these two roles, he was familiar with that socio-professional community as both a potential
source of participants and as an audience for the new thinking that the conferences were
promulgating.
Four Roundtables during the 1980s and early 1990s focused specifically on the new
knowledge base of ELT and second language teacher education. The 1983 Roundtable,
‘Applied linguistics and the preparation of second language teachers: Towards a rationale’
(Alatis, Stern & Strevens, 1983), was followed by three successive Roundtables in the early
1990s: ‘Linguistics, language teaching, and language acquisition: The interdependence of
theory, practice, and research’ (Alatis, 1990), ‘Linguistics and language pedagogy: The state
of the art’ (Alatis, 1991), and ‘Educational linguistics, cross-cultural communication and
global interdependence’ (Alatis, 1994). Together these meetings illustrate how a community
of explanation can coalesce around new ideas to develop them as social facts.
Continuity in participation
There was an interesting continuity in both the content and the presenters in these four
meetings, reflecting an evolving community in second language teacher education. The four
Roundtables averaged 37 papers each, ranging from a high of 44 in 1991 to a low of 28 in
1994. These differences could be attributed to many factors—interest in the topic, individual
speaker’s availability, and available funding, among others—so the numbers are probably not
significant in themselves. The patterns of participation tell a more useful story, however.
Although it fluctuated as a percent of the whole, the number of papers presented by faculty
from the host institution, Georgetown University, was relatively stable (averaging 33 papers
per meeting) across the four meetings. But interestingly, there were no papers from the host
institution at the first Roundtable in 1983. Table 4.2 below summarizes the speakers who
were invited to these four Roundtables:
1983 1990 1991 1994

Total numbers of papers (average = 37) 36 38 44 28
Of which the number of papers from host university 0 6 (16%) 4 (9%) 5 (18°
%)
Working total 36 32 40 23
(Total less host institution; average = 33)
New presenters — 25 31 16
(78%) (77%) (69%)
Of which the number of presenters from outside the US 14 6 (24%) 8 (26%) 10
(39%) (62%)
Of which the number from ‘BANA’ countries (Holliday, 10 5 (83%) 3 (37%) 2 (20%)
1994a) (71%)
Table 4.2 GURT presenters: 1983, 1990, 1991, and 1994
In this basic analysis, the table uses a denominator, or working total, which is the total
number of invited papers less those presented by faculty from the host institution. This is
simply a crude attempt to create a common basis for comparison, and is in no way meant to
minimize the contributions of speakers. It is based on the rationale that those from outside
institutions have to travel to participate. By this same reasoning, the table also distinguishes
the number of presenters from outside the United States, which ranged from 62 percent (in
1994) to 24 percent (in 1990). A possible explanation for the high in 1994 could be the topic,
which linked educational linguistics to cross-cultural communication and global
interdependence. The number of non-US-based participants is also broken down into the
number who came from Australasia, Britain, or North America, the rationale being that these
so-called ‘BANA’ countries (Holliday, 1994a) were centers of the Anglophone disciplinary
traditions, and might be expected as immediate members of the community of explanation. To
see participation expand beyond these BANA countries might suggest a widening of the new
community.
What does all this suggest about the emerging vernacular community of the new knowledge
base in the pre-internet era? In some senses, it could be a picture found in many academic
meetings, of either well established or new explanatory communities. The number of papers
presented by speakers mostly from the United States, the host country, is relatively stable.
Some patterns forming the community surface among repeat speakers who were invited to
more than one of the Roundtables. Taking the 1983 Roundtable as a point of comparison, the
number of repeat presenters in subsequent years was 22 percent in 1990 and 1991, rising to
30 percent in 1994, which was a smaller event. In 1991, six of the nine repeat presenters had
spoken at the previous year’s Roundtable in 1990, while three had spoken at the 1983
Roundtable. In 1994, there were repeat presenters from several years: one presenter from
1990 only; three from 1991 only; and two had spoken at multiple years’ meetings. Only one
person, Professor Jack C. Richards, was invited to speak at all four Roundtables. Table 4.3
outlines the continuity in speakers and institutions across the four Roundtables.
Roundtable dates 1983 1990 1991 1994

Working total (Total papers less those 36 32 40 23
from host institution)
New presenters — 28 (78%) 31 (77%) 16 (69%)
Total repeat presenters from previous — 7A (22%) 9B (22%) 7C (30%)
GURTs
Of which the number were presenters — — 3 (33%) 1
from all previous years
Number of institutions with more than 2D 2E 3F 0
one presenter
A All from 1983 D University of Hawaii; University of Southern California
B 6 from 1990 E Carnegie Mellon University; University of Michigan
C 1 from 1990 only; 3 from 1991 only; F School for International Training; University of
2 from multiple years Southern California, Los Angeles; University of Texas,
Austin
Table 4.3 Continuity in participation: Presenters at GURT Roundtables (1983, 1990, 1991, and
1994)
The invitations to these repeat speakers may have been a function of several factors
(availability, proximity, or professional and personal friendships); however, their
involvement did contribute to a common platform. The continuity in speakers meant certain
individuals became central—for whatever reason—in the articulation of the new social facts,
which helped to establish core thinking in the emerging knowledge base. It is interesting that
this continuity was more individual than institutional however, if we consider the universities
that were represented by more than one speaker.
Coherence in the new vernacular

These patterns in participation are part of a picture that suggests an emerging coherence in the
community of explanation. A second aspect is what was talked about; the content that
contributed to this discourse and the development of new social facts. A general content
analysis of these four Roundtables also shows some intriguing patterns. In Table 4.4, the 131
papers from the four Roundtables are broken down into four broad categories—papers that
are discipline-derived, in other words with roots in either applied linguistics or second
language acquisition; papers about the work of teaching, including specific classroom issues
and practices as well as pedagogy more broadly; papers about theorization (theory and
practice, discussion of approaches to, or new categories of, knowledge); and papers that are
either context-specific or which provide general accounts of language teaching activities. The
denominator is the working total from each year explained above, to guard against undue
weighting from the host institution.
Roundtables 1983 1990 1991 1994 Totals

Discipline-derived 4 10 15 9 38 (29%)
Work of language 12 11 15 7 45 (34%)
teaching-related
Theorization 6 9 7 3 25 (19%)
Accounts 14 2 3 4 23 (18%)
Working total of 36 32 40 23 131 (100%)
papers
Table 4.4 Coherence in the new vernacular: A content overview of GURT Roundtables (1983, 1990,
1991, and 1994)
Over the four Roundtables, the focus of the 131 papers was primarily on disciplinary
knowledge (29 percent) and on classroom practices (34 percent), which is not surprising in
building up the social facts of the knowledge base. The 38 discipline-derived topics were
closely divided between applied linguistics (22 papers or 58 percent) and second language
acquisition (16 papers or 42 percent). The papers about the work of language teaching were
less evenly divided: 69 percent, or 31 of the 45, focused on the classroom itself, including
methodology and concerns of classroom teaching, while 31 percent (14 out of 45) concerned
the work of teaching beyond the classroom, such as standards setting and teacher-research.
There were few papers, 19 percent, or 25 of the 131, that explicitly addressed theorization of
the knowledge base, however, and only 18 percent, or 23 papers, were accounts of actual
practices. These were primarily about the work of language teaching or teacher education in
specific contexts (78 percent or 18 of the 23); only 5 papers (22 percent) could be called
‘synthetic’ accounts that brought together experiences from multiple settings and attempted to
generalize from them.
The Roundtable content could undoubtedly be parsed in other ways, but regardless of the
specific categories, the central point underscores Bazerman’s observation that he ‘couldn’t
see what a text was doing without looking at the worlds in which these texts served as
significant activity’ (1998, p. 4). In this relatively short ten-year period, the social facts of
language teaching spread through these meetings confirmed a social process. Knowledge
transmission depended on an increasingly clear articulation of content, expressed in terms of
disciplinary communities, and a consensus around the skills involved in the daily work of
language teaching. The proceedings of these Roundtables offer a window into the process of
self definition.
The Hong Kong Conferences on Language Teacher Education

The Georgetown Roundtables helped elaborate the knowledge base primarily from a US-
centric vantage point in terms of speakers and of policy. A second set of conferences was
central in developing the specific research dimension of second language teacher education.
Professor Jack C. Richards initiated the bi-annual conference in 1991 at the City Polytechnic
of Hong Kong, where he chaired the English Department. As with the Georgetown meetings,
explicit attention was given to both the continuity of topics and the selection of speakers. In a
sense, Richards also provided a connective thread between the Georgetown Roundtables,
where he had been a regular speaker, and the new conference in Hong Kong. In setting the
topic and inviting and sponsoring the keynote speakers, Richards fostered the emerging
professional discourse. While this guidance focused the content, it did not control it since the
Hong Kong conferences, unlike the Georgetown Roundtables, made an open call for
participation, from which speakers were selected.
Participation in the Hong Kong Conferences was smaller and also more focused in terms of
topic. The meetings averaged 16 papers, with a high of 19 at the first conference in 1991.
Compared to Georgetown, there was little continuity of speakers, which might have been due
to its location and the expense of travel. Only two of the 17 papers at the second conference
in 1993 were by previous presenters; and at the third conference in 1995, again only two of
the 13 papers were given by repeat speakers; in both instances, one of the two was a faculty
member of the host institution.
Refining the vernacular

The Hong Kong Conferences are more interesting from a content perspective. They reflected
an emerging vernacular that combined general teacher education research with a particular
focus on second language teaching. Unlike the Georgetown Roundtables, which included
multiple second languages, second language teaching in the Hong Kong conferences meant
English, primarily as a foreign language. Table 4.5 summarizes the three conferences using the
same content categorization as the Georgetown Roundtables. The proceedings, which
appeared the year following each conference, were a further step in curating the discourse
since only a sub-set of the presented papers were selected for publication.
Publication year* 1992 1994 1996
Total number of papers* 18 17 13
Discipline-derived 0 3A 0
Work of language teaching 4 5 6
… in the classroom 2 3 5
… outside the class 2 2 1
Theorization 9 3 4
Accounts of teacher education 5 6 3
‘Synthetic’ accounts 2 2 2
Context-specific accounts 3B 4C 1
* The proceedings, which included a sub-set of the presented papers, appeared the year after each
conference.
A = 1 paper drew from applied linguistics, 2 from second language acquisition
B = Hungary (2); Japan (1)
C = Hong Kong (2); United States (2)
Table 4.5 City Polytechnic of Hong Kong Language Teacher Education Conferences content
overview (1992, 1994, 1996)
Although this content analysis is basic, several aspects stand out. Very few papers (only three
across the three conferences) had an explicit disciplinary focus; in contrast, nine papers, half
of the published proceedings, from the first conference were about new theorizations. A
leitmotif of practice ran against this conceptual backdrop. These two foci were split equally
between the language classroom, papers that focused on language teaching as the content of
language teacher education, and teacher education, accounts of its designs, and practices.
Returning to the propositions

At the end of the previous chapter, two views of how people learn to teach languages were
summarized according to three propositions—about the knowledge needed to teach, how it is
learned and taught, and how that learning/teaching is organized and delivered. The typology
contrasted the premises underlying the born expertise and the made over time views of
language teacher learning. In Table 4.6, disciplinary transmission is added according to the
same three propositions.
Table 4.6 What language teachers need to know, how it is learned, and how that learning is
organized—Version 2
Disciplinary transmission rounds out the typology at the explicit end of the continuum. It
complements and formalizes the terms of teacher learning in the know-how made over time
view. The view delivers content, defined by the disciplines, through knowledge transmission,
and the institutional structures and arrangements that support it. Even though there is
sometimes scrutiny and debate over the specifics of content, delivery, and institutional
arrangements, the premises themselves about what counts as the knowledge base are not often
directly challenged (see Freeman & Johnson, 1998).
Disciplinary knowledge plays a central role in language teaching and second language
education. As it does in other fields, it provides a way into the work and defines the
professional identity. But this knowledge is not inert; it is produced by groups that value it as
communities and that use it to understand and explain what they do. In educating second
language teachers, this process is complex for two reasons: because the core content,
language, is a hybrid idea that is variously defined by different disciplines, and because
teaching and education are also hybrids that draw from different disciplines for definition. In
the face of these ambiguities, second language teacher education has defined itself a
specialized sub-area within language teaching on the one hand and teacher education on the
other.
5
Learning-in-place: situating content and professional learning in
language teacher education
Situations might be said to co-produce knowledge through activity.

(Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989, p. 32)
This chapter examines how learning to teach combines knowing and doing in context, which I
call the Haycraft dilemma. This process, known here as ‘learning-in-place’, is premised on
the idea that learning involves activity, which is doing things in contexts. The learning
process is understood as situated; it looks at how knowing in situations implies creating new
identities. There are two aspects of in-place or situated learning that relate to how people
learn to teach languages. The first is about content, how describing language in situated terms
impacts what it means to learn and to teach it in school. The second aspect is about situated
teacher preparation (see Lampert, 2009) and its principal vehicle, practice teaching, which
bridges the training room to the school site. Practice teaching is grounded in the idea of
learning-in-place, and the central principle in situated learning theory of mastering
increasingly complex micro-worlds.
Knowing and doing

The tension between knowledge and application, between knowing and doing, has been
central in educating second language teachers. It is the driving dynamic underlying short-term
certificate level preparation, which has its roots in the work of John Haycraft and the
International House group of language schools. Haycraft founded the London school in 1953
and initiated a franchise system of teacher preparation that helped establish short-term,
certificate-based training as an alternative route to initial employment. (Alternative route
training, which is discussed more fully in Chapter 10, refers to teacher preparation pathways
that operate independently of national teacher preparation systems). In his autobiography,
Adventures of a Language Traveller (1998), Haycraft describes an exchange he had with a
senior administrator from the British Council, whom he calls Arthur, about how best to train
ELT teachers:
– We have to give training seminars for teachers, we don’t deal with students!’ Arthur said,
firmly.
– But how can you train teachers unless you also teach students?’ I insisted.
– It’s perfectly possible to do without all that.’ Arthur scoffed.
– Oh, so by training you mean lectures on literature and British life and institutions?’
– Well, that’s what most foreign teachers need …’
– I don’t agree. What most [teachers] need is to speak and understand English—which most
of them, like us with French, can’t do when they leave school!’
(Haycraft, 1998, p. 304)
The Haycraft dilemma
The exchange between Arthur and Haycraft (as the latter recalls it), is a version of the
knowing–doing argument: whether language teachers are prepared by knowing certain things
—’literature and British life and institutions’ as Haycraft describes them—or by doing
particular activities, such as speak[ing] and understand[ing] English. Arthur sets out the
knowing position of the importance of disciplinary knowledge; Haycraft counters with the
doing position of the value of situated learning. He argues that most teachers need practice
using the language they are teaching because of a failure of situation, that schools generally
are not places for language learning. But this creates a dilemma for educating second
language teachers: If teacher education is meant to prepare them to teach in schools, and yet
most schools do not support teaching languages as they are used in the world ‘to speak and
understand’ (Haycraft’s phrase), then how can people be well prepared to teach this content?
This Haycraft dilemma is the central challenge of situated learning. It is actually two
interrelated dilemmas, which organize this chapter: the dilemma of language as situated
content and the dilemma of language teacher education as situated preparation.
Situated learning theory

Unpacking the Haycraft dilemma starts with situated learning theory. In an early paper,
Collins (1988) defined situated learning ‘[as] the notion of learning knowledge and skills in
contexts that reflect the way the knowledge will be useful in real life’ (p. 2). This framing
seemed based on a duality that separated learning and use, but that was not the intent as
Brown, Collins, and Duguid explained the following year:
The activity in which knowledge is developed and deployed … is not separable from or
ancillary to learning and cognition … it is an integral part of what is learned. Situations …
co-produce knowledge through activity. Learning and cognition, it is now possible to argue,
are fundamentally situated.
(Brown et al., 1989, p. 320)
Asserting this integral connection between situation, learning, and thinking does a couple of
things. It foregrounds doing as a process of making meaning in a shared context. Second, it
argues that participating, doing things, is in fact learning to use knowledge, not simply
applying it (which would assume the person knows how to use it in the first place). As the
authors explain: ‘we should abandon any notion that [concepts] are abstract, self-contained
entities. Instead, it may be more useful to consider conceptual knowledge as a set of tools.’
Tools, they argue, ‘can only be fully understood through use, and using them entails both
changing the user’s view of the world and adopting the belief system of the culture in which
they are used’ (ibid., p. 33). Using knowledge as a tool in a situation (re)shapes who the user
is; in other words, identity is a function of what a person does with the tool and where they do
it.
These three ideas about situations, knowing, and identity summarized in Table 5.1 below,
scaffold the cluster of ideas that became known as situated learning theory (see for example,
Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1987; Rogoff, 1995).
Key idea Statement (Brown, Collins, & Gloss
Duguid, 1989)
Situation ‘Situations might be said to co- Doing as making meaning in a
produce knowledge through shared context
activity.’
Knowing ‘abandon any notion that Doing as using knowledge
[concepts] are abstract, self- appropriately in situations
contained entities… . consider
conceptual knowledge as a set
of tools.’
Identity ‘using [tools] entails … Doing (re)shapes who the doer is
changing the user’s view of the
world.’
Table 5.1 Summarizing key ideas of situated learning (after Brown et al., 1989)
¿Usted está a este nivel?

A story from a colleague illustrates rather humorously how these elements contribute to
identity as situated. She had been visiting an elementary school in rural Mexico to observe the
English teaching. She was a tall woman and in spite of her age (she was in her 70s at the
time), she had decided to sit in a student-sized chair with a group of students at a table
towards the back of the classroom. Of course the children seated near her were more
interested in her than in the lesson. At one point, a little girl turned to my colleague and asked
somewhat incredulously, Usted está a este nivel? [Are you at this class level?] Although the
colleague was six decades older than the students in the class, it seemed to them that the fact
she was sitting in a student chair at a student table in the classroom must mean that she was
taking part in the English lesson as a student. Since she looked a bit old to be studying
primary school English, the little girl felt she needed to clarify the situation. In that moment,
my colleague’s identity as a participant was defined by the situation, by where she was and
what she was doing, and by how she was perceived by the others who were participating.
Focusing on individuals within situations can seem like a subtle change in emphasis, but it
has profound implications. Situated learning theory recasts learning from being an individual
cognitive process, in which a person assimilates particular content, to a process of
increasingly skilled and socially grounded participation in the practices of the group or
community. This hybridity situates the individual cognitive work in these social processes,
which is in part how social learning theory differs in emphasis from social practice theory
(discussed in the next chapter). Lave and Wenger explain the shift from individual to social as
follows:
Conventional explanations view learning as a process by which a learner internalizes
knowledge, whether ‘discovered,’ ‘transmitted’ from others, or ‘experienced’ in interactions
with others. This focus on internalization … establishes a sharp dichotomy between inside
and outside, suggests that knowledge is largely cerebral, and takes the individual as the non-
problematic unit of analysis…. Conceiving of learning in terms of participation focuses
attention on ways it is an evolving, continuously renewed set of relations; this is, of course,
consistent with a relational view of persons, their actions, and their worlds…
(Lave & Wenger, 1991, pp. 47, 49–50)
They summarize the change in emphasis: ‘The notion of situated learning now appears to be
… a bridge between a view according to which cognitive processes (and thus learning) are
primary and a view according to which social process is the primary, generative phenomenon
and learning is one of its characteristics’ (ibid. p. 34).
The dilemma of language as situated content

When learning centers on social processes, the focus changes the way language is
conceptualized as classroom content. Arthur’s position in the Haycraft dilemma was that the
content of language teacher education ought to be literature and British life and institutions.
Delivered via the highly structured format of lectures, the learners’ participation in that
content would likely be limited to listening, and perhaps asking the occasional question.
Haycraft countered with a definition of language content based in the social processes of
speak[ing] and understand[ing] English. Social processes here however, simply meant using
the language. Language was not as fully defined, as situated learning (and later social
practice) theory would do.
Language as a social process

Conceptualizing language as a social process is complex. The first issue comes in defining
the content as something people are doing, rather than something they meet, get, and
eventually have. Language as doing challenges the idea of competence as some kind of
unitary, a-situational absolute state. Instead what holds diverse users together are the
situations in which they are using that language. Canagarajah outlines the logic:
If languages are always in contact and communication always involves negotiation of mobile
codes, we have to ask if the term ‘monolingual’ has anything more than an academic and
ideological significance. Communities and communication have always been heterogeneous.
[M]onolingual[s] are typically proficient in multiple registers, dialects, and discourses …
(Canagarajah, 2013, p.8)
He continues, ‘Users treat all available codes as a repertoire in their everyday
communication …’. Languages are not necessarily at war with each other; they complement
each other in communication. ‘The influences of one language on another can be creative,
enabling, and offer possibilities for voice’ (p. 6). Conceptually, Canagarajah and others (for
example, Pennycook, 2007) refer to this state of language use as trans-linguistic, suggesting
that languages move across situations rather than accumulating within them.
Translingual practice
Canagarajah’s point that using language, which he calls ‘languaging’, is trans-linguistic
changes the conversation about language as what is taught as classroom subject-matter. As
suggested in Chapter 2, language teacher identity comingles professional and linguistic
socialization; the former comes from the apprenticeship of observation and the latter from
experiences of language in the world (see Figure 2.2). Together these socializations
contribute to the content in language classrooms. Now, the comingling process is essentially
the user’s experiences of situated language use over time. The Common European Framework
of Reference defines this as plurilingualism: ‘… a communicative competence to which all
knowledge and experience of language contributes and in which all languages interrelate and
interact’ (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 4). The CEFR describes a developmental process that
situates language learning in a widening gyre of experience: ‘an individual’s experience of
language and its cultural contexts expands from the language of the home to that of the society
at large and then to languages of other peoples (whether learnt at school or college, or by
direct experience).’ (p. 4).
Plurilingualism
As a situated definition of language use, plurilingualism differs from the conventional
additive view of multilingualism in which widening exposure to different languages leads to
greater use. The plurilingual conception of language learning argues that … [the learner]
‘does not keep these languages and cultures in strictly separate mental compartments, but
rather builds up a communicative competence to which all knowledge and experience of
language contributes and in which all languages interrelate and interact’ (CEFR, p. 4). As a
statement of language policy, the subversive aspect of this definition comes from conceiving
of language learning and use as open-ended or always partial. Competence is not a state of
mastery that a language speaker has or can attain; it is a pattern of ongoing use in situations
usually of escalating complexity.
Knowing in situations
Narrative 5.1: Knowing in situations—Japan, Part I
After I completed my post-graduate teaching degree, I took a job in Japan, teaching at an
experimental language institute. The core program was residential in which adult students
immersed themselves in English for a month of intensive study and living. The philosophy
was that language involved cultural understanding, which came through using the
language in many ways simultaneously—in the classroom, in extra-curricular activities, at
meals and at social events. The learning environment was meant to support new forms of
participation and to encourage students in developing new language selves. The whole
environment was different from what I was accustomed to. I was new to Japan and was
making my own cultural adjustments. As a teacher, it was the first time I was teaching my
own language—English—and was using the language in a myriad of residential
interactions with students on a daily basis. As a high school French teacher, I was the user
of the language through my teaching identity and what I did in the classroom. In this
situation in Japan, English permeated the learning environment. It was in the curriculum,
as French had been in my high school teaching, but English was also supposed to be all
around—in hallway chats, in the dining hall, playing volleyball, taking weekend
excursions. I say ‘supposed to be’ because it was and it wasn’t. Certainly we teachers used
English exclusively with each other and most of the time with students. But there was an
artificiality to the process as we kept to our language and gently insisted that the students
honor the social contract that made English the medium of the month-long residential
experience.
Immersion language programs like the one in which I was teaching in Japan embody the ideas
of how knowing in situations contributes to new identities (see Table 5.1). But they raise the
question of how to define the content students are supposed to learn and teachers are
supposed to teach, or more accurately put, where (in which situations) to locate that content.
Is it in the classroom, at the dinner table, at parties, or field trips? Or more likely is the
content located in all of these situations, which then brings up the problem of how to define
that content in teachable terms. The CEFR has set out an approach for doing so on the level of
language policy. Much has been (and could be) written about the CEFR, how it is used and
abused, as well as the many companion policy statements (e.g. the Vietnamese English
Teaching Competency Framework, the Chilean Initial Teacher Preparation Standards for
English teachers) and implementation documents (for example, the English Profile, 2015, and
the European profile for language teacher education, Kelly, 2004) it has generated around the
world. In the context of situated learning however, this discussion focuses on two aspects in
particular—the goals of the Framework and the processes by which it was developed—both
of which underscore the idea of how knowing in situations can contribute to new identities.
The CEFR as a translinguistic shorthand

Launched by the Council of Europe in 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference
for Languages (CEFR) was developed as a group of statements that could articulate learning
goals and levels across various national language standards. This translinguistic shorthand
was intended to facilitate movement of people across Europe for education, employment, and
exchange. North, one of the developers, described the main purposes for the CEFR:
To establish a metalanguage common across educational sectors, national and linguistic
boundaries that could be used to talk about objectives and language levels …
To encourage practitioners in the language field to reflect on their current practice …
(North, 2007, p. 21)
The aim was to organize a system of common reference points, based on the Council of
Europe’s Modern Languages projects.
Blending somewhat disconnected purposes of metalanguage (the first goal), teacher
reflection (the second goal), and policy alignment (the third goal) in one document is
intriguing. To achieve the first and third, the CEFR provided a shared set of descriptors that
could anchor alignment of standards across various languages. In working toward the second
goal, these descriptors were expressed as ‘can do’ statements. The aim was to combine the
user’s own aims with the potential of the new language as in for example, ‘I can use simple
phrases and sentences to describe where I live and people I know’ [CEFR–A1–Spoken
production] or ‘I can present clear, detailed descriptions of complex subjects integrating
subthemes, developing particular points and rounding off with an appropriate conclusion’
[CEFR–C2–Spoken production].
Engaging teachers in defining situations
From the standpoint of situated content, the CEFR marked a turning point in which learners’
own aims became central to how the language is defined. Those aims are expressed as
participation, what learners can do in particular situations. In this sense, the framework
embodies Lave and Wenger’s (1991) comment about situated learning quoted earlier that
‘Conceiving of learning in terms of participation focuses attention on ways it is an evolving,
continuously renewed set of relations … of persons, their actions, and their worlds’ (p. 50).
The challenge was how to capture what these situations looked like. To do so, the developers
of the CEFR used a participatory methodology, which recruited classroom teachers to help
articulate and validate the level descriptors. North described the process:
[B]y working interactively with over 50 teachers in the series of workshops … and then
calibrating the descriptors in relation to the judgments of 100 teachers in relation to their
students, it has been possible to keep both the categories employed and the descriptors
defining them user-friendly.
(North, 2000, p. 35)
The resulting statements might be, as North characterized them, user friendly; however, in
terms of situating language content for learning and teaching, the process was more than that.
Engaging classroom teachers in the framework’s articulation (some as developers and others
as potential users), drew directly on their situated knowledge and expertise. Although this
type of development process is used for some policy documents (such as the European Profile
for Language Teacher Education 2004; the Vietnam English Teaching Competency
Framework), it is not the norm. These processes of participatory development are meant to
integrate teachers’ understandings of practice. In the case of the CEFR, the ‘can do’ statements
are supposed to reflect two types of situation, those in which the speaker uses the language
and, indirectly, those classroom situations in which the language is taught and hopefully
learned. North (2007) talks about this second classroom situation in the second purpose of the
CEFR, ‘To encourage practitioners … to reflect on their current practice, particularly in
relation to learners’ practical language learning needs, the setting of suitable objectives,
and the tracking of learner progress’ (p. 1; italics added).
When seen from the perspective of situated learning theory, the CEFR has accomplished
several things. It expresses language content as situated in terms of learner aims (albeit
generically stated). Although it is disappointing and perhaps to be expected, as the CEFR has
been taken up, these ‘can do’ statements have in some contexts become reified as learning
outcomes, often in order to serve as the basis for large-scale interventions in language teacher
assessment and teacher training. This is contrary to intentions in creating the document. As
one commentator observed, ‘it is not the function of the CEFR to lay down the objectives that
users should pursue or the methods they should employ, it has to provide decision makers
with options and reference points … for their specific educational context’ (Schaerer, 2007,
p. 11). But he continues, reification happens, ‘Tools and documents once published lead their
own lives. They tend to be interpreted, used or not used, applauded or criticized out of a
wide variety of perspectives’ (ibid.).
The second important accomplishment is to expose the complicated relation between
learning language in the classroom and using it in the world. It is almost as if the CEFR were
a policy-level response to the criticism of language learning in school that Haycraft makes to
Arthur, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, ‘What most [foreign teachers] need is to speak
and understand English—which most of them, like us with French, can’t do when they leave
school!’ This complication frames the second part of the Haycraft dilemma—situated teacher
preparation.
The dilemma of situated learning in teacher preparation

The first part of the Haycraft knowing–doing dilemma is about what happens to learning
languages when the process is situated in the classroom; it is about situating the content. The
second part has to do with learning to teach it; it is about situated learning in teacher
preparation. In their exchange, Haycraft asks Arthur somewhat rhetorically, ‘But how can you
train teachers unless you also teach students?’ In reply Arthur reportedly scoffs, ‘It’s perfectly
possible to do without all that.’ These positions reflect different views of ELT teaching;
underlying these views are key aspects of situating teacher preparation. Haycraft’s position
can be understood in two ways: that practicing teachers probably make better teacher
educators, and that to be adequately prepared, new teachers need not only lectures and input
but also practice teaching students. In one sense the two go hand-in-hand since they assume
that teacher educators, who are at the same time working with students, are better equipped to
present practical information about teaching and to coach trainees using that knowledge in
classroom teaching. Arthur summarizes the opposing disciplinary knowledge–transmission
position succinctly when he says (or Haycraft quotes him as saying), ‘It’s perfectly possible
to do without all that … lectures on literature and British life and institutions … that’s what
most foreign teachers need …’
Practice-based teacher education

Their exchange shows how elements get bundled in the complicated question of situating
teacher preparation; it involves not just what is presented to new teachers, but also who
presents it, how, and where. These elements, which are what Lampert, Boerst, and Graziani
(2011) refer to as ‘organizational resources’, are foundational in what is called ‘practice-
based’ teacher education. They explain, ‘This frame trains the focus on how available
resources might be used in collegial interaction across a school and how that use becomes a
context for the development of shared interpretations of problems and common commitments
to solutions’ (p. 3–4). They describe the intermingled relation between the teacher-learner
and the socio-professional context, saying that the focus ‘does not ignore what individual
teachers know and are able to do, nor does it see individuals as independent operators who
need to figure everything out for themselves’ (ibid.). Conceiving teacher learning as a situated
process of using organizational resources focuses attention on the connections between the
practice of teaching and the settings in which it happens, in other words on the social
environment (Lampert, 2001).
Situatedness and the social environment

Even if described as organizational resources, situatedness is a complicated and intriguing
idea. The term can describe a state of affairs—learning that is situated in a particular place
and time, among a certain group of people—and it can be a process—situating learning over
time. Describing this interconnection, Rogoff (1995), a situated learning theorist, refers to the
educational philosopher John Dewey:
The social environment … is truly educative … [when] … an individual shares or
participates in some conjoint activity. By doing his share in the associated activity, the
individual appropriates the purpose … becomes familiar with its methods and subject
matters, acquires needed skill, and is saturated with its emotional spirit.
(Dewey, 1916, p. 26)
Dewey’s notion of the social environment as educative resonates with an experience I had
when I started learning Japanese.
Narrative 5.2: ‘The social environment … is truly educative’—Japan, Part II
Soon after I arrived in Japan, I decided I needed to study the language. Partly it was an
article of faith from past experiences with French—that since I was living in Japan I
needed to know how to speak Japanese. In this sense, language learning was a form of
social respect for the situation. The urge to learn Japanese was also triggered indirectly by
my professional situation. I would spend my days using only English, to teach in the
classroom and to socialize with students in the residential program, but this immersion felt
artificial in the larger social scheme of things. Whenever I was outside the institute, there
were things I wanted or needed to be able to do in Japanese—buy food, order a meal, take
a train or a taxi, or mail a letter.
I had high hopes when I enrolled in my first Japanese class. But I was dismayed to find a
grammar-based book and a teacher who drilled us on basic sentence patterns. I would
leave the class feeling that I couldn’t do anything with the language I had practiced. I was
feeling farther and farther from being able to participate in any useful way in Japanese in
my life outside of my workplace. As classes continued, my frustrations grew, as did those of
some of my classmates. When a group of us sought out the school director to talk about the
class, he listened sympathetically and then told us that this was just the way Japanese was
and how it had to be taught to foreigners. Then I had a glimmer of understanding that
there was something more complicated happening than a simple mismatch between
classroom pedagogy and students’ aims. I began to realize that the school as a social
environment was perhaps teaching something more than immediate language, that there
were lessons to be learned in this situation about language and culture expectations, even
if I couldn’t quite make out what they were exactly or put them into words.
Dewey’s comment—that the social environment is truly educative—captures the dawning

realization I had when I first studied Japanese. The lessons, the teaching, even the director’s
explanations, all were organizational resources for my learning. I needed to use them to make
sense of the situation. Sure I was learning to speak some Japanese; but more than that, I was
learning how to be in this Japanese situation, how to be a student in a Japanese language
classroom. What I experienced learning Japanese language could be, by extension, true of
learning to teach. What would it take for a teacher education environment to be ‘truly
educative’, to use Dewey’s phrase? The answer goes to the second part of the Haycraft
dilemma—’how can you train teachers unless you also teach students?’ in both its meanings.
To be educative, the teacher education environment would need to embody the entire
experience, in a sense as my Japanese classes had done. As Haycraft argued, teacher
education would have to involve language teachers as teacher educators, and training new
teachers through teaching actual language students. These two ideas come together in what is
meant by practical learning, and in clinical arrangements in preparing teachers.
Situating teacher learning

The Richards and Hino (1983) example
At one of the first Georgetown Round Tables focusing on second language teacher education,
Richards and Hino from the University of Hawaii presented a paper, titled ‘Training ESOL
teachers: The need for needs assessment’ (1983). The paper, which reported on a small-scale
survey study of expatriate English teachers working in Japan, was a needs assessment of
potential applicants to their university’s post-graduate degree programs, but it offered a
window into the early forays into situated thinking in ELT teacher preparation. Three aspects
of their study stand out as key issues in how situations shape learning to teach ELT: who
defines the situations, what is valued as knowledge in those situations, and what is perceived
as practical.
Who defines the situation?
It turns out, perhaps not surprisingly, that defining the situations for which ELT teachers are to
be prepared is essentially a socio-political move. This point is evident in the bifurcated
definition of situational knowledge that emerges in who Richards and Hino surveyed. They
describe the sampling strategy: ‘Subjects were members of the Japan Association of
Language Teachers (JALT)… The total membership in JALT is approximately 1600, of whom
55% are Japanese … Access was provided to the JALT membership list and a questionnaire
was mailed to 200 non-Japanese members’ (1983, p. 314).
What is striking about this straight-forward description in retrospect is how they divided
the survey sample between Japanese and non-Japanese teachers. Although the authors did
note that among expatriate teachers were ‘native and non-native speakers of English’ (p. 313),
the distinction echoes the native and non-native divide in equating teaching knowledge with
teacher identity (discussed in Chapter 3). This point is not meant as a criticism. Rather it
illustrates the complexity of defining situations in ELT teacher learning and underscores how
the process can often rely on existing socio-political categories. In surveying non-Japanese
members of this professional association, the study seemed to take for granted that the needs
of ELT teachers who were Japanese nationals would differ from those of expatriate teachers.
In explaining the sampling decision, Richards and Hino underscore this point when they
describe a divided system of employment in which ‘The majority of English teachers at this
level (junior, senior high school, and university) are Japanese. [In] the private sector …
[which includes] private language schools and programs and some in-house company
programs … the majority of teachers … are expatriates’ (1983, p. 313).
What counts as knowledge in the situation?
As a view into situated teacher learning, the second aspect of the Richards and Hino study
was how it portrayed situated knowledge. Their survey asked what the respondents felt they
needed to know to teach ELT as well as where and how they believed they had learned it in
their teacher preparation. By asking teachers about the value to them of what they had studied
in their preparation, the study crossed a phenomenological line, perhaps without meaning to
do so, to engage their perceptions of knowledge and learning. This approach ran counter to
the prescriptive discussions that filled the field of second language teacher education and the
GURT Proceedings. Richards and Hino introduce their findings with a quotation from an
applied linguist, Diller (1977), who wrote, ‘The professional teacher of English as a Second
Language needs pedagogical training to be a teacher, and academic training in English
language and linguistics to be a professional in our field’ (cited in Richards & Hino, 1983, p.
319). Their point seemed to assert that the disciplinary view of learning to teach (Chapter 4),
which prevailed at the time, was not supported when teachers were asked in the survey
responses what they valued. When these practicing teachers (N–41) were asked ‘how useful
the courses you studied were in view of your present jobs’, the courses like structural
linguistics and traditional grammar, which aligned closely with academic disciplines, rated
in the bottom third. In contrast, ‘practical’ versions of linguistic knowledge fared better:
phonology and pedagogical grammar were in the top ten, and various forms of linguistic
analysis (error, contrastive, discourse) were in the top half. As if to underscore this
distinction between disciplinary and situated knowledge, the version of linguistic theory,
transformational grammar, which was most current at the time, was rated 28 out of 33, and
English literature was second to last (32 out of 33 courses). (See Richards & Hino, 1983, p.
321.)
Valuing the practical
The third aspect of the Richards and Hino study amplified the idea of knowledge in situation
and what is perceived as practical. What respondents rated as most useful to their present
teaching was not actually a formal course at all. It was their practice teaching. In post-
graduate program designs, this term doesn’t describe a standard teaching situation. Practice
teaching covers a variety of field-based teaching arrangements, from university-based
teaching in intensive English programs to teaching in school settings, which can be
geographically distant from the university. Further, the faculty who are responsible for these
practice teaching courses fulfilled Haycraft’s criteria: They are usually practitioners in whose
classes the trainee is teaching. Though it is called ‘practice’, respondents in the study felt they
became knowledgeable about the work of language teaching itself. Richards and Hino
concluded of this valuing of the practical, ‘Despite Diller’s plea, structural linguistics and
transformational grammar were not found to be useful … The teachers in this study, like most
classroom teachers, judged the value of their training in terms of its practical application and
effectiveness’ (1983, p. 320).
The Richards and Hino needs assessment was an early foray into situating teacher
preparation; it functions here as a synopsis of the central issues in the second part of the
Haycraft dilemma, what/how teachers learn about teaching as they participate in situations.
These situations make new teachers participate in teaching practices in the social contexts of
the classroom and the school. One new teacher is placed in an elementary classroom which
has a sometimes disruptive clique of girls; another is in a school with state-of-the art
technology; some trainees on a certificate course get retirees as students in the practice
lessons, who come to visit with each other in the afternoon, while others get people who
come at the end of the workday. These teaching situations, like any classrooms, are diverse,
varied, and basically incomparable one to another. Given this diversity, a critical question
arises: If learning in situations is central in learning to teach, how can teacher preparation
account for the variety and complexity? Surely, learning in one classroom does not simply
translate unchanged to other teaching situations?
Pedagogical simplification
As part of a response to this question, situated learning theory operates through two,
interrelated forms of scaffolding: structuring participation and bounding situations. The idea
is that learning environments can be organized so that what is learned is more likely to be
adapted to new use environments. Scaffolding situations involves recognizing which aspects
can be manipulated and how, and then supporting participants to take what they have become
confident at in the situation into new situations, which are more complex and uncharted for
them. Wenger describes this process as ‘pedagogical simplification’:
First, the areas open to simplification must be identified, as well as the nature of possible and
useful modifications. Then the potential problems of scaling up from a simple to a more
complex micro-world must be anticipated so that the coach can make transitions smooth and
effective.
(Wenger, 1987, p. 134)
This process can be distilled in two principles: how to structure participation and how to
bound situations.
Creating micro-worlds
Pedagogical simplification centers on the idea of ‘increasingly complex micro-worlds’, in
which Wenger (1987) says, ‘the succession of modifications at each step are meant to support
learning’ (p. 133). Instructional designers Burton, Brown, and Fischer (1984) explain that
these micro-worlds have three dimensions, which can be manipulated: ‘the equipment used in
executing the skill, the physical setting in which the skill is executed, and the task
specifications for the given equipment and physical setting’ (p. 139). They use the example of
learning to ski, in which the three elements that are manipulated are ‘doing simple turns [task
specifications], with shorter skis [equipment], on a gentle slope [physical setting].’ The
goal, they explain, is to ‘allow the student to focus on the factors that are fundamental to
learning a skill, rather than on factors that are not immediately relevant.’
The key to making these manipulations work to support learning, situated learning theorists
argue, lies in the relation between the situation in which the task is learned and where it is
actually used. The learner has to see the two situations as similar and yet not alike. Too much
similarity, or oversimplification as Wenger calls it, can reduce the verisimilitude and ‘may
present too distorted a view of the task’ (1987, p. 133), since it makes the task seem overly
easy and predictable. The tension lies in getting the situation right, which means that the task
in this micro-world is faithful to what needs to be learned and is authentic from the point of
view of the community proficient in the practice. In the skiing example, the fidelity of ‘doing
simple turns’ is rooted in its function as part of the larger task of skiing. The authenticity, from
the learner’s point of view, comes from practicing these turns first on the beginners’ slope, but
then being able to do them (often with a ski instructor’s guidance) on trails with other skiers.
Beyond designing these ‘increasingly complex micro-worlds’, the equipment itself can be
adapted to bridge the performance of the learner with the proficient practice. Shorter skis
allow new skiers to practice the complex work of turning and stopping as experienced skiers
would, by using adapted equipment.
Practice teaching: how to create authentic micro-worlds
The principles of pedagogical simplification can apply in a variety of ways to the complex
work of teaching. There are aspects of learning to teach that certainly involve mastering
skills, and micro-worlds are devised to work on them. Practice teaching is probably the most
widely used case-in-point. The task specifications are adjustable so that trainees can teach
alone, in groups, or with a more experienced other. The lesson content can be left to the
trainee or it can be specified; the number of language students and the duration of the lesson
can vary, and so on. Each of these forms of scaffolding are used to make ‘practice’ teaching
authentically mimic aspects of the actual classroom (to make the beginners’ slope like the
regular ski trails, to use the example of skiing). The pedagogical simplification in practice
teaching differs in what can be done to scaffold the equipment or tools. Modifying physical
equipment (shortening skis) is one thing; adapting social or conceptual tools is another.
Settings can be organized, and tasks orchestrated, to create a gentle slope for teaching, which
is what practice teaching designs do. But the tools involved are social and conceptual, which
makes it considerably more complicated to adapt them. How can ideas about teaching be
simplified to support newcomers to the practice? How can the adapted versions be faithful
and authentic to proficient practice? Or to use Dewey’s phrase, what makes the practice
teaching environment ‘fully educative’?
Haycraft on practice teaching

These questions can take us again to John Haycraft. In his first book about English language
teaching, Haycraft describes the process of pedagogical simplification devised at
International House in London in the 1960s to serve immediate needs for short-term training.
Central to the design of their certificate courses was a sequence of practice teaching
environments in which ‘first the course members taught the rest of their group; then foreign
students who were brought in as “guinea pigs” ‘ (1965, p. 197). The two settings, with peers
and then with language students, represented increasingly complex micro-worlds. In many
practice teaching designs, trainees prepare short lessons, which they then teach to their peers.
What these walk-through lessons lack in authenticity (since peers are not actual English
learners), they seem to gain in the fidelity of the central work of classroom teaching—
organizing and presenting content, setting up and sequencing activities, and so on.
Identity and criticism
Increasing the authenticity by involving actual English learners makes the practice teaching
micro-world more complex. It alters more than just the teaching–learning dynamic, as
Haycraft explained of the early practice teaching at International House:
Practice classes with foreign students were the greatest ordeal [for teacher-learners] as the
criticisms of the students, of other course members, and the teacher had to be faced
afterwards … The real battle was against the dry and the academic: often newcomers to this
form of teaching tried to be historians of the theatre instead of the actors and directors they
should be.
(Haycraft, 1965, p. 198)
Haycraft identifies two aspects of increased authenticity in teaching practice that go to the
heart of situated learning: the major one is how the situation demands a different identity
(which he calls ‘the real battle’); the other is the role of the more experienced other (called
here ‘criticism’). It is not surprising that practice teaching can force trainees into a different
identity. They bring pedagogical identities from their socialization as students, watching
teaching, and participating in the classroom from that perspective. These experiences equip
them to act as ‘historians of the theatre’, to use Haycraft’s analogy, to stand back from directly
doing the work and to talk about the content rather than engage students in it. The major shift
in the practice teaching situation comes as trainees start to grasp pedagogically what is meant
for language to play a dual role as content and medium in classroom teaching. For example, a
trainee working with a group of beginning language learners tries to set up pair work by
telling students to ‘Work with a partner’. When the instruction fails to produce pairs, he
repeats it, saying, ‘Work with the person next to you’; and that doesn’t work so he says, ‘Work
with your neighbor.’ From the trainee’s point of view these are three equivalent instructions,
but to the beginning level students they sound like three different commands.
Language, as the central equipment in practice teaching, is complicated to simplify.
Trainees learn how to modify what they say so that students can make sense of it, as in the
example, but that is only one part of the challenge. The major change is to grapple with how
to teach language by using language to teach. In other words, to use Haycraft’s analogy, how
language can be both the script of the drama that the trainees talk about as ‘director’, and the
lines that they say as ‘actors’. Criticism, feedback, and coaching by the more experienced
other is meant to scaffold that change in perspective, to help trainees realize what teaching
looks like from the other side of the desk (Lortie, 1975). So attention is paid to how critical
information is communicated in practice teaching. Research studies (for example, Farr, 2010;
Wajnryb, 1998) and training protocols (for example, Bailey, 2006) aim to understand how
feedback works and how to make the tool more effective. Ultimately, conveying critical
information is the tool.
Types of practice teaching

Practice teaching in teacher preparation takes many situational forms. The term covers a
range of designs from in-class micro-teaching among peers, to shorter and longer structured
lessons in which one or more trainees teaches a small or large group of English learners (both
mentioned in Haycraft’s comment above), to in-school internships (sometimes known as
student teaching) in which the trainee works along side the classroom teacher to assume
greater and greater responsibility. University-based preparation courses now include many of
these designs. In ELT however, the early proponents were often in alternative route designs
like the intensive, certificate-oriented short courses of Haycraft and colleagues. Although
these practice teaching situations vary widely as micro-worlds, they share a common aim of
engaging trainees directly in the world of teaching, which they do by structuring participation
and bounding the situations. The processes of structuring and bounding work through the
principles of pedagogical simplification—by specifying the task, managing the setting, and
modifying the equipment. In many situations of learning a skill, like the skiing example, the
focus is individual, which is where situated theorists started. In practice teaching however,
each of these simplification principles depends on some sort of collaborative effort.
The goal—safe enough to let out on the road

In situated teacher preparation designs, practice teaching being a prime example, the task and
the setting are inherently collective. The task in these designs involves students and a teacher
(or groups of teachers), and the main equipment used—language—is, as we said, a collective
tool as well. The goal of these lessons is not simply to get good at the skills involved, but in
the sense of the Hippocratic oath, to ‘do no harm’. As scaffolded practice, the intent is for
trainees to know what to do in basic teaching situations and thus to potentially avoid making
common teaching mistakes that may be problematic or damaging to students. Haycraft used an
analogy in describing the early International House certificate training courses that aptly
captures the core aim that trainees learn enough to do no harm:
These courses were rather like driving lessons. We provided an alternative to learning
through crashing into lamp-posts or running people down. At the end we, like the usual
[driving] test examiner, might say: ‘Well, you’re now safe enough to let out on the road. But
don’t think you’re a good driver.’
(Haycraft, 1965, p. 198)
Sarcasm aside, Haycraft’s analogy does capture the way in which the design of practice
teaching embodies the idea of situatedness in teacher preparation. In creating responsibility
for doing the work safely that is shared collectively among the teaching group, the scaffolds
of the task, the goal, and the collective organization and tools carry out the principles of
situated learning theory.
Learning collectively in situations

How people can learn collectively—from and with each other—in situ is the central design
challenge in situated learning. The following statement from Brown, Collins, and Duguid
identifies four social features that support the process:
Collective problem solving… [Groups] give rise synergistically to insights and solutions
that would not have come about without them.
Displaying multiple roles. Successful execution of most individual tasks requires students
to understand the many different roles needed for carrying out … the task.
Confronting ineffective strategies and misconceptions … Groups can be efficient in
drawing out, confronting, and discussing both misconceptions and ineffective strategies.
Providing collaborative work skills … If people are going to learn and work in
conjunction with others, they must be given the situated opportunity to develop those skills.
(Brown et al., 1989, p. 40)
When applied to practice teaching in short courses, it is striking how much they align with
descriptions of effective practice teaching design in ELT. For instance, Thornbury and
Watkins (2007) describe arrangements that are typically part of collective learning in the
practice teaching designs that epitomize short-term teacher training courses. In writing for
teacher trainers on the CELTA certificate course, they list ‘factors that promote a good
dynamic in [teaching practice (TP) groups’, in statements that implement the principles
above:
Having a shared purpose Group members understand that TP is not a competition, or
‘talent quest’, but that by collaborating, they have a better chance of succeeding
Time spent together Form the groups as soon as possible, and give them as much time as
possible
Learning about each other
Interaction For example, group planning and group feedback
Proximity Make sure trainees can sit and work together, and ensure that no single member
is ‘out of the group’ (original italics; p. 170).
Here the social medium of professional learning is this group work of preparing, teaching,
and critiquing lessons; the assumption is that ‘by collaborating, [trainees] have a better
chance of succeeding.’ The collaboration involves allotting time for the trainees to spend time
together to do the collective work, both of which are essential to learning-in-place.
Though addressed to different audiences, the parallels in the two lists are uncanny. Brown,
Collins, and Duguid outline principles of situatedness, on the left in Table 5.2, while
Thornbury and Watkins’ describe how to carry these principles into practice teaching.
Situated Learning Theory Practice teaching arrangements

Brown, Collins, & Duguid (1989, p. 40) Thornbury & Watkins (2007, p. 170)
Goal ‘learning is a process of enculturating that is Goal [to] ‘promote a good dynamic in [teaching
supported in part by social interaction.’ practice or ‘TP’] groups.’
Features
Collective problem solving Having a shared purpose.
[Groups] ‘… give rise synergistically to insights ‘group members understand … that by
and solutions that would not have come about collaborating, they have a better chance of
without them’. succeeding’.
Displaying multiple roles Successful execution Time spent together Form the groups as soon as
of most individual tasks requires students to possible, and give them as much time as possible.
understand the many different roles needed. Learning about each other …
Confronting ineffective strategies and Interaction (e.g.) group planning and group
misconceptions feedback
Providing collaborative work skills ‘If people Proximity Make sure trainees can sit and work
are going to learn and work in conjunction with together.
others, they must be given the situated
opportunity.’
Table 5.2 Collective arrangements: Practice teaching from a situated learning theory perspective
Thornbury and Watkins’ list (on the right) implements the theoretical features of situatedness
(on the left). Read together the two lists show how learning-in-place foregrounds the
collective and social context as central in learning to teach. As a form of pedagogical
simplification, practice designs support the idea of making teacher learning closer to, and in
some senses contiguous to, the actual work of classroom teaching, which is the aim of situated
teacher preparation.
Situated learning theory helps to understand two dilemmas in second language teacher
education. The dilemma of the subject matter lies in how to make language as classroom
content more like language as it is used in the world. Situating content, as the CEFR
describes, addresses this dilemma, though it leads to other issues. The other dilemma is how
to prepare people to teach that content. Here the ideas of pedagogical simplification and
collective learning from situated learning theory are useful in analyzing practice teaching as
the centerpiece of situated teacher preparation. Situating language as content and teacher
preparation together make-up the Haycraft dilemma: how to create what Dewey called an
educative environment in learning to teach languages.
6
Socio-cultural views: understanding sense making and what travels
in learning to teach languages
Two ideas are interwoven in this chapter: sense making, how teachers (or people generally
for that matter) make meaning in and from what they are doing, and transfer, or what travels
in learning from one context to others. Both ideas can open up in many directions; to narrow
the focus this argument is about what each one contributes to understanding how people learn
to teach languages. Socio-cultural views of learning provide the broader foundation for this
discussion. They form a comprehensive theory that connects what is being learned and how,
with who, why, where (under what circumstances) the learning is happening. Socio-cultural
theory is fundamentally important in developing these ideas of sense making and what travels
because it reorients the relationship among the learner (here a teacher), the contexts of the
learning (from training rooms to classrooms), and the process.
A socio-cultural starting point

There are excellent expositions of socio-cultural theory (see Johnson, 2006, 2009; Swain,
Kinnear, & Steinman, 2015) as well as research accounts (Johnson & Golombek, 2011) that
explore its richness and complexity. For purposes here, I will concentrate on a few of the key
assumptions with the aim of connecting them to the ideas of sense making and what travels. A
starting point is the term socio-cultural itself, which combines people (‘social’) and how they
participate in meaning-making (‘cultural’) as the key elements in how people learn. Instead of
making the individual the analytical focus, as we are accustomed to doing, a socio-cultural
perspective reverses the focus, arguing that by taking part in activities in social contexts,
individuals make meaning. A closely related theory known as cultural-historical activity
theory (abbreviated as CHAT and also known as ‘activity theory’) specifies that participating
in sense making (‘cultural’) happens in time (‘historical’) through what people do (‘activity’).
So socio-cultural theories argue that what and how people think and know (their sense
making) comes from what they are doing, which is positioned in time in two senses of the
word: Time is the immediate present (what they are doing now) and time as the ‘historical’
past (the time up to now). Their sense making happens in and through chunks of doing, known
collectively as ‘activity’. For this theory, the unit is the idea of ‘activity’ as people doing
something for particular reasons that make sense socially (to the people they are with in the
activity) and at the time.
Sense making
Narrative 6.1: ‘Popular’ or ‘being avoided’?
Early in my first year of teaching, I noticed that my first-year class was especially eager.
When the bell rang, they would crowd into the classroom, vying to sit at the front. The
desks were set up in a large U-shape with my desk in the center, and it seemed the places at
either end of the U were particularly prized, so much so that students would fight to sit
there. As a new teacher, I found this attention gratifying; I thought was evidence that my
students liked the class so much that they wanted to sit as close to the teacher as possible.
Then one Monday morning, the classroom set-up seemed a bit different. It must have been
cleaned the afternoon before, and when the desks were put back in the U, my desk was
positioned at the very front of the room so that I was now able to take in everyone,
including those at either end of the U. Suddenly it seemed my ‘popularity’ plummeted.
Instead of fighting to sit nearby, students now wanted to sit in the desks at the bottom of
the U, which were the farthest from my desk. A while later, I put it all together. The nearby
desks had been in my blind spot, so I must not have called on those students. With the
inadvertent rearrangement however, I could see every seat so any student was fair game.
This story of the cluelessness of a first-year teacher distills the process of sense making—
how meanings arise from a situation of activity and how time contributes in the process.
Without the change between the previous and present versions of seating (time), which
triggered a difference in student response (activity), I might not have reconsidered why
students were trying to sit close (the meaning). Making sense of all this could be seen as a
process of interpretation in which one explanation (the students liked me …) was supplanted
by another (if they sit close, they’d be out of my line of sight), but the process is more
complex and nuanced than that. My original explanation arose from several sources; it had a
social history from my own experiences—in school, with people generally, and in a present
context—my being a new teacher, close in age to these high school students, presenting
lessons actively. These sources shaped my perceptions of the social situation of the
classroom. When the seating was inadvertently altered, the social situation changed and with
it the scaffolds for my explanation that ‘sitting close means liking the class.’ This interplay of
past and present, of social and individual, of the setting and people’s actions in it coalesce in
how sense gets made; this is what socio-cultural theory—and CHAT in particular—helps to
unpack.
Social practice theory: complex, comprehensive, and terminologically dense

Social practice theory is complex, comprehensive, and full of its particular terms. The label
is used here as the parent name that includes socio-cultural theory, cultural-historical activity
theory, as well as various theories of participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998).
The complexity and comprehensiveness go hand-in-hand, however. Detailing the interplay of
elements of place, the participants, the social context, what they are doing, and time—how the
current situation embodies previous versions—is multifaceted. There are a lot of moving
conceptual parts, which are needed for the theory to have comprehensive explanatory power,
and these comprehensive details need specific terms, which is where the terminology comes
in. Using specific terms helps to see things by naming them; the terms can distinguish among
aspects of everyday life that are often lumped together. In this way, the theory names its social
facts and creates its meanings. Three terms that function in this way are the foundation for the
rest of this chapter. The first is the distinction Leont’ev (1978) makes between three levels
—operations, actions, and activity—in describing what people do. These levels are
interrelated through the goal or object. The second is a diagrammatic representation of how
activity works as a system (Figure 6.1), and the third, which is attributed to Engestrom, is the
hierarchy of tensions or contradictions (Table 6.3) he outlines that operate within and among
systems. These terms help to explain how teachers make sense of what they do as they learn,
and how things travel in that learning from pre-service training or professional development
sessions into classroom teaching. Together the terms offer a comprehensive view of learning
as a social process that is very useful and applicable to the complexities of second language
teacher education.
How actions become meaningful and activity works as a system

Leont’ev’s (1978) distinction in actions
Conceptualizing how people make meaning out of what they are doing brings up an immediate
challenge. It becomes important to distinguish the discrete, publicly observable parts of what
they are doing and connect these parts to a whole, which is where the meaningfulness comes
in (Wertsch, 1995). Writing in what would be called the ‘first generation’ of the activity-
theory perspective (explained later in this chapter) Leont’ev (1978) differentiated three
levels through which the activity itself becomes meaningful. He distinguished between an
action, as the thing done, the physical efforts that go in it, which he called the operations, and
the activity, as the meaning-bearing whole. These levels are intertwined as part of a goal or
what activity theory refers to as an object through which they become meaningful. The
distinction can seem like an instance of the theory’s wordiness, but it helps in focusing on the
parts of what can otherwise seem like a routine whole. Think about students raising their
hands in class for example. The operation (physically lifting the hand and holding it up)
becomes an action (raising the hand), which is meaningful as an activity, the object of which
is participating in the class in some way. There is a sort of loose social formula of
meaningfulness, something like ‘when I do this, I mean (intend to mean), that’ which connects
the goal and the individual’s action to a social meaning through the collective activity. The
glue of this connection is the social norms and conventions associated with being a student.
Those norms come from what we are used to doing in the classroom context; they depend on a
shared past in which we have gotten used to what things mean and how to do them
meaningfully, literally how to mean them in that setting.
The distinction and interconnection between operation, action, and activity is useful to
apply to teacher learning. For example, parsing the seating incident from my first year of
teaching using these terms locates the specific mechanism of what I learned. The student’s
actions were similar—they were deciding where to sit—and the object didn’t change—to
minimize the chances of being called on in the lesson. But I understood their actions through
two different goals, which made the actions part of different activities. In the beginning, I
thought the activity of choosing where to sit showed their interest in the class. After the
classroom was slightly rearranged however, I realized it had a different goal for them: to sit
where they could avoid having to participate. From the students’ standpoint, the object of the
activity of choosing seats remained the same throughout. From my standpoint however, there
were two different activities, each with its own object—showing interest in the lesson in the
first, and avoiding it in the second. The mechanism of my learning lay in making sense of the
contrast between what looked to me like different actions—sitting close by and sitting farther
away from me—which to the students were essentially the same action, guided by the same
goal.
Shifting the analytic priority
Leont’ev’s tripartite distinction helps to connect what happens in the physical world with the
meanings it brings. It also surfaces the complex ways in which those connections are made
and sustained. Actions take on meaning through being intended or perceived as part of a
specifically recognizable activity, which defines the dynamic between what we do and what
we mean by it. This dynamic, which socio-cultural theorists refer to as the ‘relational
interdependency of agent and world’, creates a different perspective on what is happening.
Wertsch (1991) summarizes this shift in emphases, ‘When action is given analytic priority,
human beings are viewed as coming into contact with, and creating, their surroundings as
well as themselves through the actions in which they engage’ (p. 8). It also opens up a
different perspective on what makes activities meaningful.
Engestrom’s diagram of systems

Activity is animated by meaning, or the need to find or create it, which we call making sense.
Social practice scholars Lave and Wenger, describe this dynamic of meaning-making as
follows: ‘objective forms and systems of activity […] and agents’ […]understandings of them
mutually constitute the world and its experienced forms’ (1991, p. 51). They make three key
points: First, activities are not random or created on the spot; they exist as ‘objective forms
and systems’ which participants use. Second, these given forms depend on participants to
recognize them, otherwise they no have meaning. This is what is meant by ‘mutually
constituting meaning.’ And third, our worlds are actually made up of these meanings for things
we do; we live in a world of activity, not of actions. Here the complexity and wordiness of
the social practice theory can overlap with a vengeance; the terms can seem opaque and the
complexity unmanageable.
Karaoke
Think about a karaoke sing along as an example. The songs that participants choose to
perform are part of the activity system of karaoke; the system can even have a history—
popular songs from different years that come preloaded on a sound system of some kind. The
karaoke event, with its participants, songs, and sound system, is an ‘objective form and
system of activity’; it exists whether or not people perform, which is an instance of the first
point. When people choose songs and perform them, they are ‘constituting the activity system
as meaningful’. A karaoke event only happens if there are singers who participate; an
audience is helpful but not necessarily required. The singers make the event karaoke, and the
karaoke event makes the singers; this is what is meant by the second point—mutually
constituting meaning. Third, while we sing in many contexts, it is the context of activity that
defines the type of singing activity as karaoke. If you walk into where it is happening, and
providing you know what karaoke is, you will know what is going on whether you actually
participate or not. This last point is central to the idea of an activity as a system, that the
meaning comes from the interaction of a complex web of elements which include not just
what is happening, but where and when, and how that conforms to the norms and expectations
of what should be happening under these circumstances.
‘Persons-in-activity’: mapping the triangles

Activity systems are usually represented in a distinctive geometric diagram of overlapping
triangles, which capture the interplay of the five elements working towards the goal (or
object) of the activity. The elements sit in two relationships: the subject, the tools, and the
object are the primary one; it is embedded in a larger set of relationships among the rules or
norms, community, and the roles or division of labor. The representation in Figure 6.1 is often
explained through the example of a game (here I have chosen tennis) probably because games
are readily understood as clearly bounded activity systems.
Figure 6.1 A tennis match as an activity system
Tennis as an example
Using a tennis game as an example has the advantage of putting specific names on the five
elements in the activity system. (The sixth element—the object—is to win the match; it is a
constant.) The players (called the subjects of the system) use the ball, the net, and the lines on
the court etc. as tools of the activity to play the game. They use some of these tools actively—
like their rackets and the ball; others—like the net, and the lines on the court—are passive
tools, though they are equally important to the game. (‘Important’ here means the activity
wouldn’t be a tennis game without them.) Interestingly, these passive tools carry a lot of the
meaning; the lines on the court mark what is in or out, which has implications for the scoring.
These implications are part of the rules that make tennis, tennis. Rules go beyond the game
itself, though. They also include norms about what to say (how the score is announced for
instance), what to do (players usually shake hands before and after they play), and even what
to wear (tennis whites in certain tennis contexts).
The subjects (players) have roles that divide the activity up and define who does what,
when. For instance, one player serves and the other returns the serve. To carry out this
division of labor according to their roles, they follow the rules and norms. Putting this
together, the meaningfulness of the activity system comes from the tools being used ‘properly’
for tennis, the rules and norms for tennis being followed, and the roles being done
appropriately for tennis. This meaningfulness depends on being recognized by a reference
group or community that makes sense of the activity as playing tennis; and that these elements
are working meaningfully together to be a tennis game. Breakdowns within an element, or in
the connections between them, affect the meaning of the activity. So a player (subject) may
play ‘poorly’ (do a ‘poor job’ of the role) or be ‘unsportsmanlike’ (contradict norms); or
certain tennis shots may not be ‘ruled out’ (not applying the rules), or the tennis balls may not
be ‘regulation’ (tools), and so on. The point being that these words in quotation marks are
ways in which the community judges the meaningfulness of the activity.
Applied to teacher education: a peer-teaching example

Viewing activities as systems offers a powerful conceptual framework for studying what goes
on in teacher education (Barahona, 2015; Tsui & Law, 2007). For example, the common
exercise of peer teaching, in which trainees ‘teach’ lessons to their peers and get feedback
from a teacher educator, can be understood in different ways. As discussed in Chapter 5, peer
teaching can be seen as a behavioral undertaking, in which the trainees need to learn certain
teaching moves and demonstrate they can do them. From an activity-theoretical perspective,
peer teaching becomes an exercise in meaning making, in how to think and act like a teacher.
Benedict-Chambers (2014) studied trainees who were learning to teach science as part of
their preparation to become elementary school teachers. She looked at how trainees and the
teacher educator talked about the peer-teaching lesson. Other researchers in ELT have studied
the discourse of supervisor feedback (for example, Wajnryb, 1998; Farr, 2010); what makes
Benedict-Chambers’ work useful in the context of this discussion is her use of the framework
of activity systems to map the interactions.
Peer-teaching in elementary school science

In the following excerpt from Benedict-Chambers’ study (2014), the trainees and the teacher
educator, as the subjects of the activity system are talking about a walk-through science
lesson in which fellow trainees played the part of elementary school students. The object of
the activity was to learn about teaching environmental science, and specifically about
enacting the ‘EEE’ (Engage-Experience-Explain) framework, an inquiry-based science
curriculum framework they have been studying (Benedict-Chambers, 2014, p. 37). Figure 6.2
maps the peer-teaching walk through as an activity system (Benedict-Chambers, 2014, p. 28–
31).
Figure 6.2 Walking through a science methods lesson (from Benedict-Chambers, 2014)
The teacher educator begins the feedback on the walk-though lesson with a question:
TEACHER What would you revise?

EDUCATOR:
NOELLE: … what I’m struggling with most is how to integrate the investigation question
into this aspect … of the observations … But I think I could have reminded
students … that’s the question we want to answer.
We need to collect evidence to answer this question … I think I focused so
much on the process of observing and recording and what that meant that I kind
of lost the content.
(Benedict-Chambers, 2014, p. 67)
In her response, Noelle, the trainee, uses terms about science teaching from the EEE
framework, in italics above, as tools to talk about what she did. As the exchange continues,
the teacher educator confirms her comments, and then shifts the way she is talking (in italics
below):
TEACHER Yeah, I was wondering about that a little bit. You did such a nice job on the
EDUCATOR: process but then on the actual sense-making of the scientific content … I
wonder if it would work to stop the kids in the middle of the observations and
say, “Okay, remember our investigation question … can we have some initial
ideas—answers to this investigation question based on our observations?”
NOELLE: Yeah and that would be a good way for them to notice because when I was
looking through the [EEE Framework] rubric I didn’t really provide an
opportunity at all for them to make a prediction about the outcome (ibid.).
When she responds, Noelle again uses the tools from the elementary science methods course,
in italics, this time to paraphrase the teacher educator’s suggestion, in italics just above. The
rules and norms here are complex. The most evident is the norm of tool using, working with
science methods terms to unpack the lesson. There is also a norm of invoking the elementary
classroom as the referent community, when the teacher educator says (also in italics above),
‘Okay, remember our investigation question … can we have some initial ideas—answers to
this investigation question based on our observations?’ Interestingly, in her statement the
science methods terms seem to travel as tools, so that the same words can potentially work in
the lesson and they can be used to talk about it. The teacher educator’s suggestion also
confirms a subtle division of labor in the peer teaching, to orient the feedback within the
lesson and to bridge the lesson to full teaching in the referent community.
From the standpoint of meaning, the incident is complexly layered. The trainees have two
roles in the activity system. As ‘elementary students’, they are supposed to use the common
misconceptions children have about the topic, which they have studied, to play their roles in
the lesson. Then afterwards in the discussion reproduced here, they become teachers-in-
training to discuss what happened. Their main tools are the EEE framework they have been
studying, and the terms from the science methods course, which is the context of the peer
teaching. In the course, peer teaching is a lesson within a lesson, which established the
division of labor between the teacher educator and the trainees, who can say and do what is
in their roles. These layered roles—as students, as trainees, and as future teachers; as teacher
educator and as fellow elementary teacher—are meaningful (which makes them roles worth
playing) because of the different communities they invoke. The trainees are taught and
evaluated by the teacher educator within the university course, which is one community. They
also listen to her as a fellow teacher, in their roles as future teachers in an elementary school
context.
How time works in social practice theory

This dynamic of being trainees and listening as future teachers is a good example of how time
works according to social practice theory. As trainees, the participants bring what they know
and are familiar with to the peer teaching: the science methods terms as tools would be an
example, or the various norms—how elementary students act in class, how post-graduate
trainees talk in discussions, etc. We could call these aspects of ‘past-into-present’ time. When
they talk and listen in the role of potential elementary school teachers, there is also ‘present-
into-future’ time. For instance, a bit later in the feedback session, a trainee, Lacey, talks about
her concern:
Lacey: I think something that’s hard, which I was thinking about while you were doing this,
because I work with fifth graders too … when students are mislabeling things … I wonder as
a teacher how you deal with 25 students doing that and how you can make sure that they’re not
spending their whole investigation period calling one thing another thing.
(Benedict-Chambers, 2014, p. 68)
In raising classroom management as an issue, she links it to the focus on the science lesson,
pointing out that it could end up sabotaging the object of that activity: ‘How [do] you deal
with 25 students [to] make sure that they’re not spending their whole investigation period
calling one thing another thing.’
Two time frames

The two time frames—past-into-present and present-into-future—are interwoven with each
other as what we generally call ‘experience’. There are two dimensions of experience. One is
the experience of doing the activity as it happens: in the tennis example, playing the game; in
the feedback example, talking about what happened in the peer-teaching lesson. The other is
the experience of having done the activity once it is complete—after the game when the final
score separates who won and who lost; in the peer teaching, considering the lesson as
potential teachers. The second dimension of experience uses proxies to sum up the first
dimension, so the score is a proxy for the tennis match, and the comments using science
methods terms that express lessons learned become proxies for what happened in the walk-
through lesson. These proxies are products of the process of doing the activity. Not
surprisingly, proxies often come in symbolic form—as numbers for scores, as words (like the
science methods terms) from the peer teaching. This point is central to thinking about the
second theme of this chapter, what travels in teacher education.
Object and outcome
The relation between these two experiences is described in socio-cultural terms as the
tension between the object of the activity—the goal—and the outcome—what happened. The
tension is obvious in the tennis example where the object for the players (as subjects of the
activity) is to win the match, while the outcome is that one player does win and the other
loses. The distinction is less striking in the peer-teaching example; when Lacey brings up
classroom management, there is an implication of an outcome: how would this procedure
work in a Grade 5 classroom? The often-heard critique of teacher preparation, that it is ‘good
in theory but wouldn’t work in the classroom’, could be taken as expressing this tension
between object and outcome. Understanding how time works is key to understanding what
travels from teacher education into teaching.
What travels
A starting point
Social practice theory shows how sense-making works: how actions gain meaning within
activity systems and how they travel across situations. The theory also helps to rethink how
time works as part of activity, particularly with the constant tension in the goal. The
relationship between why a person is doing the activity (the object) and what happens in it
(the outcome) creates an unavoidable struggle. The tension is between playing the tennis
match to win it and what the final score is; win or lose, the struggle is resolved for the time
being. In the practice-teaching example, the tension in the goal is more complicated. The
trainees are learning inquiry-based science lessons in order to pass them on when they are
teachers, so there is a tension between the present (object) and a future time (outcome). How
will the lesson work when it is actually taught? This tension involves how an activity that is
done in the present contributes to what happens in the future. This entails examining the
connections between them, which is the focus of the feedback session. It is the second central
idea in this chapter—understanding how ideas move, what ‘travels’ in teacher education. The
discussion starts with an anecdote, the first of three that trace how one tool has traveled in my
own experience of using it in different ways. I first met the tool, the Cuisenaire rods, in
elementary school.
Narrative 6.2: Rod story I: from fraction trains to Japanese

In the fall of Grade 3, I remember two men in suits coming to our class. They brought with
them two kinds of wooden blocks. One had blocks of different geometric shapes and
volumes (Dienes blocks), and the other brought a set of rectangular sticks of different
colors (Cuisenaire rods). Each man sat with a group of us and asked us to do things with
the blocks. The man with the Cuisenaire rods asked us to make trains using the rods, which
came in ten different lengths from the white rod (one cubic centimeter) to the orange rod
(ten centimeters long). I remember he spoke English with an accent I wasn’t used to, gently
purring his words. He asked us to figure out how many cars (rods) it would take to make
two trains, one with yellow rods and the other with blue, of the exactly the same length.
Years later I realized we had been exploring the mathematical concept of lowest common
denominator. It took nine yellow rods (five centimeters each) versus five blue rods (nine
centimeters each) to make equal length trains: 9 cars of 5cm yellow rods = 5 cars of 9cm
blue rods = 45.
I didn’t run into the Cuisenaire rods again until I was in graduate school studying
language teaching; they were part of a methodology demonstration of the Silent Way. We
were manipulating these same colored rectangular blocks, but now the object was to figure
out Japanese: ‘John-san, akai bo-o sanbon tote koko ni oite kudasai.’ (John, take three red
rods and put them right here.)
Transfer
The notion of traveling is referred to in educational psychology as ‘transfer of learning’. It is
beyond the scope of this discussion to review the history and the literature of the concept,
which is done elsewhere (for example, Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999/2004); the main
point here is the term itself. ‘Transfer’ implies something that is being moved from one
context to another. It is defined as ‘… the ability to extend what has been learned in one
context to new contexts’ (Bransford et al., 1999/2004, p. 51). The emphasis is on the thing
itself and how it does or doesn’t change in being taken from one setting to another. Think of
bringing something perishable, maybe fish or milk, home from the supermarket on a hot day;
does it survive in edible form or does it spoil? ‘Transfer of learning’ has a similar sense;
does what is learned in one place survive in its initial form when taken from where it is
learned to where it is used?
There are several issues with this view of transfer from the perspective of a social practice
theory (see Sfard, 1998). The aim is assumed to be that the thing being transferred continues
to be the same regardless of context (see Reddy, 1979). Context is taken as the backdrop, as a
place where things happen. In a social practice view, what is being transferred is (re)defined
within each context so stability is not the aim. Context is dynamic, as in the tennis game or the
peer-teaching examples; it is part of what makes meaning. The idea of time works differently
as well. Studies of transfer of learning measure elapsed time between contexts (near versus
far transfer) to see how long an idea or a skill survives in the form in which it was learned. In
social practice theory, time is part of the context; as discussed earlier, past time defines how
things are in the present, and future time anticipates how the activity may be used.
Table 6.1 summarizes these differences in the two views. At the most basic, the idea of
transfer differentiates between learning something and using it later. In social practice theory
learning and using are intertwined. Learning is a way of talking about using that describes
getting more and more like those who are fluent or proficient.
Transferring Traveling
What is being moved Stays stable Is (re)defined in context
Context Is the backdrop, setting Is a dynamic social environment
Time Measures how long what has Is part of context—the past
been learned is preserved shapes the present activity, which
anticipates future uses.
Table 6.1 Transfer vs. traveling
Traveling
Transfer is one way of describing how ideas move; traveling is another. It focuses on what
happens as things move in time. In teacher education things travel—techniques in the training
room move to the practice lesson; concepts from the seminar show up in the school
practicum; all of this travels from preparation or in-service contexts into classrooms. To
tackle this question of how things travel, we need to better understand the social practice
view of tools, what they are and how they work.
Tools
In cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), tools are one element of an activity system.
They can be physical things, like the racket or the ball in the tennis example; they can also be
symbolic, like the terms from the science methods class in the peer-teaching example. While
physical tools usually vary depending on the activity, the most common symbolic tool in doing
activities is language. Physical and symbolic tools are often combined in an activity, such as
when a teacher explains while pointing to the board or using a worksheet. Tools also come
with a past, a history that creates norms for how they are to be used. This history is not
something separate; in social practice theory the history is part of the tool. It makes the tool
meaningful in the activity.
Equipment, tools, and activity

Saljo (1982) gives a good example of how tools embed history. He compares two ways of
adding numbers: doing sums and using a calculator. The first case involves using a pen and
paper as tools; the second case, using a hand-held calculator or perhaps the calculator
function on a cell phone. The procedure with the different tools starts in a similar fashion: you
make a list of the numbers using the pen and paper or you tap the numbers in order into the
calculator. Then the two procedures—the ways they divide the labor of adding—diverge.
When you use a pen and paper to add the numbers up, you need to mark (or remember) the
amounts that carry forward from one column to the next. When you use the calculator, you
enter the numbers in sequence, pressing the + key each time, (and since you can’t see the list
you need to remember how many numbers you have entered), then you tap the equals key and
the sum is displayed on the screen.
Time functions differently in the two tools. With the pen-and-paper list, past-into-present
time is visible in the list of numbers and the amount carried forward in each column. With the
calculator however, past-into-present time is invisible. You have to keep track of the numbers
you’ve entered. In this way, memory is accessible with the first tool, but inaccessible to the
user with the second. In fact, the tool ‘remembers’ the numbers so the user doesn’t need to.
The two tools also differ in how present-into-future works. To verify the outcome in the first
case, you can go over the listed numbers, checking the amounts you carried forward, and the
sum that you got. In the second case, you need to repeat the process of entering the numbers
from the beginning to see if you get the same answer. With the list, if there is a discrepancy in
the answers, the tool allows you to see where you may have made a mistake. With the
calculator, the tool is relatively opaque so that checking for mistakes can feel a bit like trial
and error—you have to repeat the process until you arrive at a stable answer.
Used to add a list of numbers, the object of the activity is the same but the two tools work
quite differently, as summarized below.
The tool Pen and paper Calculator
Object of activity To total a list of numbers
Assumes the user
Is numerate Can read and enter numbers
(norms/rules*) (community)
Can write numbers on a keypad
Can perform addition Recognizes + and = signs
Using the tools (division of

Lists numbers vertically Enters numbers sequentially,
labor) pressing + after each group
Adds each column
Carries appropriate amount Needs to remember where
to the next column s/he is in the list
Writes the sum Presses = key for sum
Outcome of activity Gets the sum of the list

To verify the outcome Can check each step Has to repeat the steps
* Elements of activity in italics refer to Figure 6.1
Table 6.2 Two tools for adding sums (summarizing Saljo, 1982)
How tools embed expertise

Saljo’s example highlights several important aspects of tools. First, tools combine the
physical with the symbolic; in both cases in this example, numbers, and the way to manipulate
them. Second, the new tool embeds the previous one to make it in some ways obsolete. In this
case, the calculator subsumes the activity of the pen and paper list; it embeds the arithmetical
process in the tool itself, which changes what the user does. The difference between using a
calculator and using a pen and paper, Saljo argues, is the division of labor or how expertise
is reorganized between the user and the tool.
This means that expertise in a social practice view is not something people bring to what
they are doing; it comes about in the activity itself. An expert pianist is a virtuoso when
playing the instrument; a teacher shows expertise in the act of teaching. An expert witness
plays that role in a legal trial. We use the term to describe how people use tools (including
tools like words and language) in a particular activity. In a way, my experience with the
Cuisenaire rods is an example. There is nothing expert about the rods themselves; they are
just ten sticks of wood of different colors and lengths. Using them, however, is another matter.
Over time, the uses attach meanings and history to them, which makes the rods such powerful
tools.
Narrative 6.3: Rod story II: the tool takes on different meanings
During my graduate training, the Cuisenaire rods and I crossed paths many times. I was
fascinated by the seemingly endless ways in which they could be used. We used them
literally to teach numbers and colors (‘One black rod; five orange ones’) and in applied
linguistics we talked about using them to teach prepositions (The white rod is on top of the
orange one), and verb tenses (First, I took two white rods, now I’m taking an orange one.),
and so on. In methodology courses, I saw how these pieces of wood could trigger meanings
in the new language, which changed the rods from equipment to tools for particular forms
of teaching. In the Silent Way, the teacher could combine silence (not-speaking) with
visible situations using the rods to prompt students to use the new language (Stevick, 1980,
p.44). In the Counseling-Learning methodology, there were metaphorical uses: these
colored wooden sticks could be members of a family, or buildings in a city, or a map of a
memory (Stevick, 1980, 139).
As we worked with the rods that year, I got completely immersed in the ways they might
function in the language classroom. While they were familiar from mathematics in Grade
3, now they seemed a tool of a different sort. Or maybe they were the same tool, but now
used differently. It was akin to meeting a person a for the second time and finding they’ve
changed. In Grade 3, the rods had seemed boring; now, when used to these new ends in
language teaching, they seemed dynamic and engaging.
Meaning comes in use, which has a history

Unlike the pen and paper and the calculator, the rods themselves did not change. Rather they
were used in different ways and through those uses assumed different meanings. They were
trains in Grade 3 when the object was learning about the idea of lowest common
denominator; pieces to manipulate when the object was practicing rudimentary commands in
Japanese; imaginary representations when the object was for my language students to
‘describe a place that no one in the class has ever been’ (Stevick, 1980, p. 139). The
meaningfulness of the tool comes in its use, from how the user understands its capabilities.
Use always happens in time, so these capabilities are found in the history of the tool. The
calculator embeds pen and paper addition in the function of the + key. Rods as tools do not
embed anything though, they carry the meaning through how they are used—in one lesson to
show a grammar point, in another to tell a story, in a third to represent members of the family,
and so on. Learning how to use this tool as a teacher entails figuring out its capabilities and
using it in various ways. This combination of imagination and activity creates the person’s
history with the tool. Like mine, that history stretched from mathematics in Grade 3, to teacher
training as a new teacher, to what I do now.
Narrative 6.4: Rod story III: manipulating the tool

In a graduate seminar, I began to notice that the students always sat in the same places,
which meant that any group work we did involved them with the same people. Discussions
became lopsided; there were pockets of the class that spoke a lot, while others didn’t
contribute much. I could have asked them to sit in different places I suppose, but with 30
students the change would likely have been more chaotic than effective in scrambling
things up. So I hit upon using the rods. At the start of the following class, I passed around
a box with 30 rods, three of the same color (times the 10 colors). Students each took a rod;
some did so without paying much attention, while others pored over the box as if they were
choosing piece of candy. When all the students had chosen a rod, I asked them to gather up
their stuff and move to sit with the people who had the same color rod. The reseating
worked well, probably due to the novelty of the activity and the innocuous looking nature
of the sticks of wood. It re-divided the labor—who talked to whom—in the class.
Later in the same term, as I used the technique on other occasions I saw that some
students would attend closely to which classmates had chosen which color so as to be
grouped with them. These people had learned how to use the tool; they realized that color
was the salient feature and used it according to their own goal. They could take an
outcome they wanted—sitting with friends—and make it the object of this reseating
activity, which contradicted my object in using the rods which was to create randomly
mixed groups. So I changed the rules. The next time we were reseating, after they had each
chosen a rod, I told students to sit with someone whose rod was one centimeter different
(longer or shorter) than theirs. This change in the norms of how the reseating activity had
been working redefined the meaning of the tool—rod length rather than color became the
salient feature—and had the effect of re-establishing the original goal of randomized
seating—at least temporarily.
Levels of contradiction
Contradictions within an activity
This story illustrates the interplay or tension between the object of an activity system and its
outcome, and highlights several points about that dynamic. Different participants can (and do)
have different goals or objects: I wanted to randomize seating; some students wanted to
manage where they sat. These tensions in one element of the activity system are called
primary contradictions. At any given moment, either color or length (or both) could be the
salient feature that made the rods meaningful in a particular situation. I manipulated this
primary contradiction in the tool towards the object I wanted (randomized seating). Over
time students got to know the drill and learned to manipulate the tool to achieve their own
goals (sitting with whom they chose). This tension between elements within an activity system
—here the tool and the object—is called a secondary contradiction. In any activity,
participants are bound to have differing agendas; secondary contradictions describe how
they use elements—the tools, the rules and norms, the division of labor—to meet their own
ends.
Primary and secondary contradictions describe how the activity system works, where its
dynamism comes from. The idea that the alignment among elements of the system is by nature
contentious, is central to the theory. Activity systems are always unstable as the story above
shows. When some students recognized how I was using the rods (as a tool to reseat people),
they then could use the tool to their own ends (sitting where they wanted to). I altered the
aspect of the tool that was salient (to be length not color), which changed what happened in
the activity. The levels of primary and secondary contradiction happen within an activity
system; in this case characterized by its dynamism and instability.
Contradictions between activities

There are two further levels of tension that happen between activity systems. Tertiary
contradictions are tensions that implicate whole systems, often between the previous and
present versions. The Saljo example is a case in point: Doing addition using a pen and paper
versus doing it on a calculator are different activities; they are alternative means to achieve
the goal, totaling up a sum. Although adding on the calculator has largely replaced pen and
paper (particularly with the advent of cell phones), the two activities do co-exist. There is a
tertiary contradiction between them, between the previous way of adding sums and the
current way of doing so. The tertiary contradiction surfaces in tensions over speed and
accuracy for example. Using the calculator is usually faster than adding sums by hand, which
supports the norm of being efficient. But, when there is (or appears) to be a mistake in the
total, the older way of adding using pen and paper allows rechecking more easily. A mistake
when adding on a calculator can mean doing the activity all over again.
The fourth level involves tensions between elements of different, usually neighboring,
activity systems. These so-called quaternary contradictions, while they can seem abstract,
happen all the time: in family situations when children are participants in the family and also
in a peer group of friends; in cross-cultural interactions where norms and rules differ from
one situation to another; in work situations when some tasks are expected by gender (for
example, women serving coffee or making tea regardless of their jobs) and so on. Both levels
of inter-system tension are common in teacher education. Tertiary contradictions, between
present and anticipated systems, can surface for trainees between being students and acting as
(future) teachers. There is a tension between the norms/rules of the two activity systems, for
example when trainees receive a grade (norm/rule of being a student) for a practice teaching
assignment, while the concern is how the lesson went and what they learned about teaching
(norm/rule of becoming a new teacher).
Quaternary contradictions, between adjacent systems, are common in teacher education
as well. School placements for teaching practice or internships are a case in point. Here the
neighboring systems of the university teacher education program and the school have different
goals. For the university, the object is to educate new teachers; for the school, it is to educate
the children who are students. To make teaching placements work, these two neighboring
activity systems have to negotiate a shared goal. The norms/rules of the two communities
differ, which can be evident in the tension for the trainee between dressing casually as a
student at the university, but professionally as a student teacher in the school. These teaching
placements create a different division of labor as well, which can surface in the post-
observation conference between the university supervisor, mentor teacher, and student teacher
for example. In spite of collaborative planning and good intentions, there can be tensions in
role, in who gets to talk about what, and in expertise (for example, Tsui & Law, 2007).
Contradictions and expansive learning

Contradictions at each of these four levels are part of how things work. CHAT theorists argue
that the tertiary and quaternary contradictions are where change, or in CHAT terms
‘expansive learning’, happens (Engestrom, 1987). As Engestrom (2001) explains, this
transformation takes place in activities when ‘the object and motive of the activity are re-
conceptualized to a radically wider horizon of possibilities than in the previous mode of
activity’ (p. 137). This sense of open-endedness is what makes the learning expansive, ‘In
important transformations in our personal lives and organizational practices, we must learn
new forms of activity which are not there yet. They are literally learned as they are created’
(Engestrom, 2001, p. 138). Contradictions are the engines of activity, a point that Engestrom
(1999) emphasizes when he refers to them as ‘the force of change and development’ (p. 9).
The levels of contradiction, which are summarized in Table 6.3, locate and describe where
and how movement happens in an activity.
Primary Within an element of Rods as a tool can

the activity work in two ways
(color and length) to
determines where to sit
[Rods story III]
Secondary Among elements of the Between the tools
activity (above) and the object
for students – to
choose; for the teacher
– to mix seating [Rod
story III]
Tertiary Between two activities Between rods used as
(as in the old vs. the tools – as trains (in
new ways of doing Grade 3), and in the
something) Japanese lesson [Rod
story I]
Quaternary Across activities, In graduate school,
between the elements of learning about using
the focal (or dominant) rods as potential tools
activity and those of with different objects in
neighboring activities applied linguistics and
methodology [Rod story
II]
Table 6.3 Levels of contradiction in activity summarized by rod story
Summarizing contradictions by rod story

My history using the Cuisenaire rods illustrates these contradictions. Starting in Grade 3 and
continuing to the present, I have worked with the rods in different ways as a student of
mathematics and of Japanese, as a teacher of language and of teachers, as summarized in
Table 6.3.
The rods themselves have remained the same; what has changed is how I have used them in
these different activities, which has been driven by my goal, my reasons for doing so. The
question is what has traveled across these various activities and uses? On a concrete level, it
is the rods themselves. In terms of sense making, it is the cumulative meanings, the
experiences of how I have used them. The rods took on meanings in and through the situations
in which we used them. This amalgam of the thing and what it means becomes a social fact in
the situation. Like any sign, the physical thing comes to signify a meaning by what is done
with it. In Rod story III for example, students would choose rods and I would say which
dimension—the color or the length—would mean where to sit. The social facts are what
traveled, and social practice theory describes the process.
How activity creates and sustains social facts
There is a final rod story, which illustrates how social facts are semiologically created as
tools in activity systems.
Narrative 6.5: Rod story IV: The tool as reified talk

My class of 12 adult English students was huddled around a large table. One of them, the
box of rods in her lap, was gathering her thoughts in response to my prompt to tell us
about ‘a place you’ve been that no one else here has ever seen.’ Hesitantly at first, she put
several blue rods end-to-end. ‘The ocean is very blue there; very warm.’ Then she scattered
some white rods beside of the blue rods; ‘The beach is really white.’
Standing up some brown rods, ‘There are big trees, maybe mango trees?’ Her story
continued for about ten minutes, and then her classmates started to ask questions. Later
they wrote up summaries of what she had told them, often pausing as they wrote to study
the rods on the table as if to recall her account. As the class ended and people were
leaving, one student went to gather the rods and put them back in the box. ‘Leave them that
way.’ said another student, ‘We want to know that place.’ It almost seemed like that beach
with white sand and mango trees was locked in those colored blocks of wood.
Reifying talk
The idea of reification, as making something ephemeral permanent, is a bridge between talk
and social facts. In most situations, the words that are used are soon forgotten and only their
meaning persists, but when they become reified in activity though explicit attention and
controlled use, they can become tools. The process is more easily seen when things, like
rods, represent words as they do in this example. It is easy to confuse the physical thing with
its role as a social fact, however. Here, leaving the rods on the table seemed to preserve the
words, as the physical embodiment of a social experience of telling and listening to the story.
They serve to recall the experience of the activity. In teacher education, as in any social
practice, physical objects often come to represent activities: rubrics become social facts in
conferences; course books become social facts in language classrooms; certificates are social
facts of training. These physical objects embody meanings and ways of being used by groups
of people, and as such they can travel from one activity setting to another. Wenger (1998)
refers to them as ‘boundary objects’ that import functions and meanings from one place to
another. An observation rubric, which has been introduced and practiced in the training room,
then gets used in the school teaching placement for example. This process happens constantly,
and yet it is rarely explicitly planned or fully orchestrated in what we do in teacher education.
Social practice theory is richly useful in demonstrating how meaning is developed through
doing things in situations. But it entails a shift in focus, or what Wertsch (1991) calls a shift in
analytic priority. When activity is foregrounded, people become a function of what they do, as
he puts it: ‘… action, rather than human beings or the environment considered in isolation,
provides the entry point into the analysis’ (p. 8). This shift from people to what they are doing
in the situation has enormous theoretical implications for conceptualizing learning to teach
generally, and learning to teach languages specifically. It directs attention to activity and to
the tools that participants are using in those activities. And since passing time changes things,
the social practice theory focus on activity needs to include change, which it does in the
concept of contradiction. The implication is that learning to teach is not a process with an
endpoint, or even a trajectory from newcomer to experienced teacher; rather it is a fabric of
interwoven activity systems which often challenge and even contradict each other both within
systems and across them.
PART THREE
Core processes of second language teacher education
Introduction to Part Three
Language teaching, like any form of teaching, is usually described in terms of the classroom
work that we can see. We introduce teaching methods and techniques as things the teacher
does; we observe and comment on lessons as activity that we can talk about. But this public
side of teaching has a hidden side (Freeman, 2002), the mental work that makes it happen.
Part Three is about that mental work, and three processes in particular: thinking, knowing,
and reflecting.
How Part Three is organized
The first two chapters in the section examine teacher thinking in language teaching and
second language teacher education. Chapter 7 outlines how ideas about teacher thinking in the
field have developed since the 1950s; Chapter 8 looks at four seminal ways the process has
been represented, two from general educational research and two from second language
teacher education. The next two chapters present a similar analysis of knowing. Chapter 9
follows the development of ideas about language teaching knowledge through four
generations, and Chapter 10 looks at ways in which those ideas are organized socio-
professionally into the ELT knowledge-base. The four chapters balance internal and external
perspectives. Chapter 7 and Chapter 9 look at how the field of ELT has defined thinking and
knowing internally; the companion Chapter 8 and Chapter 10 look at many of the same issues
from the outside in.
Generations as a scaffold
There are accounts of the history of language teaching generally (for example, Kelly, 1969)
and English language teaching specifically (for example, Howatt, 1984; Howatt & Smith,
2014). The concept of generations differs from these histories, however. The aim is to define
patterns in how ideas about thinking and about knowledge in language teaching have been
understood. Shifts in these definitional patterns are important in understanding how language
teaching as a field has defined itself, the ideas about thinking and about the knowledge it has
valued, how these ideas have come about and, when they are perceived as incomplete, what
gaps push the next generational view.
The chapters about the field-internal perspectives are organized chronologically. Each uses
the idea of generations to frame the development of ideas about teacher thinking and
knowledge. These generations loosely characterize time periods during which prevailing
ideas in the field shared a common general focus and set of concerns. Since thinking and
knowing are closely connected, it makes sense that the generations parallel and intertwine
with each other as they concentrate on similar issues and concerns. In fact, this generational
history could be an account of how understandings and definitions of teacher thinking and
teacher knowledge in language teaching have converged. The table below gives a snapshot of
how the concerns have coincided.
Generation Chapter 7 Concern Chapter 9

0 Thinking as behaving — —
1 Thinking What Content and Disciplinary knowledge
methodologically pedagogy
2 Thinking synthetically How Choice Knowledge as pedagogy
3 Thinking heuristically Who and Where Context Knowledge in-person,
in-place
Current — Why Purpose Knowledge-for-teaching
Table iii.1 Generational parallels in teacher thinking and knowledge: A snapshot
As with any snapshot however, this table will likely raise more questions than it answers. It
is introduced here at the beginning of the section to orient the reader—fuller consideration of
the parallels is left to you.
As companion perspectives, Chapter 8 and Chapter 10 are meant as a balance to the field-
internal examinations; each offers a particular external view. Chapter 8 describes how second
language teacher education brought two generative conceptions of teacher thinking from
general educational research into the field, where each was seminal. Chapter 10 looks at the
socio-professional dynamics that have shaped how the ELT knowledge-base has developed.
These two chapters argue that second language teacher education transforms ideas in unique
ways to suit the nature of language as subject-matter and classrooms as where it is taught.
Side-by-side, the two chapters on thinking and the two on knowing present what the field
itself has done and how it takes the same ideas from elsewhere and does them differently.
The final chapter in this section is on reflecting, which is defined as thinking and knowing
in particular situations. The discussion uses two ideas—situations of practice and action-
present—that are part of Schon’s writing about reflection to build connections between the
discussions of thinking and knowing and second language teacher education.
7
How teacher thinking got to be part of language teaching
It is rather pointless to ask the teacher, after a routine decision has been made, what were
the contents of his [sic] mind at the time of the decision. For in a very real sense, there is
little he can report of any substance except that ‘It seemed like the right thing to do under
the circumstances’ or ‘I did it almost without thinking.’
(David Hargreaves, 1977, p. 13)
Clearly language teachers think and always have; there has always been a hidden side to the
work (Freeman, 2002), but how it became formally recognized by the field of language
teaching is an interesting story. This chapter uses the device of generations to outline the
movement in conceptions of thinking in the field. As explained in the Introduction to Part
Three, these generations represent patterns of ideas; they follow a historical progression, but
are not meant to be a history per se. Each generation is associated with a broad shift in the
teaching methodologies considered current, the rationales and explanations for those ways of
teaching, and the teacher’s role in relation to them. This evolution in definitions of thinking is
in many ways specific to language teaching. It is driven in part by the fact that language,
which is inherently fungible, has always been susceptible to modification as classroom
content. This reinvention has taken place through methodologies, and the different ways in
which language as content has been taught. The changes in teaching have catalyzed
redefinitions of what and how language teachers think as they teach.
Outlining the conceptual generations

To follow these changes, the broad sweep of ideas about language teacher thinking is grouped
into four generations, beginning with the Audio-lingual and Direct Methods in the 1960s
(abbreviated here as ALDM). ALDM teaching is taken as the starting point for these analyses,
generation zero, because teaching was entirely behavioral; independent thinking was not
acknowledged as part of what the ALDM teacher did as she taught. Thinking became
recognized in the first generation in the 1970s, as different innovative methods vied for
prominence. Each introduced a view of language teachers’ beliefs that was defined
exclusively in terms of the particular social facts of the methodology. In the latter part of the
1980s, the second generation emerged through debates about eclectic teaching, best methods,
and the post-method condition. In this period, thinking became a synthetic activity as language
teachers chose and combined techniques to achieve particular classroom goals. In the third
generation of the 2000s, teacher thinking has been positioned as a heuristic activity focusing
on investigating the relationships between what happens in the classroom and student
learning. Through these generations—starting from the behavioral thinking of ALDM
teaching, moving to methodological, then to synthetic, and currently to heuristic—thinking has
come to be recognized as a central part of what language teachers do.
Generation zero: thinking as behaving

Audio-lingual and Direct Method (ALDM) was a comfortable, clearly defined way to teach,
as I remember it. In ALDM teaching, the teacher’s role was to carry out clearly structured,
explicit sequences of teaching behaviors. Anchored in Skinnerian behavioral theories about
learning and Chomskyian theories of generative grammar about language, the job had a clear
mission: The [Audio-Lingual] classroom should operate as a ‘cultural island’ with the teacher
acting as a trusted guide introducing his [sic] students to the view of life as seen within the
new ‘speech community’ (Krakowski, 1961, p. 306). As it took the place of grammar-
translation teaching during the 1960s, ALDM teaching brought what was seen as an
advantage. Grammar-translation lessons were about the target language; students expanded
their meta-knowledge but were not encouraged to use the language. In contrast, in ALDM
lessons students were immediately immersed in strictly patterned language content; they were
using the new language from the beginning and thus creating the cultural island in the
classroom.
Patterned practice: an exercise in structural dexterity

The means of this geo-psychological transformation was patterned practice, a behavioral
form of teaching based on habit-formation par excellence. Brooks (1964) the leading
proponent of the Audio-Lingual Method, likened patterned practice to ‘what playing scales
and arpeggios is to music: exercise in structural dexterity undertaken solely for the purpose of
practice in order that performance may become habitual and automatic’ (as cited in
Krakowski, 1961, pp. 305, 306). The irony was that both students and teachers were trapped
in this habitual and automatic form of classroom activity. Like a fast volley in tennis, each
participant had a clear role in these exercises in structural dexterity. As a form of pedagogical
behavior however, patterned practice was uniquely suited as a two-lane methodological
bridge: the teaching packaged the target language content as defined through sentence
structures, and the students learned to use that content habitually and automatically, as
directed by behaviorist theory.
Automaticity
To reach this goal of automaticity, as Brooks explained, ‘the [student’s] mind [needs to]
concentrate on the message rather than on the phenomena that convey it’ (Krakowski, 1961, p.
306). The distinction between meaning and phonological phenomena served to organize who
did what in the classroom. The teacher introduced the phonological phenomena that conveyed
the message—the lines in the dialogue—and managed rapid, repetitive patterned practice of
these phenomena until the students could convey the message without having to think about it.
It was teaching that entailed quick reflexes but little careful or complex thought. That teachers
might be doing something like pedagogical reasoning (Shulman, 1987) was not even
contemplated in this view of language teaching.
A behavioral approach
As a behavioral approach to classroom pedagogy, ALDM responded to several levels of
educational demand. The methodology was a vehicle for the rapid expansion of foreign
language teaching in the United States, particularly at the secondary and university levels. Its
usefulness was probably because ALDM was fairly easy for new teachers to learn how to do,
though not necessarily to do well. ALDM helped to facilitate the spread of Russian as a
foreign language in the post-Sputnik era of the early 1960s (Chvany, 1995; Lipson &
Molinsky, 1977). When the launch of the US Peace Corps in 1961 expanded the number of
less-commonly taught languages and thus created a demand for teachers (US Peace Corps,
2015), ALDM teaching became the principal methodology. Since teachers of less commonly
taught languages were not widely available in the USA, ‘educated native speakers’ were often
recruited and trained, which reinforced the idea that language teachers were born knowing
their content. Teachers were assumed to have content competence and they could be prepared
for ALDM teaching through short-term, straightforward behaviorally oriented teacher
training. The combination of defining content knowledge through the criterion of nativeness
and methodology through the behavioral classroom practices of ALDM offered a feasible
way to scale up US foreign language teaching during the 1960s.
Thinking behaviorally: the ‘educated native speaker’

As a criterion for teaching knowledge, nativeness was easily invoked. The phrase ‘educated
native speaker’, which was used to describe teachers’ language qualifications and student
learning outcomes, was the highest level of language proficiency on the five-point US Foreign
Service Institute scale (Higgs, 1984). But the standard had some unexamined implications for
the intersection between content knowledge and teaching capability. The phrase conflated
education with nativeness so that the scales ratings were simultaneously a measure of
knowledge and of thinking. The educated native speaker had to know the target language (be
‘native’ in it) and therefore could think in it (as an ‘educated’ person). The lack of distinction
between language knowledge and using it emphasized automaticity in another form; it made
knowledge the central teaching attribute and thinking its logical by-product.
The native-speaker criterion became a hiring criterion in many teaching contexts. The main
prerequisite, nativeness, was to know the language and its culture and be able to think with it.
This defined teaching knowledge essentially as socialization. The knowledge of language and
culture was learned through having grown up in settings in which the language was used at
home and in schools. To enact this native knowledge of content in the classroom, teachers
hired for their target language proficiency often depended on prepared materials, and teaching
these materials entailed faithfully carrying out ALDM pattern practice. The social and
employment criterion of educated native speakers as language teachers was often abbreviated
as ‘native-speaking teacher’, which underscores the collapsing of content and teaching
knowledge. As a description, the phrase equated ‘native’ with knowing the language and its
culture, and ‘teaching the language’ with speaking it in the classroom. Teacher thinking
involved using the native knowledge and skills as a speaker to develop automatic language
habits in students.
In promulgating nativeness as a status-quo definition of content knowledge, and teacher
thinking as the exercise of pattern practice as highly structured classroom behavior, ALDM
presented a view of teaching that was completely behavioral and did not require thought. In a
sense, the formulation put all teachers on a common footing. Provided they had native
knowledge, which they enacted through patterned practice of classroom interactions, these
individuals were teaching language. During the 1970s, challenges to this formulation emerged
that became the first generation of understanding the place of thinking in language teaching.
The first generation: thinking methodologically

The advent of the ‘innovative methods’ (Blair, 1982), starting in the mid 1970s and continuing
through the 1980s, diversified classroom practices from the singular view of ALDM teaching
based on behaviorism. There are various groupings of these methods, which are sometimes
also referred to as humanistic or designer, but they have generally included Community
Language Learning (Curran, 1976), the Natural Approach (Krashen & Terrell, 1983), the
Silent Way (Gattegno, 1976a), and (de)Suggestopedia (Lozanov, 1978) (see Larsen-Freeman,
1986; Stevick, 1980; also Cushing-Leubner & Bigelow, 2014). ALDM, which had been
hegemonic, became one of several methodological options. Where ALDM had been the sole
way of teaching, these innovative methods introduced a rich pedagogical smorgasbord of
theories and techniques. Where ALDM teaching was highly formulaic, these methods were
the opposite. Each thrived on idiosyncrasy. Each method introduced particular definitions of
learning, which in turn supported unique views of teaching and of the teacher’s role. Each
innovative method, in other words, had its own unique form of thinking.
A common end, different means, and different rationales

As evidenced in the names alone, the differences among the innovative methods were so
unmistakable as to make them virtually incompatible. The distinctions are clearly evident in
the diversity of observable teaching practices used to achieve the same aim. These classroom
techniques were not simply different public teaching practices; each one included an
ideological stance towards language teaching, which made the methods themselves in effect
mutually exclusive. For example, Table 7.1 details what a teacher would do to achieve
fluently acceptable pronunciation in the target language. It contrasts the ALDM as the status-
quo ante with two innovative methods—Community Language Learning (Curran, 1976;
Stevick, 1980), and the Silent Way (Gattegno, 1976a).
Method Observable practice Underlying assumptions
Audio-lingual A The teacher models the new Language is patterned.
Direct Method language. Language use is based on habit.
Teaching B Students repeat chorally (often Learning a new language, the
several times). student is building new language
C The teacher nominates an individual habits.
to respond. The goal of language learning is to
D If correction is needed, the teacher use the new language automatically,
models the correct language, to develop ‘correct’ habits in the
sometimes exaggerating the mistake; new language.
the student repeats the correction. Errors indicate incorrect or
partially formed new language
habits.
Community A From the bilingual transcript of the Language is meaning-based.

Language recent conversation, an individual Language use creates and conveys
Learning class conversation, a student chooses identity through meaning.
a word or phrase in the new Learning a new language, the
language to practice and says it as student is developing a new
best she or he can. language identity.
B The teacher, standing behind the The goal of language learning is to
student, repeats the word or phrase convey who you are in the new
once after the student. language, to develop a functional
C The student can say the word or new language identity.
phrase again, in which case the Errors indicate a partially formed
teacher continues to repeat after the new language identity.
student.
The Silent Way A The teacher points to colored Language is consistently patterned
rectangle or word on a chart. (Each sounds.
color represents a phonemic value in Language use creates and conveys
the new language). meaning through patterns of
B Students try out the indicated sound sounds.
as they understand it. Learning a new language, the
C The teacher offers non-verbal student is developing awareness
coaching through gestures, indicating and criteria for the new sounds and
one student’s version over others, how they are patterned.
returning to the word chart, or The goal of language learning is to
perhaps gives a neutral response. convey what you want to say in the
D The students continue to say the new language, to express what you
sound at will until the teacher (or mean via the sounds of the new
other student) moves the focus to language.
another sound. Errors indicate a lack of awareness
or partially formed criteria.
Table 7.1 Teaching pronunciation: Three contrasting practices and their underlying reasoning
What is interesting, as others have also observed (for example, Larsen-Freeman, 1986;
Stevick, 1980), is how differently these three methods approached the same goal, in this case
the goal of developing students’ pronunciation in the target language. The visible classroom
practices above are so distinctive that an observer would be unlikely to confuse one form of
teaching with another. Each set of practices is based on a specific ideological way of
thinking. Anchored in a specific view of language learning and the learner, these views are as
distinct and incompatible as the public practices they foster. In the example, ALDM teaching
promotes automaticity in language production leading to fluency; Community Language
Learning aims to create a new language self, based on the learner’s interests, concerns, and
priorities. The Silent Way focuses on learner independence, which is realized through
autonomous practice using the target language sounds to express what the learner perceives
and wants to say. From this vantage point, it seems like a riddle: Are these three means to the
same end of fluently acceptable pronunciation? Or, given the different ways they define the
goal, is each method actually a uniquely distinctive means of its own?
Methodological independence
The continued spread of innovative methods during the 1980s fed the notion of thinking
methodologically. Teaching behavior, to use the ALDM frame, expressed distinct ways of
thinking about language, learning, and teaching. This first recognition of thinking as part of
language teaching was not explicit, however. Since the teachers’ thinking was directly linked
to—or even embodied in—the form of practice itself, thinking methodologically was not
distinguishable as an element of the teaching. Lessons could be described, for example, as
‘Silent Way teaching’ or ‘Suggestopedia classrooms’, or a teacher might be called (or refer to
herself) as a ‘CLL teacher’ or as using the ‘Natural Approach’, and so on. When language
teaching had been equated to ALDM, there was no need for such distinctions; indeed there
was basically no way to make them. Classroom teaching looked largely the same and there
was no need to identify different forms of thinking to distinguish it. That changed in the 1980s,
when thinking differently and teaching differently became synonymous.
The independence of innovative methods blossomed organizationally throughout the 1980s.
The first generation promoted the notion of practitioner through teaching materials, books, and
newsletters that were published independentlyNOTE 1 by the methods proponents (for
example, Counseling-Learning Publications for CLL/Counseling-Learning; Educational
Solutions for the Silent Way; and Alemany Press, for the Natural Approach). The methods
offered training opportunities, often outside conventional academic settings, usually by their
leading practitioners, that established separate communities of practitioners. And each had its
own language of practice.
Distinct languages of practice
The ideological distinctiveness became more evident as innovative methods developed their
particular social facts and idiosyncratic ways of talking and writing. Through demonstrations,
publications, workshops, and training, the methods fostered specific communities of practice
that developed and promulgated their own particular language of practice. Users identified
themselves, and were recognizable to others, through the ways in which they described what
they did in their classrooms. The teaching pronunciation comparison in Table 7.1 illustrates
these languages of practice. In ALDM teaching, for instance, student mistakes are
characterized as potentially ‘bad language habits’, but Silent Way teachers would distinguish
between student ‘mistakes’ and ‘errors’. Underlying the difference in the two explanations is
a way of thinking about how people learn languages. In ALDM as we have said, students are
forming automatic language responses, so mistakes in pronunciation indicate imperfect
mastery of the habit. In the Silent Way, the goal was to learn autonomously so when a student
produced an unacceptable pronunciation, one of two things might be happening. The student
may be making a mistake, the result of mis-taking one sound or word for another, although the
student knew or had access to both. Or the student may be making an error, which in Silent
Way thinking is the inevitable result of facing the unknown. As explained in the Educational
Solutions Newsletter (Gattegno, 1976b, p. 2), ‘Errors underline the matter with which they
are linked; mistakes, the person involved in the activities … Indeed, errors happen, while
mistakes are made.’
Method Classroom practice Explanations Social facts

ALDM The teacher models the Students are forming ‘automatic responses’
correct language, automatic responses so lead to ‘language habits’
sometimes exaggerating mistakes in
the mistake; the student pronunciation showed
repeats the correction. an imperfect mastery
(or ‘bad’) language
habit.
The Silent Way The teacher offers non- ‘Errors underline the Students make
verbal correction matter with which they ‘mistakes’ or ‘errors’.
through gestures, are linked; mistakes, the
indicating one student’s person involved in the
version over others, activities … Indeed,
returning to the word errors happen, while
chart. mistakes are made.’
Table 7.2 Correcting pronunciation: Two different languages of practice, explanations, and social
facts
These different languages of practice connect to different ways of acting and thinking in the
classroom. In Table 7.2, ALDM and the Silent Way use different social facts to explain why a
teacher would act in a particular way in correcting students’ pronunciation. The social facts
abbreviate the explanations in providing different ways of thinking about the teaching
problem, and support different ways of responding to it. In ALDM teaching (Table 7.2), in
order to avoid bad language habits the teacher would orally correct the student when she
heard an utterance that was wrong. In Silent Way teaching, the teacher would try to distinguish
whether what the student had said resulted from an error or a mistake, which would then
guide different ways of responding. With mistakes, the teacher might let students sort out the
correction themselves, usually with minimal support, whereas with errors she would likely
intervene to show what was different or new in the target language that may have led to the
error. Thus in thinking methodologically the teacher had packaged a way to explain what was
happening in lessons and to respond to it.
Towards the next generation
Each of these innovative methods was a system of thinking and acting unto itself. The specific
training each offered, supported by its classroom materials and teacher publications, created
communities of explanation in which teachers would exchange ideas and develop their
thinking using the social facts of the method. This way of thinking methodologically placed
language teachers in an interesting position, however. On the one hand, each innovative
method clearly depended on thinking and its language of practice. On the other, teachers faced
a sort of Hobson’s choice: either learn to use a particular method as it was conceived and
thus to the exclusion of other methods, or teach a-methodologically.
A-methodological teaching
A-methodological teaching, which was called eclectic, meant blending techniques and
practices, which led to a contradiction: since each method embodied an ideological stance
towards teaching and learning, a teacher could not simultaneously use a particular method and
at the same time combine elements from various other sources. Doing so would violate the
thinking and explanations that undergirded the techniques. For its practitioners, the specific
method served them to do, think, and talk about their teaching; they enacted its practices and
drew on its social facts to explain what they did. They could participate in its language of
practice in conversations and writing about their classroom teaching experiences. This form
of teaching depended on methodological fidelity. In contrast, those who taught eclectically
blurred lines of methodological thinking.
Gaps in methodological fidelity
The contrast between teaching within a single method and the notion of eclectic teaching led
to arguments, which were couched as which method was ‘best’ (for example, Prabhu, 1990).
Proponents of eclecticism argued that since there was no way to determine which method
worked best, it was incumbent upon teachers to consider ‘their students, [when] searching for
proof that the methods worked. This, they argued, led teachers to … [find] ways to pick and
choose elements of multiple methods to increase student engagement, language use, and
communicative capacity’ (Cushing-Leubner & Bigelow, 2014, p. 247, 248). But teaching in
this way entailed a new conception of thinking. Innovative methods supported sophisticated,
if singular, thinking about the specifics of language learning and teaching. Eclectic teaching, in
contrast, with its central notion of choice, offered the possibility of independence in how the
teacher worked in the language classroom. Ironically perhaps, the very exclusivity and
singularity of each innovative method, expressed in its own language of practice, sustained
deeper thinking about teaching and learning and made the method susceptible to challenge.
Logically, if innovative methods offered mutually exclusive explanations of language
learning, through their particular social facts, and claimed to be effective on that basis, it was
not possible to compare them. To compare methods to determine which one was best would
require shared explanations of learning, along with common social facts and a lingua franca
of practice to express them.
The second generation: thinking synthetically

The second conceptual generation was characterized by three overlapping challenges to
thinking methodologically, although they unfolded somewhat sequentially. From the standpoint
of thinking, eclectic teaching, communicative language teaching (CLT), and the post-method
condition shared the common denominator of choice. Each defined the language teacher’s role
as selecting techniques and practices and somehow putting them together, synthesizing them,
in her classroom teaching. They proposed a different means by which the synthesis might be
reasoned, but fundamentally they shared the view that language teacher thinking had to be a
synthetic, combinatorial process.
Eclectic teaching
Eclectic teaching became the label for teachers who combined classroom activities from
different methodologies, but there was little agreement on what it meant for a language
teacher to be eclectic, and the definition remained superficial. Rivers (1968) offered one of
the first definitions of eclectic teaching as ‘try[ing] to absorb the best techniques of all the
well-known language-teaching methods into classroom procedures, using them for the
purpose for which they are most appropriate’ (p. 21). This view made eclectic teaching a
smorgasbord of activity and reasoning, a sort of combinatorial pedagogy. The view had
critics, however, who argued that the alternative to thinking methodologically had to be more
than simply choosing among classroom activities. In outlining what he called informed
eclecticism, Deyes (1982) emphasized the thinking involved. He warned that such teaching
was not ‘an ad hoc use of techniques, simply because they are … fun, or because they give
clear right or wrong answers… [nor is it to] … be seen in any sense as an easy way out’
(p.16). Instead, Deyes set out the core challenge to thinking methodologically when he argued
that the point of eclectic teaching was that ‘techniques need not derive from any one theory of
language, of learning, or of education, but should be related to the overall nature and
objectives of particular courses.’ In other words, eclectic teaching could marry techniques
from various methods in a synthetic process that focused on the particulars of the teacher’s
setting. This, however, entailed detailing the thought processes underlying these choices.
From singularity to choice in thinking

The arguments in support of eclectic teaching introduced a different view of teacher thinking.
To be truly synthetic and more than a fanciful selection of activities, eclectic teaching needed
to include the thinking by which the techniques and practices were selected and combined.
This made the form of thinking ‘more demanding and time-consuming than using a method.’
Deyes (1982) reasoned ‘if the choice is an informed one, the teacher will need to (a) be
familiar with, and understand, the range of linguistic and pedagogical considerations … [and]
… (b) have some (implicit) reason for making a particular choice at a particular moment’ (p.
16).
The basis of choice became the core issue for proponents of eclectic teaching. In a
comment famously attributed to him, Widdowson offered an acerbic characterization of this
position: ‘If you say you are an eclectic but cannot state the principles of your eclecticism,
you are not eclectic but confused.’ (as cited in Pettis, 2003, n. p.) Counteracting confusion,
proponents of synthetic thinking variously described it as choosing (for example, Deyes,
1982), making informed decisions (Stevick, 1980), or operating from principles (for
example, Widdowson, and later Brown, 1994). These terms coalesced around the notion that
language teaching was more than classroom behavior, that it entailed a dimension of thought
that was individual.
The ‘best method’ debates

Proposals proved less different from thinking methodologically than proponents argued,
however. In essence, eclectic teaching substituted the teacher’s idiosyncratic thinking for
methodological reasoning as the basis for teaching choices, thus exchanging one form of
singular classroom thinking with another. Where innovative methods gave explicit
explanations, supported by their social facts for particular classroom practices, eclectic
teaching depended on individual reasoning. This meant that, by definition, eclecticism did not
share a common language of practice; the reasons for choices could be articulated in highly
individual terms. The rise of teaching advice columns in various publications (for example,
TESOL Matters) during this period (sometimes titled What works), exemplified the growing
individualism in explaining classroom choices. On the surface, the new view appeared to
democratize thinking about teaching, but it had a different, unintended effect. When every
teacher could have reasons for what she was doing, there were no common warrants for what
was meant by teaching effectively.
Blending methods, ‘what’s best’
Arguments about effectiveness bloomed in the best-method debates of the 1990s. Prabhu
(1990) began a paper titled, ‘There is no best method–why?’, by paraphrasing discussions
about methodological fidelity, consistency, and teacher choice: ‘the statement that there is
some truth to every method needs to be seen not just as an epistemological observation, but as
a plea for an eclectic blending …’ (p. 167). He went on to voice skepticism about eclectic
teaching, pointing out that when teachers picked and chose among classroom practices, ‘such
indiscriminate blending of methods adds nothing to our pedagogic understanding, since it
offers no perception of what may be true about which method’ (p. 168). The idea of
perception of what may be true, to use his phrase, for teaching in particular ways introduced
the question of warrant.
Truth by accident
The suggestion of warrant—that there needed to be evidence by which a method’s proponent
could claim a classroom activity worked—changed the basis of the effectiveness debate from
choice to evidence. The conversation was not no longer simply about choosing among
techniques, or even the principles that informed those choices; it could now be about the
evidence of what happened through those teaching choices. Without evidence and the
reasoning to elaborate it, eclectic teaching was what Prabhu called truth by accident. It
amounted to idiosyncratic arguments about what worked in the classroom with little or no
basis for discussing practices or efficacy.
The ELT arguments of the 1990s launched the idea of individual thinking in language
teaching. Eclectic teaching and the best-method debates subsumed methodologically based
ways of thinking within the idiosyncratic, anything goes, truth by accident view of thinking.
But there was a critical difference. The ‘thinking methodologically’ of the 1980s was
ideologically exclusive; using the innovative methods made teachers part of a methodological
discourse community. Thinking synthetically, no matter how reasoned, was fundamentally
individual. For teachers, thinking for themselves opened a potential conceptual space
between their behaviors, what they were doing publicly in the classroom, and what they might
be thinking. In other words, teachers now had something to think about their teaching.
Space to think
Drawing this distinction between methods and how teachers used them created a space that
had not been described in the previous era when methodology and teaching were synonymous.
It became feasible to ask how thinking might relate to teaching behavior and somehow shape
it. In concluding the paper ‘There is no best method–why?’, Prabhu (1990) mused on this
possibility: ‘Perhaps, then, there is a factor more basic than the choice between methods,
namely, teachers’ subjective understanding of the teaching they do’ (p. 172). The second
generation had begun to differentiate the teacher from her teaching, and the space between
them constituted her thinking. He concluded ‘A method is seen simply as a highly developed
and highly articulated sense of plausibility’ (p. 175), which he defined as teachers’ ‘personal
conceptualization of how their teaching leads to desired learning with a notion of causation
that has a measure of credibility for them’ (p. 172).
CLT and a common language for classroom teaching

The debates about eclectic teaching and best methods covered a period through the 1980s and
into the 1990s when teacher thinking came into its own in ELT. The problem was that this
newly conceptualized independent function was evolving without a way to express it. The
social facts and explanations used in thinking methodologically were less widely accepted
and persuasive. Thinking became an individual process with a ready common language for
discussion. To articulate teachers’ choices, to make them more than idiosyncratic, a common
professional language was needed with which to publicly talk and write about teaching. To be
professionally coherent, these discussions needed to be anchored in a common definition for
the goal of language teaching so that the common language could be the means and the shared
goal the end and to agree on a shared sense of ‘plausibility’.
A means and an end
There was a common language; it had been first outlined in the ALDM era in Anthony’s 1963
article, Approach, Method, and Technique, and expanded as a professional vernacular by the
popular synthetic methodology texts in the mid-1980s (for example, Brown, 1994; Larsen-
Freeman, 1986; Richards & Rodgers, 1986). The shared end also existed in the definitions of
teaching that emerged in Communicative Language Teaching (or CLT as it became known).
CLT was promoted as the predominant classroom methodology through its expanding role in
curricula, published materials, and pedagogy. As a methodology, CLT offered teachers an
identity; it became an increasingly shared view of how to teach and used a common language
to describe it. The common language, along with this common goal of communicative teaching
both depended on teachers being seen as thoughtful, as able to choose what they were doing
as they taught.
The coming of a common language: a pedagogical ‘filing system’

In Approach, Method, and Technique, Anthony (1963) had suggested a set of basic terms for
language teaching. With the three terms in the title, he proposed an architecture that connected
teachers’ inner worlds of belief and assumption with their external classroom practices. ‘The
organizational key’, he wrote, ‘is that techniques carry out a method which is consistent with
an approach.’ In his brief proposal, Anthony made a case for the need for a common
language. ‘It would seem a worthwhile endeavor to attempt to limit the use of some of the
more common terms when we talk professionally about the concepts of language teaching.’ He
saw benefits in sharing terminology, even when disagreeing about ways to teach language:
… we can refer to a framework about which we do agree, and focus clearly on the
distinctions between views, we may be able to determine in what areas … [we] … employ
the same terms differently, and where we use differing terminology … [about] … the same
situations.
(Anthony, 1963, p. 63; original italics)
He described the terms as ‘definitions … presented as a pedagogical filing system within
which many ideas, opposing or compatible, may be filed’ (p. 63). However, it took almost a
quarter of a century for this vision to catch on and take root.
From deep to surface structures in teaching

Anthony’s categories reflected the cognitive era in which he proposed them. The hierarchical
relationship between approach and technique that connected teacher thinking to classroom
action reflected then prevailing theorizations of language. It seemed to echo Chomsky’s
(2002) view that surface structure variations in utterances were grounded in deep structural
linguistic patterns. Anthony made a similar point (in the statement above) that the teachers’
varied, or even eclectic, use of classroom techniques might be anchored in a core set of
beliefs about teaching and learning. This would mean that what was observable and variable
on the surface of practice might be seen as a function of consistent deeper ways of thinking.
Where Chomsky outlined a complex hierarchy of phrase-structure rules that moved the deep
structure meaning to surface structure utterance, Anthony argued that consistency formed the
connective tissue between teachers’ thinking and their actions.
Time and method
Method was the bridge between public and private. Anthony (1963) defined method as ‘an
overall plan for the orderly presentation of language material, no part of which contradicts,
and all of which is based upon, the selected approach’ (p. 65). What was radical, and at the
time unremarked, was how this view conceived of time. The world of thinking was in a way
outside of time; the world of classroom activity was solidly temporal and sequential; and
method as the bridge connected the two. Chomsky’s view of language production and
Anthony’s view of thinking were both structural in the 1960s sense of the word, that structures
in the mind generate patterns of behavior. They were based on a concept of time that
connected an internal world outside to time (which was axiomatic), to the external, sequential
world in time (which was procedural). As Anthony (1963) explained, ‘An approach is
axiomatic, a method is procedural’ (p. 65; original italics).
Bridging worlds
Anthony’s hierarchy could help make consistent what seemed to be incoherent in the
classroom and explain individual practice. He explained that what an observer saw were
‘Techniques [that] depend on the teacher, his [sic] individual artistry, and the composition of
the class’ (p. 66). But what was observed could not be method because it bridged worlds. He
continued, ‘Teachers often feel uneasy … fearing a misinterpretation of their classes. This, in
my view, arises largely out of the confusion of techniques with method’ (1963, p. 66). His
notion that there is more to teaching than meets the observer’s eye had prescient quality,
which seemed to anticipate the writing about language teacher observation in the 1980s. ELT
writers (for example, Bailey 2006; Freeman, 1982; Gebhard, 1984) would argue that the
seeming disconnect between what was observed in teaching and what the teacher said about it
was a function of differences in meaning-making between the observer and the teacher, and
therefore that the route to change in classroom practices lay in working through a teacher’s
thinking and reasoning about what she was doing. This kind of work depended, as Anthony
rightly observed, on having a shared way to talk about the teaching that was separate from the
specifics of a particular method and thus could be ideologically neutral.
A transcendent framework
Anthony envisioned a transcendent framework in which the specific categories needed to be
fleshed out. The diversity of the innovative methods of the 1980s offered just that possibility.
Here the variety of teaching practices could be related to competing axiomatic principles (see
Larsen-Freeman, 1986), and the common framework was maintained. Anthony (1963) did not
anticipate that the diversity of classroom practices would necessarily be problematic, noting
optimistically that it might prove superficial when it was seen in the context of common
thinking, ‘We might find out that language teachers do not differ among themselves as much as
has been heretofore supposed’ (p. 63). Actually, the differences among innovative methods,
and the best-method arguments they spawned, supported the need for a common framework of
terms for language teaching.
Expanding the common language

In 1986, Richards and Rodgers published their account of innovative methods, which drew on
and expanded Anthony’s tripartite model. In the Preface to Approaches and Methods in
Language Teaching, they made a case similar to Anthony a quarter of a century earlier:
The proliferation of approaches and methods is a prominent characteristic of second and
foreign language teaching. To some this reflects the strength of our profession … To others
however, the wide variety of method options currently available confuses rather than
comforts … Our goal is to enable teachers to become better informed about the nature,
strengths and limitations of methods and approaches so that they can better arrive at their own
judgments and decisions.
(Richards & Rodgers, pp. vii–viii)
Using their framework to describe eight methodologies, Richards and Rodgers promoted the
cross-cutting advantages of a common language. They acknowledged the axiomatic bases of
the methodologies they compared as ‘based on very different views of what language is and
how a language is learned’ (p. vii). But they emphasized surveying rather than synthesizing
them: ‘We hope that the analysis of approaches and methods … will elevate the level of
discussion found in the methods literature, which sometimes has a polemical and promotional
quality’ (p. viii). As a consequence of comparing methods across a common set of categories,
the categories themselves took on a descriptive neutrality, making them seem incontrovertible.
Shared ways of teaching: CLT

Much had changed in the world of language teaching in the intervening quarter century
between Anthony’s original proposal of a methodological metalanguage in 1963 and Richards
and Rodgers elaboration of it in the mid-1980s. The pluralism of innovative methods, which
had led to the best-method debates, had been supplanted by a predominant view of classroom
methodology. Communicative language teaching was different, which made it amenable as a
common goal. Based on discipline-derived definitions, CLT seemed to eschew axiomatic
principles. Classroom content was organized using the Chomskyian concepts of structural
linguistics for language, and the Hymesian definitions of communicative competence for its
use (see Brumfit & Johnson, 1979). While these definitions were also based on belief, they
were different. The systems of those beliefs—linguistics, anthropology, sociology—were
scholarly disciplines and not the axiomatic ideologies of the innovative methods. With CLT as
a language of practice, teachers drew from the disciplines for their explanations of teaching.
CLT thinking
The appeal to disciplinary knowledge distinguished CLT as an approach, using Anthony’s
term, from the roiling variety of innovative methods, and in a sense lent it academic credence.
As it took on a pre-eminence similar to ALDM teaching in the 1960s, CLT offered a
straightforward rationale for action that collapsed the vying ideas of eclectic teaching into a
single line of thinking. Thinking in CLT had an almost syllogistic character: The purpose of
language was communication therefore the language classroom should mimic the world by
creating communicative tasks. To do so, the teacher would organize these tasks, providing
language input and communicative practice, and where needed negotiate correction so that the
language students produced was intelligible. CLT thinking seemed largely like following a
recipe of steps similar to the pattern practice of ALDM teaching, albeit ones that were mental
rather than strictly behavioral. Thinking in this way seemed more complex than following a
method; for the teacher it was a matter of aligning the interactive, and therefore potentially
less manageable classroom activity, with axiomatic communicative principles.
Like ALDM of the 1960s, the ease of this homogeneous reasoning seemed to contribute to
CLT’s rapid expansion. Based on the curricular innovations of the Council of Europe’s work
on language syllabi (for example, van Ek, 1975), CLT offered a generic formulation of
language teaching that fit the expansion of ELT during the 1990s. The classroom practices of
CLT were somewhat amorphous, certainly in comparison to the strict definitions of the
various innovative methods, making them more flexible to adopt and adapt. From a teacher
education standpoint, CLT teaching became the successor to eclectic teaching; it offered a
similarly combinatorial pedagogy that encouraged teachers to work synthetically using a
variety of classroom activities. Pragmatically, CLT was embedded in programs of
commercially published classroom materials and assessment designs, which helped to make
it widely available in classroom materials and their curricular supports. In terms of thinking
however, CLT represented a non-partisan view of teaching founded on disciplinary
definitions, which needed a common language. This is what Anthony’s categorization, through
Richards and Rodgers, supplied.
A methodological metalanguage
Anthony’s (1963) terms, which were expanded by Richards and Rodgers (1986) and other
writers (for example, Brown, 1994; Larsen-Freeman, 1986) into a common methodological
metalanguage, described language-teaching practices in seemingly neutral, methodologically
agnostic terms. The common terminology was usually introduced through initial teacher
education in pedagogy courses. New teachers would then find it supported and amplified in
the major, communicatively based textbook programs from which they were often expected to
teach. What was actually meant by teaching communicatively, and whether teachers were
actually doing so, was largely beside the point; what became centrally important was that
there was a way to conceptualize and describe teaching independently of any particular
axiomatic methodological approach. Using the synthetic language of CLT and methodological
metalanguage, the world of classroom practices was independent of the teacher, a world that
she could orchestrate through choice and informed decision-making.
Thinking exposed
A loose assemblage of factors came together in the second generation to expose the private
realm of language teacher thinking and make it an operational part of the public classroom
work. These factors are summarized in Table 7.3 below:
Common language Anthony’s (1963) original framework outlined a basic set of terms for language
teaching.
Common language Used comparatively to examine innovative methods in various methodology
texts, the terms function as a common language to distinguish internal private belief from publicly
observable behavior.
Shared view of teaching The spread of CLT as the dominant methodology supported the use of this
common language.
Shared view of teaching Based on disciplinary knowledge and social facts from applied linguistics,
anthropology, and subsequently second language acquisition, CLT prescribed a homogenous way of
thinking (phrased as ‘teaching communicatively’) that supported a heterogeneous set of classroom
practices (loosely called ‘communicative techniques’).
Shared view of teaching The central premise of thinking as choice and decision-making was
instantiated through shared practices ranging from teacher education programs to curricular teachers’
guides.
These factors contributed in redefining the mental work of teaching as the notion that teachers would
choose or decide what to do, a notion that embodied thinking as a function that was separable from
the public classroom practice.
Table 7.3 The second generation summarized
By the mid 1990s, this perspective had helped to establish a synthetic view of language
teaching, in which the public classroom work became a bricolage of techniques, practices,
and materials bound together by the teacher’s reasoning. The synthetic view anticipated and
ultimately supported a more heuristic view of practice in the next generation. By exposing the
world of thinking, synthetic views also opened language teacher education to
conceptualizations and research in general teacher education as discussed in the next chapter.
These transitions were carried through in a group of discussions about the post-method
condition.
The ‘post-method’ condition

Kumaravadivelu’s (1994) post-method condition in many ways epitomized the second
generation in its commitment to thinking synthetically. He described ‘a state of affairs that
compels us to refigure the relationship between the theorizers and the practitioners of method’
(p. 28), a realignment, which was necessary because of what he and others (for example,
Holliday, 1994b with appropriate methodology) saw as an imbalance between theorizers of
methods and teachers who implemented them. Like the synthetic views of thinking embodied
in eclectic teaching and CLT, the rhetoric of the post-method condition defined a space in
language teaching for teachers’ mental activity. This agency was about choosing, deciding,
and selecting among different ways of doing things in the classroom, and about rationalizing
and explaining those decisions.
Localizing teachers’ thinking

Kumaravadivelu’s proposals for the post-method condition were essentially political:
If the conventional concept of method entitles theorizers to construct knowledge-oriented
theories of pedagogy, the post-method condition empowers practitioners to construct
classroom-oriented theories of practice. If the concept of method authorizes theorizers to
centralize pedagogic decision-making, the post-method condition enables practitioners to
generate location-specific, classroom-oriented innovative practices.
(Kumaradivelu, 1994, p. 29)
This was an argument in favor of localizing teachers’ thinking in their own experiences,
which he refers to above as classroom-oriented theories of practice, and in their settings,
which he calls location-specific, classroom-oriented innovative practices. Here the shift in
emphasis seems complete. In the first generation, thinking originated outside the teacher and
was translated into practice; the initial stages of the second generation (eclectic teaching and
best methods) transitioned the locus of thinking to the individual. In the post-method
condition, individual teachers’ thinking was fully localized in their experiences and their
classrooms. In this new calculus, teachers gained the autonomy to determine what worked in
their teaching situations, guided by what Kumaravadivelu (1994) called ‘principled
pragmatism’. When teachers worked pragmatically, they defined their own work, a process
that differed from eclectic teaching, which he said ‘is constrained by the conventional concept
of method.’ Principled pragmatism, as he put it, ‘focuses on how classroom learning can be
shaped and managed by teachers as a result of informed teaching and critical appraisal’ (p.
31).
Macro-strategies as an alternative to method

Two points stand out in the definition of the post-method condition that encapsulate the second
generation in defining thinking in language teaching. First, Kumaravadivelu’s (1994) proposal
distinguishes between classroom methods and the teachers who use them, an idea he distills
in the palindromic turn-of-phase, that the condition offers ‘an alternative to method rather than
an alternative method’ (p. 29). Second, he introduces a new set of terminology to enact this
alternative to method, a set of terms which he called ‘macro-strategies’, to map connections
between the inner world of belief and the outer world of classroom behavior. These
strategies are not methods, he emphasized, but they accomplish the same bridging function, ‘A
macro-strategy is a broad guideline, based on which teachers can generate their own
situation-specific, needs-based micro-strategies or classroom techniques’ (1994, p. 32).
Kumaravadivelu (1994) asserts, as Anthony (1963) had of his terms, that these ‘macro-
strategies are theory neutral as well as method neutral’. Theory has come to stand in for the
teacher’s inner world of belief and thinking, while method is a facsimile for the work that is
publicly visible in the classroom:
Theory neutral … means that the framework is not constrained by the underlying assumptions
of any one specific theory of language, learning, and teaching. Likewise, method neutral does
not mean method-less; rather it means that the framework is not conditioned by a single set of
theoretical principles or classroom procedures associated with any one particular language
teaching method.
(Kumaravadivelu, 1994, p. 32)
The point about a new, shared language of practice, is underscored in this theoretical
neutrality. The ten macro-strategies emphasize a generic view of teaching, which is part of
their explanatory power. Only three refer explicitly to language as subject matter, for
example,
(e) foster language awareness

(f) contextualize linguistic input
(g) integrate language skills
while the other seven are expressed in terms that are subject-matter neutral, for example:
(a) maximize learning opportunities

(b) (b, c)
(d) activate intuitive heuristics
(f)
(h) promote learner autonomy
(i)
(j) ensure social relevance.
Half of the strategies could apply to most teaching, indicating how far the discourse of
language teaching had moved from its disciplinary roots and the strictly methodological basis
of previous generations.
From method to teacher agency

The second generation crested with the argument for an alternative to method, in favor of
individual teachers defining what they do through the choices and decisions they made in
enacting classroom instruction. The idea of teacher agency, which replaced the idea of
following a particular methodology, had the effect of defining everything a teacher did as
method. In this post-method world, thinking entailed the freedom—and indeed the
responsibility—on the part of the teacher to articulate her choices and decisions and thus to
work out her own method. It was a heady commitment to individual agency, but it started to
surface uneasy questions about evidence and warrant of the usefulness of that agency that
pointed to the next generation. What, in other words, was this independent view of method
accomplishing for student learning?
The third generation: thinking heuristically

The third generation addressed what it would mean for the teacher to have agency in her
thinking and actions. The idea of making pedagogical choices positioned teachers to have
agency over those decisions, assuming this agency implicated them in the outcomes of those
pedagogical moves. The situation raised an interesting parallel: the second generation of
thinking had synthetically supplanted the first generation of thinking methodologically with the
idea of choice and the best-method question, but they both defined teachers thinking singularly
—one in terms of methods, the other in terms of the individual. Now the third generation was
doing a similar thing. It took the idea of thinking as choice from the arguments in the best-
method debates of the 1980s and subsumed it into the idea of agency. Teacher agency here
meant the interrelation between teachers’ choices, their classroom actions, and the outcomes
for student learning. The question of evidence and warrants was the fulcrum for this shift.
Focusing on how teachers could know that their teaching had worked, that the choices they
made accomplished their intentions, and more crucially what these choices accomplished for
student learning gave the third generation a new heuristic orientation. These foci changed the
orientation of thinking from what and how teachers were thinking, to how and why. The
central question in the third generation was how teachers might know what their teaching was
accomplishing for students’ language learning.
This idea of thinking heuristically centered language teaching on learning and the
classroom outcomes of that teaching. The issue was no longer fidelity in implementing
particular methodological practices or reasoning behind making pedagogical choices, which
were first and second generation concerns. The focus became what the lesson actually
accomplished for learners. To address this question, two elements needed to be in play. First,
there needed to be a group of classroom practices that represented generally accepted ways
of conducting lessons. Second, there needed to be professionally accepted social facts that
supported talking and writing about what happened in the lesson in order to plan for and to
analyze that instance of teaching.
Generally accepted ways of conducting lessons

The writing in ELT about lesson planning and the arc of lessons (for example, Harmer, 1996;
Meddings & Thornbury, 2009; Woodward, 2001) provided normative ways to describe
teaching practices, along with a template for organizing and sequencing them into lessons.
The terminology offered the social facts of a normative view of language teaching. A training
activity from the period called, rather aptly, The Jargon Generator in Woodward’s Ways of
Training (1992) illustrates the convergence of normative classroom teaching and a language
to express it. The activity is suggested for a point in training when ‘trainees have been wading
through a lot of reading or input and are starting to complain or make jokes about the amount
of terminology.’ The instructions are to make ‘pompous and pretentious sentences using jargon
generator … with terminology from the course’ (p. 84). The chart (see Figure 7.1) is laid out
like an ALDM or CLT language textbook to provide the raw material for generating these
statements.
Figure 7.1 The jargon generator (Woodward, 1992, p. 85). © Longman (Pearson Education Limited)
To do the activity, trainees need to be able to talk about normative practices using the terms
on the chart. As a teacher-learning activity, the aim is essentially to practice professional
discourse in a way that is ‘iconoclastic and fun’ so that ‘the terminology may become less
threatening’ (Woodward, 1992, p. 84). The activity illustrates the two dimensions of a
common language about teaching: It allows participants to agree on what to concentrate on,
but it also underlines the specialization of that language, here called ‘jargon’.
The heuristic space

Gaining control over and using professional discourse (and even having fun with it)
underscores the idea of teachers being in control, of their agency, which is the hallmark of the
third generation. It is based on the space to think that was redefined by teacher agency. Rather
than fidelity to a particular method or the eclecticism of assembling various techniques
around a common purpose, agency offered the opportunity for teachers to think about their
teaching—what was happening for students as together they did the lesson. This opportunity
was heuristic in the sense that it opened possibilities to try out different ways of working and
to investigate and to gather evidence about what was happening. A 1987 article by Nunan
titled, ‘Communicative language teaching: Making it work’, uses this heuristic space opened
up by teacher agency to explain gaps between observed and professed teaching. In observing
in the classrooms of six teachers working with adult immigrants through the Australian
Migrant Education Program, Nunan found that, although the teachers professed to be teaching
communicatively, their classroom practices actually looked quite different:
On the surface, the lessons appeared to conform to the sorts of communicative principles
advocated in the literature. However, when the patterns of interaction were examined more
closely, they resembled traditional … classroom interaction … The most commonly occurring
pattern of interaction was identical with the basic exchange structure found in mother-tongue
classes. (Nunan, 1987, p. 137)
This was an instance of the space created in thinking synthetically and using the common
language of CLT to describe it. Nunan did not conclude that what he saw wrong because it did
not conform to his understanding of communicative teaching, nor did he conclude that teachers
were misleading or mistaken by in effect saying one thing and doing another. In terms of
teacher thinking, there could be a number ways to interpret the gap between what teachers
said and what they did in the observed lessons.
Interpreting the gap
The inconsistency between professed and enacted teacher practice, which Nunan documented
and which has been identified in various forms by other researchers (see Freeman, 1996;
Hoban, 2002), establishes the central dynamic of the third generation. If in this instance,
teacher thinking were seen in purely methodological terms (as in the first generation), the gap
would be an issue of fidelity to CLT in how teachers were implementing the lessons, and it
could be addressed through better training. If the thinking were seen synthetically (as in the
second generation), the gap would be between the teachers’ intent in planning to teach
communicatively and enacting that intent in classroom teaching. In this view, addressing this
gap would require that the teachers pay more attention to articulating the details of the lesson
through better planning or more careful teaching. If however, the thinking is seen heuristically,
which is the third generational view, the gap between the lesson the teachers described and
the one they were observed doing becomes a point of engagement, investigation, and personal
research. In this sense, the disconnect offers a window into what might be happening in this
particular instance of teaching.
The table below summarizes the ways in which the gap between what teachers mean to do,
the professed practice, and what the observer sees happening—the observed teaching—
would be characterized according to the conceptualization of thinking in each of the
generations. It also outlines the ways in which that gap would be addressed or fixed through
teacher education.
Teacher thinking is The gap between professed and The ‘fix’

conceptualized observed practice described as in teacher education would be
… …
Methodologically (1st Lack of ‘fidelity’ to the Better training in the particular
generation) methodology in implementing methodology
the lesson
Synthetically (2nd generation) Disconnect between planning Better lesson planning and more
and classroom enactment careful enactment
Heuristically (3rd generation) A point of engagement in what Analysis of what happened to
happened in the lesson better meet the lesson goal
Table 7.4 Evolving explanations for the gap between professed and observed teaching (and its
teacher education ‘fix’)
The interrelation between the conception of teacher thinking and forms of response in teacher
education is interesting. The alignment can be viewed reading left to right, that since thinking
is conceptualized this way, the teacher education response would follow. Or the information
can be read from right to left, that since the teacher education intervention is aimed at better
training in the particular methodology for example, the underlying assumption must be a first-
generation one, that teachers are thinking methodologically. The two ways of reading this
alignment show the core challenge of the third generation, how to treat teacher thinking as a
heuristic process.
Arriving at the heuristic argument
The analysis that Nunan offered is solidly third generation. While acknowledging the
pessimism that the gap might trigger from a second-generation perspective—’It is not
necessary to be totally pessimistic about the chances of making the classroom more
communicative’, he wrote. Nunan argued that the gap actually reveals the powerful role of
context and socialization in shaping how the teachers think (and say) they are teaching.
[P]owerful constraints exist, as do conditioned classroom reflexes on the part of teachers and
learners. These will not necessarily change because of the published pronouncements of
applied linguists. The essential first step in promoting change is to acknowledge and
document present realities through classroom-based research.
(Nunan, 1987, p. 142)
Three features of the idea of thinking heuristically are important to note in Nunan’s analysis.
The first is the way that ‘making the classroom more communicative’ is set out as the goal,
which illustrates how CLT is the predominantly accepted classroom practice. Second is the
acknowledgement that socialization, which he calls conditioned classroom reflexes, of both
teacher and students are part of what shape how teachers are teaching and students are
responding in lessons. These two points together change how teaching is described. Nunan
does not explain the lack of teaching in these classrooms as a matter of teachers’ resistance or
ineptitude in teaching communicatively. Instead he takes the dissonance as evidence of
patterns of socialization and studenting in the larger fabric of schooling into which language
classrooms, like all classrooms, fit. These two points pave the way for the third point, which
is the heuristic argument. To engage with what is actually happening in lessons—’to
acknowledge and document present realities’—as Nunan puts it, teachers need to learn
through classroom-based research.
Teacher research and the culture of thinking heuristically

Encouraging teachers to engage in research has continued to gain momentum in ELT. The
heuristic argument to support it is couched in many ways: as classroom-based research
(Allwright & Bailey, 1991), action research (Burns, 1999; Nunan, 1990), teacher-research
(Freeman, 1982), exploratory practice (Allwright & Hanks, 2009). The intent underlying
these strategies is similar, that teachers can address their agency by thinking heuristically
about how they teach. The heuristic lies in seeking connections between intent and outcome,
between planning and acting as a teacher and seeing what happens for students. In the third-
generation orientation, the central question is: How does what I as the teacher planned (or
thought would happen) in the lesson actually play out? This heuristic is essentially a first-
person examination since teachers are uniquely positioned to probe what their students do as
they are learning, to examine how the intent and plans play out in the lesson. The agency
makes this type of heuristic thinking a personal activity; it is done by the teacher about her
work in her context.
The heuristic focus implicit in teachers doing research also influenced the general
research-practice relationship in several ways. In this generation, teaching and researching
can be framed as parallel processes (Freeman, 1982; Kincheloe, 1991). Both are concerned
with learning and learners—teaching with creating opportunities and research with
understanding what happens with those opportunities (Hubbard & Power, 1993). When
teaching and researching are seen as parallel, teachers are positioned to play a central role in
both processes. The role of teaching as subordinate in the research process is recast, so that
teachers can do research through what they are doing as teachers. This line of argument
suggested the possibility, at least conceptually, of a different kind of knowledge, knowledge
about teaching generated by teachers, which is discussed in Chapter 9.
Stenhouse and the third generation

The teacher-as-researcher movement pointed to a new definition of teacher thinking, one that
could be independent of disciplinary knowledge because it was grounded in the work of
teaching itself, and not dependent on researchers because the knowledge was defined through
the agency of teachers themselves. Decades earlier, anticipating this move towards teachers
as the primary definers of the knowledge used in teaching, Stenhouse (1985) had noted that,
‘Research cannot improve teaching without … appealing to teacher judgment [which
involves] offer[ing] hypotheses (i.e. tentative conclusions) whose applications can be
verified because they are tested in the classroom by the teacher’ (p. 49). Though he made the
comment in the context of UK curriculum reforms in the 1980s that he saw as weakening
teacher input, Stenhouse’s observation went to the heart of thinking heuristically. He was
describing the consequences to schooling and to research that accepting of teachers’ own
agency would bring. The change would not simply be in how teaching was publicly viewed;
it would be much more fundamental. Although he asked the question in the first-generation
context of the 1980s, when thinking in teaching was a straightforward matter of implementing
methodology, Stenhouse’s appeal to teacher judgment anticipated the heuristic thinking of the
third generation. Teacher thinking was no longer about fidelity of implementation, it had
matured into the individual mental work particular to classroom teaching.
While it may now seem simplistic, there was a time not long ago when language teaching was
seen as an a-cognitive undertaking that depended on consistent ways of doing things and not
on analytical or reflective thought. In the 1960s, teacher thinking equated with implementing
classroom behaviors in the ALDM, but with the methodological diversification of the 1970s,
in which forms of reasoning were exclusive to each method, ideas about the hidden side of
teaching began to change. During the 1980s, notions of teacher choice broadened the way
thinking was conceived to include the teacher’s individual reasoning. The evolution has
developed into the current views that teacher thinking involves understanding classroom
practices in terms of how students respond to them. Table 7.5 offers a summary of this
movement.
GENERATION Zero One Two Three
Behavioral Methodological Synthetic Heuristic
Defined thinking as … Carrying out teaching Working faithfully Choosing and Considering
behaviors within a method combining from connections between
methods method and learning
Teacher’s role To perform To implement To choose To investigate
Examples ALDM ‘innovative methods’ Eclectic teaching; CLT Action and teacher-
research
Table 7.5 Teacher thinking and role by generation
With these successive generations the separation between the private, individual realm,
called teacher thinking, and the public world of the classroom (variously called behavior,
teaching methodology, or classroom practice) has increased. The separation has created the
possibility of choice, which has matured into definitions of teacher thinking as individual
agency. This redefinition in the third generation has opened up the possibility of key ideas
from general education to take hold and to assume a central place in second language teacher
education, a process which is described in the next chapter.
Note
1 With the exception of Newbury House Publishers, a small publisher founded to specialize
in English language teaching in 1969 and acquired by foreign language publisher Heinle &
Heinle in 1991, established American and British publishing houses did not enter directly
into this methodological thicket, preferring instead to publish synthetic accounts of teaching
methodologies (for example, Brown, 1994; Larsen-Freeman, 1986; Richards & Rodgers,
1986).
8
Four representations of teacher thinking
Chapter 7 outlined how thinking as mental work came to be seen as integral to language
teaching, presenting an examination from within the field. This chapter looks from the
outside-in at how seminal ideas from research in general education migrated into language
teaching to fundamentally reshape our conceptions of thinking. This migration of ideas is
reflected in four graphic representations of thinking. These diagrams distill their writers’
arguments and can reveal their assumptions; thus each offers a visual way into what is central
to the ideas, what is peripheral, and what is not even mentioned.
In general educational Decision as ‘the basic teaching Teachers’ thought processes

research skill’ (Figure 8.1) (Figure 8.2)
In SLTE research Decision-making based on BAK Language teacher cognition(s)
(Figure 8.3) (Figure 8.4)
Table 8.1 Tracing the migration of ideas about teacher thinking
Shavelson’s representation of decision-making (1973) (see Figure 8.1), and Clark and
Peterson’s representation of thought processes (1986) (see Figure 8.2) were both seminal in
work on teacher thinking in general educational research in the 1980s. These representations
are connected to Woods’ view of decision-making (1996) (see Figure 8.3) and Borg’s of
teacher cognition(s) (2003) (see Figure 8.4), two key conceptualizations of thinking important
in language teaching.
The argument begins with the horizontal connections between decision-making and thought
processes, using Shavelson and Clark and Peterson as points of reference. It then looks at the
vertical connections—how these two ideas were taken up in language teaching—how
decision-making became Beliefs-Assumptions-Knowledge (BAK) for Woods and how
thought processes were reinterpreted as cognition(s) by Borg. These re-conceptualizations
proved to be highly influential in the field, exemplary instances of ‘the same things’ (ideas
from general educational research) ‘done differently’ (in language teaching). The four
representations are not intended to summarize the full sweep of ideas from general
educational research that have shaped work on language teacher thinking. The point is not a
comprehensive review, but rather a close examination of how seminal ideas migrated.
New ways of characterizing thinking

The decade of the 1990s was a unique period in the conceptualization of language teaching. It
marked the transition from definitions of thinking entirely in methodological terms to viewing
the language teacher as someone who chose or decided what she would do in her classroom.
These ideas about teacher agency democratized thinking and opened up a new conceptual
terrain through ideas of eclectic teaching and the best method debates. The consolidation of
CLT as the predominant framework created a language of practice with which to talk about
this agency. All of which seemed to culminate in statements about the ‘post-method
condition.’ The dynamic underlying these changes was unique, however. The ways in which
the content (language) and how it could be taught mutually redefined each other was specific
to language teaching. The evolution of how thinking was conceived in the field is the
narrative of this yin–yang relationship, as discussed in the previous chapter. This interplay of
changing ideas about content and methodology reshaped the teacher’s role, thus implicating a
different view of the mental work.
This reshaping of conceptualizations happened from the inside–out essentially, as language
teaching scholars rethought the field itself. In the 1990s the dynamic changed, however, as
ideas from beyond the field were introduced and took hold. The arguments about language
teachers’ agency and that their thinking was a synthetic process of combining methods and
ideas seemed to create a space for different ways of characterizing thinking, which attracted
ideas from outside into the field.
The successive generations, in defining language teacher thinking—from implementing
methods, to selecting among methodological possibilities, to investigating the impact of those
choices—continued the focus on how the inner work of thinking supported the outer work of
classroom teaching. But they did not describe the process of thinking itself. It was here that
ideas from general educational research on teacher thinking offered constructs that might
anchor this needed description. Like an oyster creating its pearl from a grain of sand, the field
changed what it took, however. So as language teaching and its new sub-field of second
language teacher education (SLTE) research took up these concepts, they were refined in
unique ways to suit their work.
Marking new intersections

Importing ideas is a heady intellectual process. New terms can often name aspects of familiar
phenomena, aspects that have been tacitly recognized, though not as centrally important. New
relationships among these terms can help to rethink assumed connections. In this process, the
ideas generate new social facts and professional explanations. All of which happened, in
different ways and to varying degrees, as ideas from research on teacher thinking in general
education were taken up in language teaching. The evolving recognition of SLTE as an area of
research (discussed in Chapter 6) was the soil in which these connections were made. The
most visible vehicle for this importation were conceptual reviews of teacher thinking, or
teacher cognition as it was also known (for example, Borg, 2003, 2006; Freeman, 1996,
2002), which recapitulated research literature from general education and introduced its key
ideas into the conceptual vernacular of second language teacher education.
These reviews had several impacts. First, they drew intellectual links between the field of
second language teacher education and research on teacher learning and thinking. Underlying
these connections was a critical de facto assertion: that language functioned as a subject
matter similar to mathematics or science, and therefore that what teachers thought about as
they taught it could be understood using some of the same constructs. This assertion anchored
a new generation of research studies in second language teacher education focusing on
teachers (for example, Freeman & Richards, 1996). This led to a second impact. As SLTE
researchers began to study teacher thinking, they naturally drew on research methods that
were appropriate to focusing on teachers’ mental work. These qualitative research methods
with their emphases on meaning and social context were fairly new in English language
teaching (see Lazarton, 1995). They quickly became the over-arching approach to studying
teacher thinking (see Burns, Freeman, & Edwards, 2015), and specific strategies such as
stimulated recall and narrative studies (see Barnard & Burns, 2012) were used for data
collection.
Horizontal connections (within educational research)

The third and most fundamental impact were the new constructs for thinking themselves, two
of which emerged as central to second language teacher education. The first was decision-
making; the second, which followed and elaborated on the first, was the idea of thought
processes. These two constructs, along with clusters of related ideas, started to align
conceptualizations of thinking in language teaching with mainstream views of teachers’ mental
work. It is unclear precisely where the idea of teacher thinking as decision-making originated,
although most work in general education references Shavelson’s (1973) article titled ‘What is
the basic teaching skill?’ (original italics). The phrase ‘teachers’ thought processes’ is the
title of Clark and Peterson’s (1986) review in the Handbook of Research on Teaching, and
figures as its major organizing idea. Together these two ideas are the point of departure for
this discussion of importing ideas about teacher thinking into language teaching.
Idea 1: decisions and decision-making

The phrase ‘decision-making’ had actually been in language teaching, with Stevick’s (1980)
idea of informed decision making, for example, before, it surfaced in second language teacher
education in the 1990s (see Nunan, 1992). But it had gained currency in research on teacher
thinking starting almost 20 years earlier. In introducing the notion, Shavelson put the role of
thinking in teaching succinctly, ‘Any teaching act is the result of a decision, conscious or
unconscious’ (p. 144). In the article’s title ‘What is the basic teaching skill’, he had pointed
out the gap he saw between the then-prevailing skill-based view of teaching and the ways in
which teachers actually worked in classrooms, which he elaborated:
Previous research on basic teaching skills examined alternative teaching acts (for example,
explaining, questioning, reinforcing) without examining how teachers choose between one or
another act at a given point in time … What distinguishes the exceptional teacher from his or
her colleagues is not the ability to ask, say, a higher-order question, but the ability to decide
when to ask such a question.
(Shavelson, 1973 p. 144)
In articulating the cognitive side of teaching in this way, Shavelson moved thinking as
decision-making into the domain of research on teaching in general education. Understanding
was shifting from seeing teaching as a set of procedural moves and behaviors to seeing it as
an activity involving thinking in and about context. The work was simultaneously
complexifying the whole notion of contexts as geographically located spaces. Conventional
definitions included specific settings of students and classroom, but others argued that the
term could also refer to the inner contexts of the teacher’s mind, identity, and experience,
what Cazden (1982), referred to in research on first-language literacy as ‘the contexts in the
mind’.
The TOTE model

Drawing on then-current cognitive theories based on theories of information-processing,
Shavelson (1973) proposed a model (Figure 8.1) in which a teacher’s decisions flowed
logically from making a judgment in a situation, to acting on the judgment, to evaluating if the
action had the intended effect.
Figure 8.1 TOTE decision-making diagram (Shavelson, 1973)
With its cybernetic-sounding title, ‘Test-Operate-Test-Exit’, Shavelson’s model linked

thinking with action through this series of decisions based on the teacher’s judgments of the
‘congruity’ and ‘incongruity’ between what she intended and what happened. Or, in other
words, the ‘congruity’ between the context ‘in her mind’ and the context in her classroom.
A unit of thinking
Shavelson’s proposal did several important things. It effectively located where thinking
happened: in the teacher’s judgments of ‘congruity’. It defined how thinking happened: by the
teacher matching intention with action. Politically it underscored what should have been self-
evident, the teacher as the person thinking was centrally important in classroom teaching.
Most basically, however, Shavelson was proposing a unit of thinking that could be studied in
research and could be designed for in teacher education. From a research perspective, there
were many aspects of teachers’ decisions that could be documented (for example, Lowyck,
1986): what the decisions were about (the content); when they occurred (which situations
triggered which decisions, etc.); how they might change over time (the role of the teacher’s
experience); if decisions were generic or idiosyncratic (the place of individuality in
decision-making); and so on. From the standpoint of teacher education, activities could be
designed to focus on trainees’ decisions. Prescriptive interventions, for instance, when a
trainer might use directive feedback to supervise a trainee, could focus on changing trainees’
decision-making; while reflective activities, for example, when trainees might evaluate the
impact of particular teaching moves, could focus on self-improvement.
It is difficult to overestimate the impact of labeling decisions as a unit of thinking. In effect
the construct opened up a cognitive world, and did so in a descriptive way. Arguments about
‘good or bad’ or ‘skilled or unskilled’ decisions aimed at prescribing ways to think that were
common in the second generation of thinking methodologically could be recast as empirical
questions, open to documentation and research. Part of this utilitarian genius lay in two
aspects: that as a unit of thinking, the scale of decisions was inherently flexible, and as label
for thinking, it was content-neutral. One always had to specify, decisions about what? In
terms of scale and content, a teacher made decisions about which student to call on or who
worked with whom in a particular exercise, but she also decided how to order activities in
the lesson, if and how to use technological aids, or often how to sequence the curriculum, and
so on. In this inherent flexibility of definition lay the enduring strength of the construct.
Conceptual problems
The fluidity of scale and content in defining what constituted a decision was also a source of
conceptual confusion. The strength came from acknowledging that there could not be a
standard measure of thinking; instead the question was one of impact—how the teacher’s
thinking connected to actions in the classroom. Decisions could only be understood through
how what happened played out in the external world. This led to two conceptual problems.
First, in its flexibility, decision-making could potentially encompass all thinking, which
would make a rather blunt, over-generalized construct. Second, it was anchored in cognitive
theory and psychology, which left aside the social world. Since teaching and learning are
inherently social activities, this focus on the individual teacher’s thinking as decision-making
left unexplored many dimensions of what teacher thinking might entail.
Idea 2: teachers’ thought processes

The idea of teachers’ thought processes was the second major construct from general
educational research to shape conceptualizations of teacher thinking in language teaching.
Coming more than a decade after Shavelson’s paper, Clark and Peterson (1986) suggested a
broader framing of thinking as thought processes. Where thinking had been represented
through the cybernetic models of decision-making (Figure 8.1), thought processes offered a
more fungible overarching idea that allowed their review to deal with a range of constructs
about teacher thinking. It thus opened up the cognitive dimension of thinking to a social world.
In organizing their survey of current research in this way (Figure 8.2), Clark and Peterson
focused attention on the relationship between the individual and the social.
Figure 8.2 Teachers’ thought processes (Clark & Peterson, 1986)
The circle on the left, which actually represents teachers’ thinking, reflects elements in the
terms of the day: ‘pre-active and interactive thoughts and decisions’ as well as ‘beliefs and
theories’. The circle on the right represents elements of the social world in the ‘actions and
observable effects’ of the teacher and students. Connecting the two is a simple, unlabeled
arrow, which leaves unlabeled the unit of thinking. Instead the diagram emphasizes this
interplay of the inner cognitive world and the outer world of actions and effects. Perhaps the
most intriguing aspect of the diagram is the acknowledgment of a loose grouping of social
factors labeled ‘constraints and opportunities’. These remain unspecified, except for their
potential influence—as negative limitations (‘constraints’) or positive possibilities
(‘opportunities’).
Opening a social world

In contrast to the TOTE representation of decision-making, Clark and Peterson’s portrayal of
thought processes situates thinking in a range of contextual elements, making it broader and
more inclusive. The representation shows the cognitive activity (on the left) and the
interpersonal, social realms (on the right) as potentially comparable in complexity and
importance. All of this takes places within the broad, yet undefined influences that can limit
or create possibilities. The representation includes time in a very elementary way. Whereas
time in the TOTE model is a constant, instantaneous present in which decisions are acted on,
and evaluated, the idea of ‘constraints and opportunities’ shaping thought processes suggests
that time and place shape social activity. In this sense, this representation of thought processes
seemed to anticipate a broader socio-cultural view of thinking that would follow in the 1990s
(for example, Johnson, 1992).
The movement from Shavelson’s (1973) TOTE diagram of decision-making to Clark and
Peterson’s (1986) representation of thought processes reflected the conceptual development
of teacher thinking in general educational research.
Tracing horizontal connections between these two diagrams (the solid arrow) shows how
what was initially conceived within the cognitive, information-processing tradition as a
sequence of judgments (Figure 8.1) evolved into a looser conceptualization as a socially
situated fabric of nested processes, anticipating a socio-cultural perspective (Figure 8.2). The
vertical connections (the dotted arrow) will examine how these two ideas were taken up in
language teaching and second language teacher education.
Table 8.2 Horizontal and vertical conceptual connections
Vertical connections (in language teaching)

Adopted and elaborated: the two ideas move to language teaching
The ways in which the ideas of decision-making and thought processes were taken up in
language teaching are instances of the same things done differently. As they had in general
educational research, the two ideas strengthened the argument that teaching included—and
indeed depended on—mental activity. These representations of thinking fit teaching languages
as they would any subject area. The constructs were changed in language teaching, however,
particularly in how they were used in second language teacher education research. Two
adaptations—Woods’ (1996) elaboration of language teachers’ decision-making (see Figure
8.3) and Borg’s (2003) synthesis of work on language teacher thinking (which he referred to
as ‘cognition’)—altered the core notions in important ways to suit the nature of language
teaching. When researching teacher thinking in other subject areas, the content area remained
one part of what was studied. It did not become the primary focus. Only in language teaching
were these ideas from general educational research recast and elaborated in this way.
Woods’ and Borg’s proposals (Ideas 3 and 4) placed the ideas of decision-making and
thought processes in the work of language teachers, their preparation, their classrooms, and
their socio-professional roles. Using ideas from outside language teaching was part of
building social facts and explanations about teachers’ thinking for the language teaching
community. An alternative, more narrowly focused approach could have been taken in using
these core ideas. Researchers could have limited themselves to simply re-interpreting the
ideas of decision-making and teachers’ thought processes from the point of view of language
as a subject matter. This approach, which is common in much educational research, applies a
core idea to different types of teaching—usually by content area or student grade-level; the
constructs of personal practical and pedagogical content knowledge discussed in Chapter 9
are examples. Woods’ proposal for language teacher decision-making and Borg’s summary
of language teacher cognition emphasized the person and the role of language teacher. They
are examples of how language teaching recasts the same ideas from the overall educational
discourse differently.
Idea 3: an ethno-cognitive model of teachers’ decision-making

Introducing his study of language teachers’ decision-making, Woods (1996) focused on the
individual teacher, in keeping with the synthetic view of thinking of the 1990s described in
Chapter 7. The study would address ‘an implicit neglect and disregard for what the individual
teacher brings to the learning experiences of the students in the field of second and foreign
language teaching’ (p. 2). He saw the commitment as critical to addressing a major gap in
language teaching research:
There is still relatively little research on what the second language teacher brings to the
process of second language learning … The role of the teacher has remained a relatively
peripheral component in language teaching research throughout the years, and of current
theories of classroom second language acquisition.
(Woods, 1996, p. 2)
Filling this gap in research would strengthen conceptions of language teaching itself and the
status of language teachers within the field.
Woods’ arguments were the essence of the same things done differently. The way in which
he positioned the study revealed a shift in how teacher thinking was being understood in
language teaching. Rather than focusing on the subject matter, he focused on the field of
second and foreign language teaching, within which he talked about the role of the teacher.
Emphasizing the field itself and the role of the teacher within it is an interesting move that
positioned teaching languages apart from other subjects. Second, Woods focused on student
learning, explicitly linking ‘the individual teacher [to] experiences of the students’. Third, he
referred to current theories of classroom second language acquisition, as if to suggest that
these field-specific learning theories, which were so central in language teaching research,
ought to encompass language teachers’ learning as well.
The parts of Woods’ model

Woods’ proposal was ambitious in pursuit of these goals. The ‘model’ of language teachers’
decision-making processes he presented focused on the lesson, but included the thinking that
might anticipate and follow the lesson. The model was divided into three essential elements:
‘decisions being carried out as classroom actions and events … the planning processes by
which future events and actions are chosen and organized’ and ‘the interpretative processes,
including background knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs, by which these classroom events
and actions are understood and evaluated’ (1996, p. 49; italics added). Like Shavelson
(1973), decisions are the core of the model. However, this model of decision-making is
prefaced by a second category, which Woods called ‘the planning processes’, that happen as
teachers prepare their lessons. The distinction was in keeping with the then current literature
on teacher decision-making; Shavelson had likewise distinguished between ‘pre-active
decisions’, made before the lesson, and ‘interactive decisions’, made during teaching. From a
research standpoint, the two types of decision-making needed different strategies for data
collection: while the thinking involved in planning (‘pre-active decisions’) might be captured
through interviews, teacher journals, and planning protocols, the impact of ‘interactive
decisions’ could be observed in the classroom.
BAK
Woods added a third form of decision-making to pre- and interactive decision-making, which
he called ‘interpretative processes’. This area is where the full elaboration of the ‘same
things done differently’ becomes most visible. He posited that this third form of decisions
involved the teacher using her ‘background knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs’ to interpret
—or think through—the impact of planning and teaching. In a sense, he was elaborating what
Shavelson (1973) had earlier called ‘judgments of congruity’ and their impact in this
interpretative process. As an amalgam, background knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs
were the basis for the teacher’s judgments of efficacy. Woods’ acronym, BAK, became a new
social fact in language teacher thinking, which was unique to its research base. Language
teachers’ ‘use of their BAK’ was often cited as a paraphrase of decision-making itself.
However, teacher decision-making in other subject areas did not identify BAK as a separate
element or locate it directly within the decision-making process.
Time and decision-making
Time was a major feature of Woods’ ‘ethno-cognitive model of teachers’ decision-making’.
There was time before the lesson (planning processes), time during the lesson (interactive
decisions), and time after the lesson (interpretative processes). It is interesting that the pre-,
during, and post- framing echoed—and probably reinforced—the conventional lesson
planning structure in communicative language teaching that was used to plan specific skill-
based activities. (There are usually pre-, during or while, and post- parts of reading or
listening lessons.) Woods organized the three types of decision-making in sequence in a
circular representation: (See also Figure 8.5.)
Figure 8.3 Language teachers’ decision-making (Woods, 1996)
The phases—action/event (at the top of the diagram), understanding/interpretation (to the
right), and planning/expectation (to the left)—follow on each other sequentially. Woods chose
to represent the sequence iteratively as a circle (or a line connected to itself). This visual was
similar to Clark and Peterson’s (1986) two circles and arrows, but different from Shavelson’s
(1973) linear, flow-chart diagram. It is interesting that when time is represented in this way, it
actually becomes part of the thinking process rather than a backdrop for it. In Woods’
diagram, the temporal sequence of decision-making seems to drive the thinking and to
reconnect it to itself. It seems to suggest how decisions might build into experience through
time.
From the research standpoint, Woods (1996) put his view of decision-making within the
process–product framework of the day (Dunkin & Biddle, 1974; Freeman, 1996), although his
study was actually more hermeneutically oriented. He wrote that ‘Classroom discourse can
be considered the product of the decision-making process that creates it’, again showcasing
the role of language in the process. In fact, he seemed to be co-opting the terms ‘process’ and
‘product’ from their usual sense of cause leading to effect, and using them to describe the fluid
meaning-making central in language teaching. Woods’ (1996) description of a process–
product-like distinction ‘between the structure of the course—the events and actions … and
the structuring of the course—the process of decision-making which results in the above
product’ (p. 13; original italics) is a similar example of this looser meaning of terms.
Contributions of Woods’ model of teacher decision-making

Woods’ model of teacher decision-making distinguished between the teacher’s thinking and
how that thinking was carried out in the lesson. In this way, he echoed the arguments of
Prabhu (1990), Kumaravadivelu (1994), and others in the second-generation thinking
synthetically discussed in Chapter 7. His model accomplished several key things in how
language teacher thinking would be studied and promoted in second language teacher
education. In the elaboration of BAK as integral to decision-making, he made decisions about
the unit of thinking and he filled that unit with beliefs, assumptions and knowledge as differing
sources of meaning. This elaboration advanced the agenda of recognizing teachers and their
cognitive worlds as central in language teaching. Including time as pre-, inter-active
decisions, and interpretation within the decision-making process, Woods’ broadened
conceptualizations of thinking to potentially include reflective practices. Teachers had to think
in order to teach and their thinking could be studied independently, and indeed promoted
through teacher education.
The role of place

The main gap in the BAK model of language teachers’ decision-making, however, was in how
place was conceived. Although Woods was addressing the context in the mind through BAK,
and his framework did acknowledge the critical importance of classrooms as the principal
places in which decision-making happened, these sites were represented as contexts for the
cognitive activity and not seen as central drivers. Later studies on the growth of expertise in
language teaching (for example, Tsui, 2003) would expand Woods’ definition of decision-
making through the notion of cognitive activity in a setting. These studies examined how time
converted to experience and how teachers’ decisions accounted for differing layers and
complexities in classrooms. In its most hermeneutic reading, Woods’ model portrayed
decisions as applying meanings to make sense of settings and activities. It is a view of how
time and place shape teachers’ decisions which would later evolve into socio-cultural
interpretations of classrooms as sources, rather than settings, for thinking.
Idea 4: language teacher cognition(s)

Woods’ (1996) study of decision-making marked the beginning of the research trajectory of
thinking in language teaching. He elaborated the idea of decision as the basic unit of mental
activity in teaching, and he recast the process, with the addition of BAK as a social fact, as
language teacher decision-making. Thus the idea was refined in terms of language teachers
and language teaching, and the same thing was done differently. Almost 15 years later, Borg
(2003, p. 81–82) followed a similar process of redefining the construct of thought processes
as ‘cognition’. Borg began his review of research on language teacher cognition with a
summary framework (see Figure 8.4), which he described as ‘… a schematic
conceptualization of teaching within which teacher cognition plays a pivotal role in teachers’
lives.’ He continues the introduction with a clear statement of the same things done
differently: ‘It is within this framework, grounded in an analysis of mainstream educational
research that language teacher cognition research has emerged …’
Figure 8.4 Language teacher cognition (Borg, 2003, p. 82)
Borg’s framework elaborates four areas—schooling, professional coursework, contextual

factors, and classroom practice—that contribute to teacher cognition. He takes the latter two,
which were elements in Clark and Peterson’s (1986) framework (see Figure 8.2), and he
makes them more general factors in teaching. Borg’s four main categories of influence are
interesting in that they are not commensurate, (although he does not claim them to be).
Schooling and professional coursework are historical in the sense that they contribute to
teachers’ background and the formation of their thinking, while contextual factors and
classroom practice are categories of the present environment for thinking. Of these two,
classroom practice, which includes practice teaching, is specifically about place; classroom
experience and contextual factors are catch-alls for elements that may contribute to shaping
instruction.
Thought processes become cognition

A major difference is how Borg (2003) elaborates and refines the background category of
constraints and opportunities in Clark and Peterson’s (1986) conceptualization. Some of
Borg’s detail is attributable to general education research on teacher thinking in the
intervening decade between the original 1986 representation and his first reference to it in
1997 (Borg used the 1997 paper as the starting point of the 2003 review). More
fundamentally, however, the changes are another instance of the way in which core ideas from
educational research have been reworked as they are applied to language teachers and their
work. Borg’s use of the term ‘cognition’ is another example. In the diagram (Figure 8.4) and
throughout the review, the term is used in two ways: as a mass noun (cognition), defined as
‘the unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching’ (p. 81) and as a count noun, (cognitions),
which refers to the parts of the whole. The two uses of the term are often interwoven. For
instance, Borg describes contextual factors that ‘influence practice either by modifying
cognitions or else directly, in which case incongruence between cognition and practice may
result’ (p. 82; italics added). The part—a cognition—can be enumerated (many cognitions)
—but it can also stand in for the whole—cognition. In a way, this ambiguity is probably
unremarkable. However, it is an instance of the same things done differently: decisions are
elements of decision-making; thoughts constitute thought processes, but in language teaching,
cognitions are cognition.
Time
The explanatory language, which wraps around the outside of the diagram (Figure 8.4) to
elaborate each category, forms a narrative statement, which when read together suggests a
left-to-right, top-to-bottom ordering in time. In the framework, two types of time—past and
present—are interwoven in language teacher thinking. The factors that shape cognition move
from ‘schooling … which defines early cognitions’ to ‘professional coursework … which
may affect existing cognitions’, to ‘contextual factors … which influence practice’. These
three factors culminate in ‘classroom practice’, which is ‘defined by the interaction of
cognitions and contextual factors’ (2003, p. 82; italics added). In the left-to-right sequence
at the top of the diagram, time progresses from early to existing cognitions. The bottom of the
diagram is about present time in which contextual factors and classroom practice come
together in the particular lesson, unit, and curricular year. This Z-like movement in the
explanatory text connects past and present in a way that Clark and Peterson’s representation
only alluded to. It reflects a progression in thinking over time as teachers learn through what
they experience.
When put side-by-side (Figure 8.5) these four representations of thinking in teaching show an
evolution, which, although it was not likely conscious on the part of these scholars, is
emblematic of how understanding of teachers’ thinking has moved.
Figure 8.5 Four representations of teacher thinking
The horizontal connection between Shavelson’s (1973) depiction of decision-making as

TOTE (see also Figure 8.1) and Clark and Peterson’s (1986) representation of thought
processes as socially situated (see also Figure 8.2) reflects the movement in general
educational research. A lot changed between 1973 and 1986, however. The process–product
paradigm waned in favor of the qualitative–hermeneutic paradigm as the prevailing research
orientation (for example, Creswell & Miller, 2000). Likewise, conceptions of thinking moved
away from the cognitivist views of information processing to favor situated cognition
(Chapter 5) and ultimately socio-cultural theorizations (Chapter 6). In this conceptual
environment, ideas about teacher thinking likewise grew more complex. Representations of
thinking as socio-cognitive interaction characterized it as making meaningful connections
between inner and outer worlds, which were shaped by constraints and opportunities in that
outer world. This took the place of the view of thinking as a set of sequential, cognitive
processes, exercised through pre- and interactive decisions.
In language teaching, these ideas were refined and done differently, which is the vertical
connection in the diagram (Figure 8.5). Wood’s (1986) ethno-cognitive model reformatted the
linear view of decision-making as cyclical. Decisions continued to be the unit of thinking, but
they were elaborated as BAK. The language teacher’s thinking process unfolded from
planning to enacting to reflecting on the lesson, which embedded time in this cyclical
representation of the thinking process (see also Figure 8.3). Borg’s (2003) framework also
reworked time in relation to thinking. His categories and explanatory narrative brought
together the sequential ideas of decision-making captured in Shavelson’s (1973) TOTE model
with the broader, inclusive gestalt of Clark and Peterson’s (1986) interacting circular
domains. In Borg’s framework, thinking was a process (cognition), of combining individual
parts (or cognitions), which made the term ambiguously useful (see also Figure 8.4).
Cognition could refer to the unit of thinking happening at a particular time in particular
circumstances, classrooms, and lessons. The term could also refer to the process that
integrated sources of decisions—from the teacher’s own schooling, from her professional
preparation, and from her past and present teaching.
Thinking Woods (1996) Borg (2003)

The unit Decisions Cognitions/cognition
Based on Beliefs, Assumptions, and Schooling; professional
Knowledge (BAK) coursework; contextual factors,
classroom practice
Emphasizes the process as Cyclical Integrating sources of knowledge
Table 8.3 Language teacher thinking: From decisions to cognition
Woods’ view of decision-making and Borg’s of cognition, together with the research
drawing on their ideas, played a major role in defining thinking in language teaching. The
evolution from decision-making, to thought processes, to BAK and language teacher
cognition(s) has shifted how thinking is conceptualized from an individual, internalized
process to an interactive, socially grounded one. Each conceptualization describes a unit of
the thinking, the foundation of that unit, and suggests—diagrammatically at least—what the
thinking process involves.
This shift from decisions to cognition(s) as the primary way of conceiving thinking suited
language teaching, given the nature of classroom activity as highly interactive, and the subject
matter as enacted through those interactions.
9
Knowledge generations in language teaching
We live not in a settled or finished world, but in one that is going on, and where our main
task is prospective. Where [the task is] retrospective … it is of value in [what] it affords
our dealings with the future.
(John Dewey, 1916, p. 178)
This chapter, like Chapter 7, uses the idea of generations—as patterns of ideas rather than as
history—to describe the development of ideas about language teaching knowledge, starting in
the 1950s. Similar to ideas about thinking (Chapter 7), each of these successive generations
responded to a loose group of precipitating factors. Table 9.1 summarizes the generations and
the key issues that separated them.
Table 9.1 Four generations in language teaching knowledge: Focus and key issues
The first two generations were largely focused internally on language teaching, however
the third generation, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, was marked by the importation of
ideas about teaching knowledge from general educational research, which proved to be
seminal in many ways. Like the evolution in definitions of thinking, these external ideas
helped to refine the ways in which language teaching knowledge was understood. And like
the ideas about thinking, they were modified—or done differently—as they came into the
field.
The first generation—defining what

Teaching knowledge as disciplinary knowledge
In the first definitional generation, language teacher knowledge was essentially synonymous
with disciplinary knowledge, particularly linguistics and psychology. In 1969, Kelly
published a book with the modest title, Twenty-five Centuries of Language Teaching: 500
BC to 19691, in which he described an uneasy alliance between these two disciplines: ‘While
linguistics, in its traditional dress as grammar, has long had a connection with language
teaching, it is only in the last century that psychologists have attempted to rationalize what
teachers have known from experience’ (1969, p. 301). Until the 20th century, Kelly noted,
linguistics had defined the content to be taught, largely through various formal analyses of
language, while philosophy, as the ‘queen of sciences’, had described the learning process
and the learner. When psychology separated from philosophy in the 19th century as an
empirically based discipline, it assumed the role of theorizing learning (see Polkinghorne,
1983).
The development of psychological understandings of learners and learning led to
increasingly detailed disciplinary definitions in general education and in language teaching. In
the spirit of things done differently, language teaching seems to be unique in claiming its own
specialized sub-discipline of psychology, second language acquisition, as its source of
definitions and discourse about learning. While candidates preparing to teach other subject
areas will study how students learn that content, they usually do so within the general domain
of educational psychology. In contrast, language teachers’ disciplinary training involves a set
of social facts that are specific to the language as content and how it is learned (or acquired)
in the classroom and in the wider world.
Language teacher knowledge became increasingly specialized as it was defined through
linguistics and psychology. There were implications of this specialization. However, as Kelly
(1969, p. 301–302) described, ‘Control over separate disciplines has gradually passed from
the teaching body to the analytic scientists who legislate what is to be taught and what
methods are to be used.’ Reflecting the dominance of behaviorism in the 1960s, he continued,
‘Concepts of language have changed from those directed towards the teaching of analysis and
rhetoric to behavioral ideas.’ The Audio-lingual Direct Method (ALDM) was the
instantiation. Supported by structural linguistic definitions of language as content, the
methodology was the translation of behaviorist theory into classroom teaching practices,
which came to define this first generation of language teacher knowledge.
The relationship between behaviorism and the ALDM in the first generation initiated a key
role for theories of language and language learning (or acquisition) in language teaching
knowledge. Language was defined as a phenomenon in the world, not simply as a school
subject; therefore theories about how it was learned, specialized though they were in
language acquisition, had the weight of general learning theories. This unified view of content
and learning process, which was the hallmark of the first generation, also became its
weakness. As new methodologies developed during the 1970s and 1980s, they differentiated
themselves as innovative in contrast to ALDM, as outlined in Chapter 7. This climate affected
teaching knowledge, fracturing the uniformity of behaviorism-ALDM, leading to gaps and a
new definition of knowledge-as-pedagogy in the next generation.
Gaps in the first generation

Focusing on defining the what in language teaching through the disciplinary perspectives of
behavioral psychology and structural linguistics, the first generation left the how of
methodology largely unexplored as part of teaching knowledge. During the decade and a half
from the mid-1970s through the end of the 1980s, language teaching was changing
dramatically, however. The hold of structural linguistics on content was challenged by
Chomskyian analyses of the generative nature of language, which were accompanied by
theorizations of the generative capacity of speakers to create and use those language
structures. Psychological theorizations of learning were also changing. The ‘cognitive
revolution’ (Chomsky, 1959) contested behaviorism and grew into a broad group of theories
about learning and learners (see Pinker, 2002), which manifested in the work of the
innovative methodologists (defined in Chapter 7). Each method was based on a particular
view of how students learned languages, which translated into particular ways to teach. The
net effect of these competing proposals was to reframe the focus of language teaching
knowledge from what was being taught, as defined by the disciplines, to the how of the
various methodologies.
The second generation—defining how

Teaching knowledge-as-pedagogy
The second generation defined teaching knowledge in terms of pedagogy. Initially that
pedagogy equated to exclusive use of a single methodology, which was subsequently refined
as a matter of pedagogical choice among classroom techniques. Initially the fact that each
innovative method was complete unto itself meant that teaching knowledge was expressed
exclusively through the social facts of that teaching approach and supported by the socio-
professional community using them. These methods were conceived as complete and
axiomatic, which made them fundamentally incompatible forms of thinking and reasoning. To
fully implement one of these methods, a teacher needed to think about language and how it
was learned in its terms.
There was, of course, choice; teachers could opt for one method or another, but once they
had made the choice, the method offered a complete world of knowledge defined in its own
idiosyncratic terms. This exclusivity meant that the methods defined a solipsistic view of
teaching knowledge within the pedagogy itself. For example, as described in Table 7.1, a
teacher using the Silent Way, who saw language learners as autonomous from the beginning of
their work with a new language, would not probably also believe that they were going
through a five-stage process of developing new language identities, as proposed in
Counseling Learning/Community Language Learning (see Stevick, 1980).
Pedagogical choices
During the 1980s, the view of knowledge-as-pedagogy began to assume a second meaning, as
the knowledge entailed in making pedagogical choices. Competing views of methods gave
rise inevitably to debates over effectiveness and which was the best, thus introducing the idea
of choice into teaching knowledge. In the first generation, a teacher could know the what as it
was defined through the disciplines. In the second generation, however, she had also to know
the how of various methodologies and more crucially have (or find) a basis on which to
choose among these different ‘how’s. This meant an increasingly plural view of teaching
knowledge-as-pedagogy, which included the teacher both knowing different methodologies
and potentially making choices about them for her classroom setting.
Krashen as an example of pedagogical choice
The idea of making pedagogical choices flourished in a period that was rife with competing
explanations of how languages were learned. Responses to the work of Stephen Krashen
were an example of this tension between the budding field of SLA research and classroom
language teaching. His proposals for language learning (for example, Krashen, 1981) had
enormous intuitive appeal and popularity among teachers, although they were widely
challenged by SLA researchers of the period (Gregg, 1986; McLaughlin, 1987). Looking at
the situation retrospectively, Wheeler (2003) attributes the controversy to a conflict between
what he calls ‘art’ and ‘science’ in defining language teaching knowledge. He quotes an SLA
scholar, Gregg, writing a negative review of Krashen’s book, The Input Hypothesis: Issues
and Implications in 1986, ‘It is very disturbing to see how well-received the theory [the
input hypothesis] seems to be. ‘The fundamental message of Krashen’s theory is that you do
not have to know very much to be a good language teacher’ (p. 121). Of this conflict between
methodologist and SLA researchers, Wheeler (2003) concludes, ‘Krashen’s theory threatens
to expose, it is feared, that science and language teaching do not always mix. It shifts the
balance away from science and technology back toward teaching as an art. It strengthens that
age-old, exasperating belief that anyone with an education can teach’ (p. 98).
First generation nostalgia
The debate exemplifies a maturing of teaching knowledge in the second generation. Gregg’s
criticism, which Wheeler (2003) refers to as the ‘science’ position, seems almost nostalgic
for the first generation with its certainty grounded in disciplinary sources of knowledge.
When SLA theorists of the day like Gregg disagreed, in some cases vehemently, with
Krashen’s (1981) ideas about the ‘acquisition/learning’ distinction or the ‘input hypothesis of
I + 1’, they appealed to the ‘science’ of their version of psychology to challenge these
comfortably intuitive formulations of how languages were learned. To their point of view, the
alternative, ‘art’ position, as Wheeler (2003) calls it, seemed non-professional. How could
language teaching depend on any particular knowledge if ‘science were discounted’? As
Gregg put it, ‘anyone could teach.’ When anyone could propose a learning theory, as the
‘innovative’ methodologists like Krashen were doing, the socio-professional consensus
around scientifically developed knowledge was discounted.
Theoretical anarchy?
Although reaction to Krashen’s work remained unsettled as professional knowledge
throughout the 1980s, the arguments always seemed to return to the language classroom and
the work of the teacher (for example, Stevick, 1980). The proposals in favor of
methodological diversity, and the debates about them, at the core of the second generation,
changed the nature of teacher knowledge by expressing it as an individual matter. Wheeler’s
debate between art and science and Gregg’s concern that anyone can teach could be read in
this new way: that teaching knowledge could be the province of the individual teacher and not
of the sponsoring discipline. There seemed to be a fork in the road: thinking as pedagogical
choice could lead either to a sort of theoretical anarchy or to the individual teacher’s freedom
and agency. Or, a third possibility: that theory could be found to explain choice and agency.
Articulating a common language—a truce in the methodology wars
The advent of pedagogical choice as a form of thinking created the need for a shared way of
describing language teaching that could facilitate choosing among teaching options. A
common language for classroom teaching could function as a common denominator across the
different methodologies, fostering a disinterested set of social facts that articulated a neutral
form of teaching knowledge. In contrast to the partisan directives of the various innovative
methods, this language was almost comfortingly descriptive. It could be used to talk about
classroom teaching without assuming the distinctive views about language and learning that
were the hallmark of the innovative methods. A common language could bring a sort of
theoretical truce in the methodology wars, like the arguments of the second generation
between Gregg (1986) and Krashen (1981).
The emerging common language
The Teaching Practice Handbook by Gower and Walters (1987) is an illustration of this
truce through the articulation of a common language for classroom language teaching. The
Table of Contents (reproduced in Figure 9.1) of the book, which was written to prepare
trainees on certificate courses for the practice teaching component, divides the content into
categories and sub-headings. The five categories, excluding the first and last sections which
are about the practice teaching, include ‘teacher, classroom management, teaching strategies
and teaching techniques’. None of them are particularly about language teaching (although a
few of the sub-headings are).
Figure 9.1 A language of practice: Table of contents from The Teaching Practice Handbook (Gower
& Walters, 1987)
The sub-headings detail a language of practice which includes classroom behaviors (for
example, 2.1—eye contact; 3.5—using students’ names), teaching skills (for example, 3.3—
setting up pair and group work; 4.1—writing lesson plans), and what would now be called
‘dispositions’ (for example, 2.7—rapport; 3.8—the group: its dynamics and the needs of
individuals within it). Altogether the Table of Contents gives the sense that this is what one
needs to do in order to teach a language.
A grammar not a hierarchy

Unlike methodology texts, this language seems to translate directly into classroom teaching in
a neutral, almost clinical way. The categories, and the elements of classroom work described
within them by the sub-headings, seem almost generic. But interestingly, they are not
commensurate. In other words, this list is a compendium and not a Linnaean classification of
the work of language teaching. The categorical organization of the Table of Contents suggests
a sort of grammar for the language of practice, which is methodologically agnostic. Expressed
in the language of competencies and performance, only nine of 30 topics in the five sections
are clearly about language teaching, while the balance could be about any form of teaching.
The Teaching Practice Handbook, and other similar books (for example, Ur, 1996;
Harmer, 1991), were addressed to a specific audience unique to language teacher preparation
—trainees in short-term certificate programs. These alternative-route programs played a
central role in developing teaching knowledge, as discussed in Chapter 10, particularly in the
second generation. Positioned extramurally beyond the discipline-based academic structures
of university-based preparation programs, these alternative-route training programs had the
latitude to develop a new set of social facts and discourse for classroom language teaching.
Further, they assessed trainees based on actual classroom performance so they needed to
express teaching knowledge in a language and using social facts that could easily travel from
the training room and practice teaching to the world of the language classroom.
Gaps in the second generation

The development of a language of practice to describe classroom teaching opened new
territory. Teaching knowledge could be expressed in methodologically non-partisan terms and
language teaching itself could be described, critiqued, and explained using those terms.
Underlying this means of talking and writing about what was happening in the classroom was
something more fundamental: the idea that individual teachers fashioned what they did as they
taught. Knowledge-as-pedagogy, which had meant knowing how to follow methodological
directions, was being reinterpreted as the teacher knowing what she wanted to do in the
classroom and how to do it. So a new gap was created. The first generation, which had
transformed the disciplinary knowledge of linguistics into applied knowledge and of
psychology into second language acquisition, had created a gap in how to apply that
knowledge in language teaching. The second generation of knowledge-as-pedagogy had
addressed that gap, first through the specific protocols of the various innovative methods and
then in the idea of pedagogical choice. But choice introduced a focus on who was doing the
choosing and how the situation of a particular classroom might shape that choice. This was
the gap leading to the third generation in language teaching knowledge, which located that
knowledge in person, in place.
The third generation—defining who and where

Teaching knowledge as knowledge in person, in place
Situating teaching knowledge in the work of individual teachers with their students in specific
classrooms, as the third generation did, started out as more of a political than an
epistemological move. Concluding his essay, ‘Dysfunctions of the theory/practice discourse’,
Clarke (1994, p. 23) made the political case: ‘The key point, I think, is for teachers to keep
their own counsel regarding what works and what does not work and to insist on an
interpretation of events and ideas that includes, implicitly or explicitly, a validation of their
own experiences in the classroom.’ The phrase, ‘teachers keeping their own counsel’,
captured the sentiments of many writing on English language teaching at the time (for
example, Kumaravadivelu, 1994), including me (Freeman, 1996). The intent, which was
initially to position teachers as knowers of their own teaching, quickly became complicated,
however, caught between two views of individuality that were at odds: the individuality of
idiosyncrasy and the individuality of exemplification.
The risk of idiosyncrasy: the problem of exemplification

To describe knowledge on the basis of what individual teachers were thinking, as ‘a
validation of their own experiences in the classroom’ as Clarke does above, ran the risk of
making it all about personal opinion. This was the risk of idiosyncrasy, that teaching
knowledge would be defined so particularly that there could be little in common across
various language teachers working in vastly different classroom contexts with students with
diverse cultures, personalities, and needs and expectations. So the political assertion of the
importance of teachers’ knowledge would collapse into millions of idiosyncratic versions of
what mattered to individual teachers. On the other hand, generalizing across these individuals
could create the problem of exemplification: how could a description of the knowledge of
one teacher represent the teaching knowledge of many? This was where, as it did with
understanding thinking, the field of language teaching gravitated towards two ideas from
general educational research: personal practical knowledge (Elbaz, 1983; Clandinin, 1986)
and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987).
These two constructs, which were influential on research in second language teacher
education, addressed the role of the teacher and of the classroom setting in defining teaching
knowledge. They each described teaching as enacting instruction, as dealing with a particular
content and classroom, which made the knowledge a function of the person of the teacher
(Elbaz, 1983; Clandinin, 1986) teaching in a particular place (Shulman, 1987). Together the
ideas spoke to this teaching as enactment and how knowledge worked in the person of the
teacher and the place of the classroom, which was the gap emerging at the end of the second
generation.
Personal Practical Knowledge (PPK)
The idea of personal practical knowledge, which came to be known as PPK, was one of the
first conceptualizations of the knowledge-in-person view of teaching knowledge. Taken from
general educational research in language teaching primarily by Golombek (1998) and
Golombek and Johnson (2004), the idea was first described as ‘practical knowledge’ by
Elbaz (1983) and then elaborated as ‘personal practical knowledge’ by Clandinin (1986)
(also Clandinin & Connelly, 1986). In the initial proposal, Elbaz wanted to situate that
practical knowledge, which she noted was more than teaching behaviors: ‘We might imagine
that practical knowledge is simply knowledge of how to do things … but it is important to
recognize that teachers do have knowledge of content … and that such knowledge it usually
undervalued’ (1983, p. 13). Taking ideas of practical knowledge from Polanyi (1974) and
Ryle (1949/2009) as her point of departure, she situated the knowledge in the person of the
teacher rather than in the activity of teaching as Shulman (1987) would do in pedagogical
content knowledge. Elbaz identified five dimensions of this practical knowledge as the
‘situational, personal, social, experiential, and theoretical orientations’, each of which
‘generates questions and assumptions about the teacher’s use of knowledge’ (1983, p. 13).
Of the five orientations, the personal became focal, as Elbaz explained:
… to speak of the teacher’s knowledge as personal is to operate within a framework which

sees the teacher as the ultimate practical authority on what kids do in classrooms, and to view
his2 [sic] practical knowledge as the result of his effort to assume that authority …
(Elbaz, 1983, p. 17)
Clandinin and Connelly (1986) expanded this personal orientation as the ‘moral, affective,
and aesthetic way of knowing life’s educational situations’ (p. 89). Putting these ideas
together, Golombek (1998) explained, gave a definition that ‘highlights teachers’ knowledge
as being dialectical, situated, and dynamic in response to their personal and professional
lives, embodied in persons’ (p. 448).
Individual stories
As a construct, personal practical knowledge embodied the perspective of individuality as
idiosyncratic. Individual teachers thought differently, knew different things about teaching,
and handled content and their classrooms differently because they were different people, with
distinctive backgrounds, experiences, and views. Researching these idiosyncrasies involved
gathering the teachers’ accounts, or stories, which amalgamate the knowledge and the telling.
As Golombek (1998) puts it, ‘teachers’ knowledge interacts with and is reshaped by the
reconstruction of their experiences through stories’ (p. 448). Stories are both a form of
knowledge and a device for telling and changing it: ‘As teachers tell their stories in classes
and meetings for the practicum, they can begin to become accountable for the choices they
make in their classrooms by becoming cognizant of the reasoning behind these choices’
(Golombek, 1998, p. 462).
Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)

What personal practical knowledge did to define knowledge-in-person, pedagogical content
knowledge did for knowledge-in-place as the other element of the third generation. In 1987,
Shulman published his first proposals for teaching knowledge, arguing that the what + how
conceptualization which packaged the delivery of content through pedagogy, was inadequate:
The key to distinguishing the knowledge-base of teaching lies at the intersection of content
and pedagogy … [The] teacher transform[s] the content knowledge he or she possesses into
forms that are pedagogically powerful and yet adaptive to the variations in ability and
background presented by the students.
(Shulman, 1987, p. 15)
The core of his proposal was this idea of transforming the content through teaching it. In his
view, methodology didn’t convey, but created the content, and the social context of the
classroom was key to this transformation.
Nancy, the teacher with laryngitis

Shulman introduced PCK with ‘a portrait of expertise’ of Nancy, a US secondary school
English teacher, who was teaching Moby Dick to Grade 11 students (1987, p. 1–3), by
describing the sophistication in questioning that she used to build students’ understanding of
the text. He explained that the observer returned to Nancy’s class a few weeks later to find
that she had laryngitis and was fighting the flu, so she had to teach using a combination of
handwritten notes and whispers. These two lessons showed the same teacher—one who
spoke and one who temporarily couldn’t—transforming content in different ways. ‘For a
teacher who managed her classroom through the power of her voice and her manner,’ Shulman
mused, [not being able to talk] ‘was certainly a disabling condition. Or was it?’ (1987, p. 3).
He then continued, describing an engaging lesson in which ‘the class had run smoothly, and
the subject matter had been treated with care.’ Shulman’s insight was that Nancy transformed
her ‘style’ and the specifics of what she did in the two lessons in response to circumstances—
her own health, the students, and the texts they were reading. This process is the core of PCK
as Shulman says, ‘The teacher can transform understanding, performance skills, or desired
attitudes or values into pedagogical representations and actions’ (1987, p. 7). PCK does not
simply combine content and pedagogy as forms of knowledge; rather the concept describes
how the act of teaching something changes or transforms it. As Shulman explains, PCK is ‘the
capacity of a teacher to transform the content knowledge he or she possesses into forms that
are pedagogically powerful and yet adaptive’ [to circumstances] (p. 15).
Pedagogical reasoning
This transformation in PCK takes place through what Shulman called ‘pedagogical
reasoning’, which he explained as follows: ‘[T]eaching … begins with an act of reason,
continues with a process of reasoning, culminates in performances of imparting, eliciting,
involving or enticing, and then is thought of some more until the process can begin again’
(1987, p.13). This reasoning, which is a form of thinking, draws from seven domains of
knowledge: ‘content, general pedagogical, curriculum, learners, educational context, “ends,
purposes, and values” and PCK’ (1987, p. 8).3
Knowledge as enactment
The third generation defined language teaching knowledge through how it was enacted by
teachers in classrooms. The personal embodiment of teaching in PPK and the transformation
of content through pedagogy in PCK shifted attention from what teachers knew per se to how
they used that knowledge in what they did. Though disciplinary knowledge was still part of
the discussion, the focus had moved to the activity of teaching. In the second generation’s
view of knowledge-as-pedagogy, practice was portrayed as the application of theory (as in
Wallace’s 1991 applied science model). With PPK and PCK, the classroom took on a dual
role as the source of knowledge and the venue for using it. This dual role of place both
generated and legitimized teaching knowledge in the third generation.
Focusing on the classroom
The new role of the classroom also seemed to address the twin issues of idiosyncrasy and
exemplification. (As discussed earlier, the problem of idiosyncrasy reflects the fact that
teachers have distinct approaches in the classroom and therefore can be expected to generate
unique knowledge in teaching, while the problem of exemplification suggests that this range
and variety would be difficult to organize and to codify.) PPK described the individual
idiosyncrasy, while PCK offered a way to deal with exemplification through its categories,
which could consolidate that variety. Through PPK, and related narrative methods, second
language teacher education research examined who language teachers were, as well as what
their various identities contributed to how they taught (for example, Golombek & Johnson,
2004; Johnson & Golombek, 2002; Pierce, 2000). In describing individual identity as shaping
classroom teaching, the idea of knowledge-in-person became established.
Wrestling with the messiness
A number of scholars in language teaching wrestled with this third generation issue of the
messy relation between content and methodology. Some proposed leaving the issue entirely
up to teachers to customize methodology by who they were (person) and where they were
teaching (setting). To do this, Kumaravadivelu, for example, outlined ‘three pedagogic
parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility’ (1994, p. 545) as principles by
which teachers might choose and customize methodology to their students. Other scholars
advocated putting the whole issue within the larger frame of post-modern thinking. Pennycook
for example argued that:
… rather than trying to understand our practice [in language teaching] according to some form
of totalizing or universal discourse, we need to recognize the complexities of language
teaching and its contexts, and strive to validate other, local forms of knowledge about
language and teaching.
(Pennycook, 1989, p. 613)
Attributes of language teaching knowledge

Still others argued that the messiness was essential. Describing teaching knowledge as
‘contextual, contingent, and developmental’, Freeman and Johnson (1998) made the case for
attributes of teaching knowledge that drew on the ideas of in-person, in-place. ‘Contextual’
described the central role of place and of the classroom found in PCK; ‘contingent’
foregrounded the relational aspects of activity and interaction in teaching knowledge. And
‘developmental’ suggested that the knowledge was learned over time, as in PPK. These three
attributes were meant to challenge the idea of teaching knowledge originating beyond the
teacher to be applied in the classroom.
Part/whole relationships
As conceptualizations, PCK and PPK seemed to respond to this challenge of seeing teaching
knowledge as entirely individual and idiosyncratic. Both were offered as general typologies
—Elbaz (1983) proposed five orientations and Shulman (1987) outlined seven types of
knowledge—that allowed organized teaching knowledge by sub-feature. This approach
differed from the two previous generations, which had described teaching knowledge in terms
of different sources (disciplines in the first generation or pedagogies and their assumptions in
the second). As constructs of knowledge-in person, in-place, PPK and PCK offered unitary
conceptualizations that included multiple dimensions within them. As if to underscore this
integration, one element emerged as the first among equals to become synonymous with the
typology. For Elbaz (1983) and Clandinin (1986), personal, which was one of the five
orientations, became personal practical knowledge; for Shulman (1987), pedagogical
content knowledge, which was one of the seven forms of knowledge. Re-titling the typology
with a particular dimension underscored the driving premise in the third generation: that
knowledge was situated in the person of the teacher doing the work in the place of the
classroom and school.
Gaps in the third generation

Situating knowledge in the person of the teacher, in the place of the classroom, school, and
community, the third generation of language teaching knowledge addressed the gap created by
choice in the second. The idea of individuals making pedagogical choices had raised issues
of the idiosyncratic ways in which different teachers might combine techniques from
particular methodologies to their own ends, along with concerns for a common structure to
organize and exemplify those choices. These concerns for consistency and coherence were at
the heart of debates over eclectic teaching and best methods. In focusing on classroom
teaching as the source and venue of teaching knowledge, the third generation turned the whole
issue on its head. Focusing on what teachers did, their agency in the classroom promoted the
central importance of the teacher as an individual working within particular circumstances;
methodological consistency became a non-issue. This drive for coherence exposed the gap,
however, captured in the following riddle: If teaching knowledge resided in the person of the
individual teacher working in the place of her classroom (as affirmed in the ideas of PPK and
PCK), how could the logic in classroom practices across a range of classrooms be defined?
What would determine the soundness of pedagogical choices made by different teachers in
their own settings? How could a teacher’s individual personality and agency be reconciled
with the collective aims of classroom teaching?
The fourth generation—defining why
Knowledge-for-teaching
As with the earlier generations, the fourth version has absorbed the conceptualizations that
preceded it. The central notion of teacher agency, first conceptualized in the third generation
as principled eclecticism, was expanded by borrowing the ideas of PPK and PCK from
general education research. However, this reconceptualization raised the issue of purpose:
teacher agency to what end? Though it was always assumed, student learning was not made
the explicit goal in third generation versions of teaching knowledge. This gap has emerged in
the fourth generation with the focus on questions of purpose, which emphasize why rather than
how.
Student learning as purpose

Purpose is not an abstract or philosophical idea, however. Under the influence of the third
generation, purpose has been firmly situated in how teachers teach particular content to
learners in the classroom. The third generation defined teaching knowledge as a product of
the person—the teacher in her teaching situation (as argued in PPK)—in the place,
transforming content through classroom pedagogy (as argued in PCK). Student learning
provides a common purpose or deep structure that shapes how teaching knowledge is used.
Teaching creates opportunities for that learning to happen, hence this generational view is
referred to as knowledge-for-teaching.
Initial conceptions in mathematics teaching

Early conceptions of knowledge-for-teaching were developed in the 2000s in teaching
elementary mathematics (for example, Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008; Lampert, 2001). Ball
and her colleagues defined mathematical knowledge for teaching as responding to the
question: ‘What do teachers need to know and be able to do in order to teach effectively?’
This orientation they note, ‘places the emphasis on the use of knowledge in and for teaching
rather than on teachers themselves’ (Ball et al., 2008, p. 394). Their representation (Figure
9.2), which drew on Shulman’s (1996) original conception of PCK, divides knowledge into
two areas, subject matter (on the left) and pedagogical content (on the right). Subject matter
is broken down into common, specialized, and horizon knowledge, while pedagogical
content relates this to students, teaching, and curriculum.
Figure 9.2 Mathematical knowledge-for-teaching (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008)
This model of knowledge-for-teaching resembles its antecedent PCK, with two major
differences. First, the model uses content as the bridge to connect the what of content on the
left side of the diagram and the how of pedagogy on the right. This explicitness, one could
argue, draws attention to the transformation process of pedagogical reasoning with content
that was central in Shulman’s definition of PCK. Second, in the category of horizon content
knowledge in the model (see A, Figure 9.2) Ball (1993) embeds time in how the content is
conceived, which previous versions of teaching knowledge did not do. Ball et al. (2008)
define horizon content knowledge as ‘an awareness of how mathematical topics are related
over the span of mathematics included in the curriculum … It also includes the vision useful
in seeing connections to much later mathematical ideas’ (p. 403). Including this category
broadens conventional ideas of knowledge to include this notion of ‘horizonal’ understanding
as ‘awareness’ and ‘vision’ of where learners are heading with the content, ‘First grade
teachers, for example, may need to know how the mathematics they teach is related to the
mathematics students will learn in third grade to be able to set the mathematical foundation
for what will come later’ (Ball et al., 2008, p. 403).
Applying the model to language teaching

As a framework, knowledge-for-teaching can apply to language teaching, with modifications.
The framework reflects a central role for disciplinary knowledge in defining content, which
is not surprising given the content basis in mathematics, but which is complicated in language
teaching, as we have said. The categories of common and specialized content knowledge on
the left-hand side describe the areas of teacher command of the target language (common
knowledge) and of language awareness expressed in the metalanguage of applied linguistics
(specialized language). Breaking down content knowledge into students, teaching, and
curriculum on the right-hand side of the diagram transposes well in language teaching as the
conventional disciplinary areas of second language acquisition, teaching methods, curriculum,
and materials respectively. These areas, which provide the foundation of most language
teacher preparation, align with the disciplinary perspectives, which are unique to language
teaching. These parallels are summarized in Table 9.2:
Subject matter knowledge Pedagogical content knowledge

Mathematical Language teaching Mathematical Language teaching
knowledge-for- knowledge knowledge-for- knowledge
teaching teaching
Common content Teacher command of Content and students Second language
knowledge (CCK) target language (KCS) acquisition
Specialized content Language awareness Content and teaching Language teaching
knowledge (SCK) and applied linguistics (KCT) methods
Horizon content [A] Content and curriculum Curriculum, materials,
knowledge and assessment
Table 9.2 The mathematical knowledge-for-teaching framework applied to language teaching
knowledge
The problem of horizon knowledge in the language classroom

The third category, horizon content knowledge, is intriguingly problematic in language
teaching (marked as [A] in Table 9.2 and in Figure 9.2). It needs some redefinition as an
example of things ‘done differently’. The problem is that since it anticipates future
possibilities, language is always horizonal. Language is generally treated as sequential
content like mathematics in most school curricula. Course books are sequenced; students are
tested to place and move them through curricula, which are organized in levels. Even though
lesson content can be recycled with greater complexity, as iterative curricula emphasize in the
spirit of building an expanding horizon, classroom teaching of language still has this
teleological quality which runs counter to the fluid use of language in the world.
Where is the horizon?

The intersection between language and teaching it in the classroom is where the idea of
horizon content knowledge does not fit easily. When the concept of horizon is based on an
agreed-upon, disciplinarily derived sequence of unfolding content as it is in mathematics,
there is a clear orientation that separates the current content from what is coming next month
or next year. This orientation is muddy in language teaching, linear language curriculum
designs notwithstanding.
Unlike mathematics or other school subjects, in language classrooms, the medium becomes
the message. Language in the classroom plays two roles simultaneously, as we have said
earlier, as the lesson content and as the means of teaching that content. Other content areas
certainly have particular discourses, but these do not function as the content per se; they are
the representational resources (including the terms and social facts) to expresses it. In a
mathematics class for example, the language used in instruction is one of the dimensions to
which the teacher attends as she is teaching the mathematical content. When explaining a
concept or correcting a misconception for example, the teacher may choose different words
or moderate her language so that the students understand her explanation. A language teacher
may well operate in a similar fashion, but faces a choice in doing so. The teacher can make
the language content more accessible by either moderating how she is using the target
language or she may use a shared first language if one exists in the setting. In the mathematics
class, the teacher does not face that choice. She has twin aims, which is Ball’s point about
horizon content knowledge: the teacher wants the explanation to make sense to the students
and to remain accurate to the mathematics content.
The basic difference is that the horizon content knowledge in a language classroom has to
be artificially defined, by the curriculum and how the teacher enacts it. The activities, and the
language the teacher uses to carry them out, create the content that brings language from the
world into the classroom. But the horizon is in how the language is used in the world and not
from how it functions in the classroom, with the refinements of its disciplinary definitions and
sequences. This fact shows up regularly when students find the English they are taught in
classrooms is not necessarily the version they may see, hear, or even use in the world. A
colleague gives a wonderful example of this mismatch she heard from a fellow passenger on
an airplane flight when the cabin personnel were distributing special meals: ‘If you’re
looking for the fish, it’s me’ (Larsen-Freeman, personal communication). It is difficult to
parse this language situation for its horizon content.
Knowledge-for-teaching languages
A model of knowledge-for-teaching languages needs to address the problem of horizon, and
particularly how to represent the dynamic of language that both creates and conveys the
subject-matter in the classroom. It needs to capture another aspect of this dynamic, that the
language that is used to teach language can also be the professional language of language
teaching. When mathematics teachers meet professionally to discuss their work, they use the
local language appropriate to the setting. However, when language teachers meet, there is a
premium put on using the language they teach to talk about how they teach it. Professional
meetjngs of ELT teachers often take place in English; teachers of Mandarin discuss their
teaching in Mandarin, and so on. This makes the fourth generational knowledge-for-teaching
languages a hybrid.
Three uses of language

Language happens three ways in the work language teachers do. It is the content of the lesson;
it is the means of teaching that lesson; and it is the professional discourse that conveys the
teacher’s identity in the world of language teaching. These three uses can align when they are
all in the target language, which usually happens for people teaching their own language. But
more commonly, the three uses differ, which they often do for people for whom the target
language is a second language. In this case, although the content is in the target language (in
the curricular materials), the teachers may often use their own language to teach it, as in
grammar translation lessons. And they may not be confident or fluent enough in the target
language for it to be their language of professional discourse. This distinction in how the uses
play out in the classroom and professional lives for teachers is often shorthanded as ‘native’
and ‘non-native’, in which the three uses are aligned for the former but mixed for the latter.
The assumption that the uses ought always to align is more socio-political than empirical,
however.
The model of knowledge-for-teaching languages in Figure 9.3 represents the three uses and
their interrelation. In the classroom (on the left-hand side), language is the content and means
of teaching. This language expertise can move into the professional world (on the right-hand
side) when teachers use the target language to talk or write about what they do. It is facilitated
to some extent by the fact that much of the language used as the means of teaching converts
easily into use in the professional world. For example, in a lesson a teacher may give
instructions for an activity, ‘We’re going to do pair work now, so turn and talk to your
neighbor about your favorite movies.’ The italicized terms can likewise function
professionally, when ‘pair work’ is a social fact used in pedagogical discussions, and ‘turn
and talk’ can be a direction in a student textbook. This socio-professional process converts
the know-how used in daily classroom teaching into recognizable professional knowledge
that can be used with fellow teachers and colleagues in the field. The diagram below shows
how these two domains of knowledge-for-teaching languages can connect.
Figure 9.3 A model of knowledge-for-teaching languages

Teaching about vs. teaching in the target language
The three uses of language point to a further level of integration that depends on how a
teacher uses the target language in teaching. As suggested previously, they may use the shared
first language to teach, organize lessons, manage students, and so on, which positions the
target language simply as the content of the lesson. Experience and some research (for
example, Coleman, 2011; Graddol, 2006) suggests that that kind of teaching is probably the
global norm—for better or worse—in most English as a foreign language classrooms in
schools, although research suggests it is less effective than using the language as a means of
teaching it (Chacón, 2005; Zakeri & Alavi, 2011). ‘Teaching about’ the target language
defines a form of teaching knowledge that uses the first language in conjunction with
metalanguage terms to explain the target language and how it works. The problems are
twofold. First, teaching about the language can make it seem less real; when the target
language is not used regularly in the classroom, it is essentially portrayed as unreal and non-
functional, good for content but not for means of teaching and running the classroom as a
social and interactive space. Second, teaching about the language depends on social facts,
such as metalinguistic terms, that reify the target language itself. Consider two instructions
—’Make sentences using the past tense’ versus ‘Talk about what you did yesterday’. The first
freezes the target language in its formal linguistic properties; the second uses it as an
interactional command.
Since the ‘communicative revolution’, however, professional norms have emphasized
teaching in the target language. Beyond the simple fact that it makes the new language more
real because it is actually part of classroom interactions, using the target language to teach
interweaves the two types of language shown on the left-hand side of the diagram in Figure
9.3. The means of teaching and classroom method are integrated as the teacher uses the
language to manage the classroom, give instructions, monitor students, give them feedback on
activities, and so on. In this way, the target language becomes a vehicle of knowledge-for-
teaching. As she uses it to do these functional classroom tasks, the teacher draws on her
overall language competence to connect content and classroom interactions, thus creating
opportunities for students to learn.
English-for-teaching
It turns out that this interplay of language in teaching is fairly predictably organized in
classrooms (see for example, Freeman, Katz, Garcia Gomez & Burns, 2015). It is highly
scaffolded in two ways which overlap: by tasks that teachers do regularly in teaching, such as
calling the role, giving instructions for activities, correcting student output, etc. and by the
curriculum they are expected to teach.
Figure 9.4 represents how this interaction between language as content and as means of
teaching plays out in the case of English-for-teaching (Freeman, Katz, LeDrean, Burns &
Hauck, 2013). It shows how the teacher’s language knowledge is deployed in her classroom
(on the left side of the diagram) and within the content she is teaching (on the right). These
two contexts of use situate the teacher’s language knowledge so she can accomplish particular
things with the content via certain interactions. The tasks—for instance, encouraging students,
asking them to speak louder, assign them homework, etc.—organize her instruction and
scaffold doing these things in English as the target language. The performance of these tasks
can connect this classroom work to the other dimension of knowledge-for-teaching languages,
the professional world, as shown in Figure 9.3 and the earlier ‘pair-work’ example.
Figure 9.4 English-for-teaching (Freeman et al., 2015)
While there is no empirical evidence that language teaching knowledge functions

differently if it is in the target language, there can be important differences to teachers’ socio-
professional participation and identity. When the three uses of language are in sync, the
alignment can create a through line to professional identity from content and using the target
language as the means to teach it. This in turn can contribute to strengthening confidence and
command of the professional discourse about language teaching in the target language. This
trajectory supports a professional identity as a teacher who can teach in and represent her
classroom practice through the target language. Being able to use the target language in
professional interactions seems to bring with it a certain socio-professional prestige,
particularly in the internet world where opportunities are plentiful and feasible. At its core,
however, the cachet of this professional alignment of the three uses of languages reflects a
legacy of the valuing of ‘nativeness’ as criterion for being a ‘good’ language teacher.
Defining knowledge in language teaching has moved from seeing it as a product of
disciplinary understandings to a process of knowing situated in the teacher’s immediate work
context and the context of her experience. Two loose sets of ideas have influenced that
evolution: changing ideas about language as classroom content and how it was to be taught,
and developing ideas about the ways in which teachers create and use knowledge in the
process of teaching. The first set is particular to the field; it tracks the internal perspective on
the development of language teaching knowledge. The second set of ideas is drawn from
outside the field, from general educational research. The interplay of these two sets of ideas
over four knowledge generations has shaped how language teaching knowledge has come to
be understood. Each succeeding generation has addressed a space in the current thinking, a
gap that the social facts of that generation could not readily explain. Table 9.3 summarizes
these movements:
Generation Key issue Versions in ELT

Disciplinary knowledge (what) If this is the knowledge needed 1.0: linguistics + psychology
to teach languages, how is the 1.1: + literatures
knowledge used? 1.2: + sociology & anthropology
Knowledge of pedagogy (how) If this is how to teach 2.0: + ‘innovative methods’ &
languages, Are differences in SLA
teaching deficits in knowledge 2.1: + Communicative Language
evidence of individuality? Teaching
2.2: + eclectic teaching; ‘best
methods’; ‘post-method
condition’
Knowledge-in-person; in-place If this is how individuals use 3.0: PPK & identity
(who and where) knowledge in teaching, if 3.1: PCK & transforming subject
personal experience and matter in teaching
context shape what they do, 3.2: knowledge as ‘contextual,
what do language teachers contingent, and developmental’
have in common?
Knowledge-for-teaching (why) If this is how knowledge works 4.0: Knowledge-for-teaching
in the process of teaching … languages
4.1: English-for-teaching
Table 9.3 Movement across generations in language teaching knowledge
The third generation drew on two key ideas about the nature of teaching knowledge from
research in general education, PPK and PCK. These ideas focused language teaching on how
knowledge could be a function of individual teachers and their experiences in context and
over time. With knowledge-for-teaching, the current generation continues that path. Coming
from outside of language teaching, these ideas have also revealed what is unique about
teaching language as content, which has contributed to the same things done differently
conceptual dynamic in second language teacher education.
Notes
1 Kelly’s (1969) work proved to be truly seminal in two senses. It presented a
comprehensive, historical view of language teaching, including both classical and modern
languages and it helped to launch Newbury House Publishers that was to articulate key
positions in American ELT through the work of Earl Stevick and others through the 1970s
and 1980s.
2 Regarding the persistent issue of pronoun use in writing about teachers and teaching, Elbaz
notes ‘my solution to the dilemma is to use [pronouns of] both [genders]; female pronouns
will predominate, however, just as women tend to predominate in the field of teaching’
(1983, p. 27).
3 Shulman’s proposal for PCK became immensely popular both in researching teacher
knowledge (for example, in science: Abell, Park Rogers, Hanuscin, Lee, & Gagnon (2009),
Van Driel, Verloop, & de Vos (1998); in mathematics: An, Kulm, & Wu (2004); in English
language arts: Dudley-Marling, Abt-Perkins, Sato, & Selfe (2006); in social studies:
Monte-Sano (2011), Harris & Bain (2010)) and in designing pre-service teacher education
programs and activities (for example, Loughran, Mulhall, & Berry, 2004). It has also been
extended to English language teaching (for example, Liu, 2013) and technology (Mishra &
Koehler, 2006).
10
Knowledge-geographies: a socio-professional view of what is
worth knowing in ELT
The previous chapter looked at how definitions of knowledge and knowing have evolved
within the field of language teaching. The perspective was internal to the field itself, tracing a
definitional arc from knowledge as something that is learned and held to knowing as
something that is enacted. This chapter examines these ideas from the perspective of how that
knowledge is formed and promoted socio-professionally. Using the notion of knowledge-
geographies, the argument outlines three metaphorical maps. The structural map describes
the primary structural features shaping the ELT knowledge-base: the parallel teacher-
preparation pathways offered by national educational systems and so-called alternative
routes. The implementational map describes common features of how ELT teaching
knowledge is organized and delivered, and the human map looks at the various ELT teaching
knowledge communities in professional associations and how these have diversified since the
1970s. Together these maps overlay three perspectives on the socio-professional landscape
of ELT teaching knowledge and how that landscape shapes and reinforces how it is defined.
A knowledge-geography
Defining what teachers know has always been a conceptually elusive, politically fraught
endeavor; writing about it can be even messier. As a metaphorical device for these
discussions, the idea of a knowledge-geography lays out the terrain in terms of what people
take as worth knowing, in this case in English language teaching. This can be mapped
according to what knowledge is valued and the role this knowledge plays in teaching. The
metaphor also suggests that people—the groups or communities that share these views of the
value and role of the knowledge—are centrally important. And it suggests different ways of
organizing the features of each map that highlight certain aspects.
The structural map: a geography of institutions

Providing and certifying teaching knowledge
This map starts with the basic features of the knowledge-geography, its topographical
structure. In language and in other school subjects, this map includes socio-professional
features of providing and certifying teaching knowledge. Socially there are the institutions
that formulate and deliver the knowledge (like universities and teacher training programs),
and professionally there are the organizations that recognize and certify it (such as
professional associations and national ministries). In most core school subjects, these two
structures are fairly tightly coordinated: tertiary institutions like universities do the teacher
preparation while governmental agencies, in some countries working through examination
authorities, handle the certification. There are certainly areas of school education in which
this through-line from preparation to certification is less firmly articulated—the arts (music,
the visual arts) or early education (early childhood teaching) are two examples—but overall
new teachers meet and acquire the knowledge-base of their school subject area in their
preparation and are evaluated for what they know and can do with it to enter into the
classroom.
In English language teaching, this socio-professional structure of providing and certifying
teaching knowledge is an instance of the same things done differently, however. Where most
school subjects have one form of preparation, there have been two broadly acknowledged
pathways to preparation for English language teachers. There are national systems, and there
are alternative routes. National teacher preparation systems operate through tertiary
institutions such as universities and teacher training colleges; alternative routes operate
through language schools often in conjunction with examination boards. Outside of Australia,
the UK, North America, and—sometimes referred to as the ‘BANA countries’ (Holliday,
1994a)—national systems operating through tertiary education, are responsible for most of
the preparation of ELT teachers who will teach in the primary and secondary public schools.
In this way, these systems prepare ELT teachers for public-sector teaching as they do
mathematics or science teachers. ELT is also taught in a range of private institutional settings
—from language schools to businesses to not-for-profit institutions—which has led, since the
1960s, to the development of a flourishing group of alternative routes. The routes operate in
ways that are specific to ELT through syndicated training pathways, which lead to various
types of extramural qualifications. The University of Cambridge teacher preparation scheme
of Certificates and Diplomas of English Language Teaching to Adults’ (CELTA and DELTA),
with various sub-awards, is the best known of these alternative route designs (see Pulverness,
2015), though there are others ranging from similar international qualification systems to
local training certificates.
Defining ‘alternative route’

These alternative routes function as parallel pathways to national systems of teacher
preparation. The term ‘alternative route’, is taken from US teacher education policy. In this
case, it succinctly defines how these teacher preparation pathways operate: they offer
alternatives to nationally established and recognized teacher certification systems and they
use training designs, or ‘routes’, that differ from those embedded in tertiary institutions.
Alternative route programs independently define their own teacher preparation curricula,
establish their own criteria for the training faculty who deliver it, and operate autonomous
assessments based on it, generally with the goal of creating internationally recognized,
portable certification for participants. In contrast, national systems of teacher preparation,
functioning through universities and training institutions, implement the structures of teacher
preparation in place in their countries; they work within national policies and standards for
preparation, curricula and assessments, responding to governmental guidance and directives,
to produce teachers according to national needs and expectations—teachers who are certified
to teach within that particular national educational system.
Borderless expertise
As a key topographical feature of the ELT knowledge-geography, these two pathways into
teaching create a tension in the knowledge base. National systems concentrate on the goals
and needs of their school systems, in other words they are geographically focused on teaching
knowledge. Alternative route designs do the opposite. They focus on a sort of ‘borderless
expertise’, a knowledge base that works across teaching settings, with the goal of producing
teachers who are certified transnationally. In historically English-medium countries, some
post-graduate MA-level training can have a similar focus on borderless expertise. This
contrast between the geographic boundedness in national teacher preparation and the lack of
geographic boundaries in alternative route preparation is a basic feature of the structure of
ELT knowledge-geography. Teachers of most other school subjects do not experience the
same level of internationally portable recognition for their professional knowledge and skills
as do ELT teachers. The geographic boundedness works in favor of knowledge bases that are
locally articulated and recognized.
Borderless expertise, which is a key feature of English language teaching has had
implications for the knowledge base. In terms of employment, the portable certifications
earned in the alternative route pathway are meant to translate into teaching opportunities that
are open and unbounded geographically. This form of preparation has created a class of
English language teacher who can travel the world as what Johnston (1999) called the ‘post-
modern paladins’ (euphemistically comparing them to 10th century crusaders). In contrast,
most credentials that are earned through tertiary education are bounded in terms of
recognition and employment. This preparation inducts teachers into national education
systems, which in turn translates into teaching opportunities that are local. This localness can
be pronounced even within countries. In the United States for example, teacher certification
operates through the fifty individual states so that a new teacher who is qualified in one state
has to apply to transfer credentials in order to be able to take a teaching job in another state.
While there are reciprocity arrangements among many states, this state-level control of
certification persists as bedrock in the American teacher preparation system.
Native-speaking knowledge as borderless expertise

The idea of native-speaking knowledge is closely linked to the idea of borderless expertise.
As argued in Chapter 3, nativeness has been a geopolitical feature of language teaching
knowledge. In terms of the knowledge base, nativeness is conceptually indefinable as a
knowledge category, so various surrogate measures (such as where an individual grew up,
was educated, and so on) are often used. As a feature of the geography, nativeness has
historically mapped fairly neatly on to the different preparation pathways, with ‘native’
English speakers being the main participants in alternative route designs while ‘non-native’
speakers were prepared mainly in national education systems. The major exception to this
observation were countries in which English was or is a national language, and thus native or
first language speakers would become its public-sector teachers. In the last two decades, as
nativeness has become increasingly problematized as a knowledge standard, it has receded
somewhat, though it certainly remains one feature of the ELT knowledge-geography.
Two maps, one territory

These two pathways—national education systems and alternate route preparation—share
certain features, which each has defined differently. These features include the training
provider—which institutions deliver teacher preparation; the goal—what is the central
purpose; and the primary employment sector—where the knowledge will be used in
teaching. Table 10.1 summarizes the differences.
Features Bounded Borderless

Pathway National education system Alternative route
Provider Tertiary institutions Independent institutions (and
some MA programs in so-called
‘BANA’ countries)
Purpose National credentials Portable certification
Primary employer Public-sector education Private-sector institutions
Particular characteristics Locally relevant teaching Standardized teaching
practices practices
Local knowledge Globalized knowledge
Local/national evaluation Transnational assessments
Table 10.1 The structural features of ELT knowledge-geography
National education systems, with their geographically bounded focus, quite rightly
emphasize local relevance and needs. The link between teaching credentials and subsequent
employment depends on that relevance. In alternative route preparation, the emphasis is the
opposite. The central purpose is to credential teachers with a commonly recognized set of
knowledge and classroom skills. This sets up a certain level of standardization in order to
allow teachers to travel globally so that their certifications are portable from one institution
to another. The two pathways, in spite of differences, show the fundamental dynamic of the
knowledge-base: the connection between how teaching knowledge is valued and how it is
used in teaching. This difference points to a second version of the ELT knowledge-geography,
the implementational map.
The implementational map: a geography of practices

A second view of ELT knowledge-geography concentrates on how the knowledge base gets
implemented. As with the first map, there is a great deal that could be said and it would take a
much fuller treatment to do it full justice. This analysis, however, focuses on three features:
how the basic design for the knowledge base works in teacher preparation, the assumptions
that anchor the design, and how the design translates into teaching knowledge over the span of
a teacher’s career.
‘Learn-then-apply’: the common design of teacher preparation

There is a common design for preparing teachers across subject areas and grade levels. It
functions almost like a computer operating system to drive how most preparation, operating
within what Wallace (1991) called the ‘applied science’ model, is organized and the learning
is sequenced. The design, summarized as ‘learn-then-apply’, begins by establishing the
knowledge and the value in having it, and then moves to its role and how to use it. The aim of
this design, as it is used across various school subjects, is to create teaching knowledge by
transforming disciplinary knowledge into a form that is usable in the classroom. In most
national education pathways for example, teacher candidates are expected to develop their
subject-matter knowledge in their first years of university study, and to then refine it as they
apply it in practice teaching and school settings in the later years.
The learn-then-apply design in these teacher education sequences moves candidates from
being students of the content to becoming teachers. Language, specifically English, as a
subject area is treated no differently in most national teacher preparation schemes. Initial
university study usually focuses on candidates’ English language proficiency (sometimes
including knowledge of literature) and methodology, which knowledge is applied in the
teaching placements in the later years. Alterative route pathways operate somewhat
differently, although they adhere to the same basic operating system. In certificate programs
for example, the cycles of learn-then-apply are much shorter—often a matter of days.
Trainees learn through input sessions and then apply what they learn in situations that
escalate in social and pedagogical complexity from teaching peers to teaching real students,
as discussed in Chapter 5. In advanced diploma programs, the connection is often reflective
as trainees apply the new input they are learning to rethink what they have usually done in
teaching.
A major difference between the two pathways lies in how they treat subject-matter
knowledge. In national education preparation, although a baseline proficiency is assumed, a
candidate’s command of English often needs to be developed, which happens in the first years
of teacher preparation. In alternative route preparation on the other hand, English fluency is
stated as an entry criterion. In the mid 1980s for example, syllabus documents for the Royal
Society of the Arts/Cambridge Certification of Teaching English as Foreign Language
(CTEFLA), the predecessor of the CELTA, stipulated that candidates ‘should have a standard
of English, both written and spoken, equivalent to that of an educated native speaker for
whom English is a first language.’ This requirement was subsequently recast with the launch
of the CELTA in the 1990s as ‘an awareness and a competence in both written and spoken
English, which will enable them to undertake the course …’ (cited in Johnson & Poulter,
2015, p. 183–184). While the difference might seem to be simply a functional refinement, it is
more profound. The previous definition referred to the geo-political standard of ‘educated
native speaker’, while the current one defines English competency internally, with reference
to the course itself. This shift stems from how disciplinary knowledge is viewed as the
foundation of teaching knowledge.
Anchoring assumptions: the value and role of disciplinary knowledge

The relationship between disciplinary knowledge and teaching knowledge is a deeply
embedded feature of the ELT knowledge-geography, as argued in Chapter 4. This is due to a
complex of factors from the geo-political to the institutional. The expansion of English
teaching since the 1950s has depended in part on teacher education, as Trim (British
Association for Applied Linguistics, 1997) observes:
… a number of universities [in Britain] had set up departments of applied linguistics, largely
to provide the professionalisation of the teaching of English as a foreign language which the
British Council considered to be necessary in the national interest, especially at a time when
the common use of English was seen to be an important factor in the survival of the
Commonwealth as an effective political and economic partnership (n. p).
(British Association for Applied Linguistics, 1997)
The drive to promote English for political and economic reasons has continued, as others
have written (for example, Braine, 2010; Medgyes, 1992; Phillipson, 1992; Reves &
Medgyes, 1994); what is interesting here is how disciplinary knowledge worked as part of
the promotion.
The geo-political value of applied linguistics, like other disciplines, has likewise been
well suited to—and even promoted by—the institutional structures of universities as the
primary providers in the national teacher preparation pathway. University faculty members
generate, teach and publish the knowledge, and form the academic communities that recognize
and value it. Thus it is not surprising in English language teaching to find academic
departments, and the disciplinary perspectives they represent, vying to define what is—or
should be—central for teaching knowledge. As proponents of disciplinary, knowledge in ELT,
Grabe, Stoller, and Tardy (2000) make the case succinctly:
Language teaching … is a complex endeavor. It is our strong feeling that exposure to and an
understanding of knowledge from a range of disciplines [linguistics, anthropology,
psychology, and educationNOTE 1] provides teachers with tools to address those complexities
effectively and to meet the multifaceted needs of their students.
(Grabe et al., 2000, p. 193)
Academic disciplines create and validate the knowledge; delivering that knowledge is, Grabe
et al. argue, the job of teacher education:
Teacher educators must strive to help new language professionals understand the value of this
knowledge and the critical role it will play in making sound pedagogical decisions, planning
classes, developing materials, delivering instruction, evaluating student progress, and
conducting meaningful action-research projects to improve one’s teaching.
(Grabe et al., 2000, p. 193)
Grabe et al. represent a common position on ELT teaching knowledge in pre-service teacher
preparation and higher education. It is a view that emphasizes the value of disciplinary
knowledge in supporting the day-to-day work of language teachers in planning, teaching, and
assessing students. (Their argument also includes improvement, suggested here through action
research ‘to improve one’s teaching’.) Teacher education needs to make the case, they say
above, for ‘the value … and the critical role [disciplinary knowledge] will play in making
sound pedagogical decisions.’
The mechanism of this support is the learn-then-apply design, which continues to
predominate in teacher preparation even though disciplinary knowledge has become less
central in teaching knowledge over the last 50 years. In moving from its disciplinary roots in
linguistics and psychology, to methodology, to knowledge-for-teaching, ELT teaching
knowledge morphed from something that is learned and then used, to a process of knowing,
which is embedded in the specifics of teaching. These conceptual changes seem to have had
little impact on the learn-then-apply framework, which has endured as the basic operating
principle underlying both national and alternative route preparation designs. They have had
little influence on how teaching knowledge is treated throughout a teacher’s career, which is
the final feature we consider of the implementational map.
Learning over a teaching career: front loading and updating

Sociologist Daniel Lortie (1975) observed that teaching is often seen as ‘a one-step career’,
meaning that the job the teacher does on the day she is hired seems—publicly at least—to be
the same as the job she does on the day she retires. His observation speaks to the problematic
notion of how teaching knowledge develops throughout a career. The teachers are born vs.
made debates, reviewed in Chapter 3, are part of this puzzle of development, as are
discussions of reflection and the role of experience in learning to teach, in Chapter 11. From
the standpoint of teaching knowledge, however, the image of the one-step career has been
reinforced by teacher preparation pathways that emphasize front-loading a teaching career’s
worth of professional knowledge.
Front-loading teaching knowledge

The ‘learn then apply’ design of teacher education affected the design of initial teacher
preparation, with the expectation that most of the knowledge and skills needed for a career of
classroom teaching can be front loaded. The de facto approach of most national credentialing
policies assumes that pre-service preparation will equip new teachers at the start of their
careers with the foundational knowledge to then continue to learn on the job, usually
independently, though sometimes with sporadic support (as, for example, with mentoring
mentioned in Chapter 3). In many national systems, the credentialing process involves stages,
so the new teachers move from probationary to fully licensed (sometimes called ‘tenured’)
status. However, this progression is usually more a function of time in the teaching position
than a reflection of mastering additional teaching knowledge. And although teachers are
usually expected (and in most national systems often required) to continue their professional
learning through periodic teacher development activities, the fact that this process is referred
to as ‘updating’ simply reinforces the assumption that the core knowledge comes in initial
preparation at the start of teaching. Left unaccounted for in this front loading approach is how
experience doing the job in the classroom, contributes to and refines formal teaching
knowledge.
Alternative route pathways have taken a somewhat different approach to front loading
teaching knowledge. The largest of these designs generally outline a progression from pre-
service preparation (recognized by initial certificates) to in-service development (certified
by diploma-level work) (Borg & Albery, 2015; Cambridge Teacher Development Scheme,
2015). This progression in learning to teach challenges the assumptions, found in university
preparation, that teaching knowledge is exclusively disciplinary. The general sequencing in
major alternative route designs from immediately applicable (called ‘practical’) knowledge
and skills in certificate training, to more disciplinarily based knowledge (called
‘theoretical’) in diploma courses extends the one-step career rather than front-loading it. With
their emphasis on classroom-oriented preparation (sometimes called in their promotions
‘what you need to teach on Monday morning’) alternative route designs have raised a more
fundamental question of what language teachers need to know at the start of their teaching. Far
from trivializing teaching knowledge, the focus on its immediate, potential usefulness has
forced a different way of conceiving what would be valuable for new teachers to know. This
‘just-in-time’ approach (to borrow the name from supply chain management) to preparation is
seen as a viable alternative to front-loading. Just-in-time preparation has become a key part
of many alternative route programs in other subject areas (for example, Teach for America in
the United States) as well as for many volunteer teaching initiatives like those discussed in
Chapter 3 (see also Freeman, Coolican, & Graves, 2011).
The human map: a geography of participation

A knowledge base is more than an abstraction; it works through people. Those who embrace
the particular knowledge and its language of practice become its community; they use its
social facts to explain their practices. Doctors use medical language in the course of their
work; lawyers use legal cant as they practice law, and so on. In ELT, although they both
prepare teachers, the two pathways have distinct professional communities. In the alternative
route pathway, the University of Cambridge scheme of CELTA and DELTA trainers and
assessors are an example of a community, while university professors are an example of the
community in the national education pathway. These are the teacher educators and trainers
who literally make the pathway. There are also communities of people who recognize each
pathway and value its particular outcome. Language school administrators who advertise for
and hire teachers with alternative-route certifications are an example in the world of
alternative routes; school principals and district administrators who select candidates
prepared for public-sector teaching positions are an example in national systems.
These groups of trainers and administrators form two loosely defined overlapping
communities—of practice (those who do the work) and of explanation (those who recognize
and value it). The groups have distinct functions although their memberships will overlap: the
first (the trainers) promulgates the teaching knowledge while the second group
(administrators) accepts it and makes it worth having. The third map of the ELT knowledge-
geography focuses on this dynamic of creating and recognizing teaching knowledge. It does so
by tracing how people use ideas as communities of explanation in ELT through the
development of two of the major professional associations in English language teaching,
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and the International
Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). As they formally
recognize particular roles and categories of work, the associations provide venues and access
to peers in those roles, all of which helps to express the knowledge base. In this way, changes
in organizational structures of these associations can offer a window into the evolution of the
knowledge base.
The dynamics of diversification and pluralization

Two dynamics have driven this expression of what counts as ELT teaching knowledge. The
first, the diversification in teaching roles, distinguished between kinds of teaching (often by
age of student or type of context); it also incorporated work beyond immediate classroom
teaching into ELT. This diversification in roles brought about the second dynamic, a
pluralization of the knowledge that would make up the base. These terms are two sides of the
same coin, in a sense. People in different roles needed to know different things.
Diversification is a useful way to look at how the changes in the demand for and delivery of
ELT—who was being taught, where, and to what end—reshaped what counted in the
knowledge base. Pluralization refers to the ways in which the unitary view of language
teaching knowledge was both broadened and specialized with these different roles in diverse
work environments. Diversification of uses of teaching knowledge drove pluralization in how
that knowledge was defined and articulated. This third map examines what has been
expressed as knowledge professionally in the structure of these associations and how ELT
teaching knowledge developed and diversified with these specialized roles and applications.
Two professional associations

The two major professional associations in English language teaching, Teachers of English to
Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and the International Association of Teachers of
English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL), were started perhaps not coincidentally in the same
year. Both associations were founded in 1966, TESOL by James Alatis and IATEFL by
William Lee; each experienced rapid expansion and membership growth throughout the 1970s
and 1980s. This growth took place both in the associations directly and through developing
connections with affiliated teachers’ organizations that were often geographically local
versions of each professional association.
The dynamic of diversification

TESOL’s growth
Both organizations grew rapidly, although not in the same way. IATEFL has had a singular
focus on teaching English in international contexts, while TESOL’s organizational structure
has been geographically ambiguous. From the start, TESOL membership has combined US-
based associations, focused primarily on English as a second or additional language (usually
for schooling), and international affiliates, whose focus is similar to IATEFL’s. (In fact some
organizations affiliate with both associations.) Membership and organizational affiliations
started to grow almost immediately. In the case of TESOL, in 1970 there were seven
affiliates, all of which were in the United States; by 1980, the number had grown to 49
affiliates, of which 35 (or 71 percent) were US-based. The growth in affiliates continued
throughout the next two decades, with the majority of expansion happening in international
affiliates, meaning those outside the United States. By 2010, more than half of the 98 TESOL
affiliates were outside the United States. This interplay of US-based and international
affiliates, represented in Figure 10.1 below, highlights the geographically ambiguous structure
of TESOL as an association.
Figure 10.1 Growth in TESOL by US and international affiliated associations (1970–2015)
IATEFL’s growth
The patterns of geographical expansion in IATEFL were completely different. Founded as an
association focused on English as a foreign language, IATEFL-affiliated organizations were
exclusively outside of Britain. Between 1990 and 1994, IATEFL had three associated
organizations; from 1995 to 1999, 42 organizations became affiliated. As of 2004, 13 more
organizations had joined as associates. Between 2010 and 2015, 55 additional organizations
became affiliated, including seven in 2015 alone. In gross, both associations experienced
dramatic growth in their geographical footprints, particularly during the 1990s and 2000s.
IATEFL’s expansion has continued at a striking rate in the first half of this decade. Figure 10.2
shows the number of affiliates that joined each association in each decade. (The data is based
on the year the organization affiliated with TESOL or IATEFL, not when it was founded).
These numbers, although displayed side-by-side, should not be read comparatively, since they
do not show total numbers of affiliated members. The chart shows an expansion across both
associations, which reflects the diversification of geo-professional opportunities to access
and participate in the ELT knowledge base through events and conferences, publications, and
other forms of localized dissemination.
Figure 10.2 The number of teachers’ associations that have affiliated with TESOL or IATEFL by
decade in which they affiliated (1970–2015)
Diversification and the broader landscape

As with many analyses suggested here, the ways in which the expansion of the affiliates of
these two associations contributed to the dissemination of the ELT knowledge base is a
complex story, shaped by internal organizational and external geo-political forces. The latter
have centered broadly on the changing role of English in the world, as it has shifted from a
language of political and economic colonization to a lingua franca (for example, Graddol,
1997, 2006; Jenkins, 2009). In contrast to other school subjects, English has been promoted
and marketed through everything from globalizing high education, to publishing, to the public
diplomacy pursued by the American and British governments. These efforts have contributed
to reshaping not only the definitions of English as classroom content, but perhaps more
profoundly to the professional identities of those who teach it. The TESOL and IATEFL
affiliates are part of a fabric that is disseminating these changing ideas. As they diversify
local access to ideas, they also create socio-professional channels for new thinking to flow
from the classroom to the wider global community. For example, in offering professional
development through meetings and conferences, this fabric of TESOL and IATEFL-affiliated
associations provides teachers with locally based learning opportunities, thus they position
the organizations as loci for articulating professional knowledge within local contexts. These
affiliated organizations are, in this sense, the front line of the glo-cal dynamic that shapes the
ELT knowledge-base; it is an on-going tension and interaction between global and local,
between borderless and bounded knowledge.
The dynamic of pluralization
This process of knowledge articulation has been reflected in the structures of these
associations themselves. From the outset, the associations supported specialized foci (known
as Interest Sections in TESOL and Special Interest Groups—SIGs in IATEFL), which
allowed for the pluralization of the knowledge-base. The creation of these Interest Sections
and SIGs gives a picture of how teaching knowledge became differentiated: how different
types of learners were identified, the content was detailed, pedagogical strategies became
accepted, and new professional roles were spun off as part of ELT. These developments
created opportunities for conversation among like-minded groups of people; the
developments fed the articulation of new social facts and communities of explanation to use
them.
Common patterns
Looking across the two associations, a few patterns stand out. Generally speaking, there is a
large degree of overlap in the foci of these interests. Of the 21 current TESOL Interest
Sections and 15 IATEFL SIGs, 12 of them have foci that overlap in whole or in part. There
are some logical differences—for example, TESOL has an English-as-a-Foreign-Language
Interest Section, which is its largest, while IATEFL does not, given that it is the mission of the
entire organization. Other knowledge areas have been reclassified (and thus renamed),
showing how terms in the knowledge base are refashioned over time. This is particularly the
case in technology. In both associations, computers were an early focus, first in IATEFL with
the Computer SIG which started in 1982, and the Interest Section on Computer-assisted
Language Learning in TESOL, begun two years later. The IATEFL Computer SIG was
renamed 20 years after its founding as Learning Technologies, reflecting the updated term.
Similarly, the interest groups about video were started in the mid-1980s, and later were
renamed. In TESOL, the Video Interest Section became Video and Digital Media in 1989; in
IATEFL the Video SIG was combined with Media (which had started in 1996) and with
Literature and Cultural Studies (started in 1989) to become the Literature, Cultural and Media
Studies SIG in 2003. Table 10.2 below, which puts the initiation of groups in the two
associations on a common timeline, shows the unfolding of the knowledge-base.
TESOL Interest Date IATEFL Special

Section Interest Group
Adult Education 1974
Applied Linguistics 1974
Bilingual Education 1974
Intensive English 1974
Programs
English as a Foreign 1974
Language
Elementary Education 1977
Higher Education 1977
Secondary Schools 1977
1982 Computers (renamed
Learning Technologies,
2002)
Refugee Concerns 1983
Teacher Education 1983
Computer-Assisted 1984
Language Learning
Program Administration 1984
1985 Teacher Development
1985 Video (combined with
Media and Literature
and Cultural Studies
into Literature, Cultural
and Media Studies,
2003)
1986 Learner Independence
(renamed Learner
Autonomy, 2006)
Materials Writers 1986 1986 Testing, Evaluation and
Assessment
1986 Pronunciation
1987 Young Learners
(renamed Young
Learner Teaching,
2009)
1988 Business English
1988 English Language
Teachers Management
(renamed Leadership
and Management,
2010)
1988 Teacher Training and
Education
1989 Literature and Cultural
Studies (combined with
Video and Media into
Literature, Cultural and
Media Studies, 2003)
Video (renamed Video 1989
and Digital Media)
1991 Research
English for Specific 1992

Purposes
International Teaching 1993
Assistants
1994 English for Specific
Purposes
1995 Global Issues
1996 Media (combined with
Video and Literature
and Cultural Studies
into Literature, Cultural
and Media Studies,
2003)
Intercultural 1996
Communication
Speech Pronunciation 1996
and Listening
2001 English for Speakers of
other Languages
Second Language 2005
Writing
Nonnative Speakers of 2008
English in TESOL
Social Responsibility 2009
2013 Materials Writing
Table 10.2 The pluralization of interests in TESOL and IATEFL (by decade from 1974–2013)
Unfolding pluralization
From the standpoint of knowledge dissemination, the areas around which professional work
and interests have coalesced reflect concretely the pedagogical concerns and identifications
of teachers and others as association members. This unfolding pluralization shows which
areas have been emphasized and the order in which those interests have been collectively
recognized. These topics of interest have reflected a level of professional momentum of sub-
groups within the ELT world that could position themselves as a specialized community of
explanation, usually with a particular language of practice to differentiate them from the
general ELT public. During the 1970s, eight Interest Sections were organized in TESOL of
which only one—Applied Linguistics—directly concerned the content of language teaching.
Interestingly, IATEFL has not had a similar SIG, perhaps because the British Association for
Applied Linguistics had been started with this focus in 1967. (The US counterpart, the
American Association for Applied Linguistics was begun a decade later in 1977.) The other
seven addressed teaching particular types of language learners, who were distinguished by
grade-level or age (for example, elementary, secondary, or adult education) or by setting (for
example, intensive English programs, bilingual education, or English as a Foreign Language,
EFL). The concerns of these initial groups set out the core of the ELT knowledge base as
pedagogy under particular teaching circumstances. Thus, for example, teaching students who
were English language learners in English-medium elementary classrooms (elementary
education) was differentiated from teaching students in intensive English programs housed at
English-medium, usually American, universities (Intensive English programs).
During the 1980s, expressions of teaching knowledge extended to pedagogy and to
professional roles in both associations. New pedagogical knowledge focused on the use of
technologies, computers, and video mentioned above, and also on aspects of learning (for
example, IATEFL’s Learner Independence SIG, 1986). In IATEFL, interests in content
extended beyond applied linguistics to include Literature and Cultural Studies and Business
English, though the latter SIG focused on the role of ELT teachers working in corporate
settings as well. IATEFL’s Pronunciation SIG was also started during this period (1986), but
sustained attention to pedagogy and particular teaching skills happened later in TESOL, with
the creation of the Speech Pronunciation and Listening (1996) and Second Language Writing
(2005) Interest Sections.
One major difference in how the knowledge base has unfolded in the two associations has
had to do with the focus on learners and settings. As mentioned above, the first decade in
TESOL was largely taken up with distinguishing among different groups of English learners.
In IATEFL, by way of contrast, only three SIGs have been created with foci on specific types
or ages of learners: Young Learners (1983), Business English (1986), and English for
Speakers of Other Languages (2001); otherwise the default seems to be teaching adults
general English. There could be many reasons for this difference but the attention to
borderless expertise seems more evident in the organizational structure of interests in
IATEFL, while TESOL’s interest structure has continued to reflect and to wrestle with this
geographical hybridity of focus. Teacher credentialing functions at the state level in the United
States and this has created a patchwork of definitions and expectations particularly in ESOL.
Because of this, TESOL has taken on a sociopolitical role as an advocate of the ELT
knowledgebase within the US national educational system.
Pluralizing knowledge by role

As the two associations became established socio-professional communities, differentiating
educational roles became a major vehicle for creating distinctions and specializations in the
knowledge base. During the 1980s, five professional roles became areas of specialized
interest. Three of these were in one association or the other: the Testing, Evaluation, and
Assessment (1986) and the Business English (1988) SIGs, mentioned earlier, in IATEFL, and
Materials Writers Interest Section (1986) in TESOL. Two groups were similar in both
associations, however: Program Administration/ELT Management and Teacher Education.
These roles, which likely reflected the expanding demands of ELT globally, were not neatly
defined; each involved defining specialized practices (for example, in testing and evaluation
or materials writing) as well as roles that were identifiable socio-professionally. Like any
specialization, establishing these as separate interests helped to articulate the areas of
knowledge that each group used in their work, which also created a tension. By distinguishing
these types of work from classroom teaching, the development of specialized knowledge
helped to concentrate teaching knowledge in the work of teaching itself. A teacher would not
simply become a test designer, program administrator, or a materials writer solely on the
basis of teaching knowledge; there was more to learn and to know in order to play these roles
and do this specialized work effectively in the eyes of the larger ELT community.
Teacher education
In many ways, the most intriguing new groups to emerge in the differentiation of general ELT
knowledge of the 1980s were those focused on teacher education (TESOL’s Teacher
Education Interest Section in 1982, followed by IATEFL’s Teacher Development SIG in
1985, and Teacher Training and Education SIG in 1988). Unlike the other groups
concentrating on learners in specific settings, these interests were concerned with a
completely different constituency, with language teachers, and only indirectly with their
students. Like program administrators, testers, or materials writers, language teacher
educators had a distinctive professional brief in the ecosystem of language teaching. As the
focus of language teaching knowledge shifted from applying disciplinary knowledge, concern
for specialized training increased with it, and teacher education took on a distinct role. The
specialized interest of the teacher education community was also unique in another regard: it
created an overlay on the existing knowledge base, a meta-discourse about how people
learned and used knowledge in teaching. This evolution was taking place as language
teachers’ thinking was becoming understood as a process of synthesizing ideas and combining
pedagogies (thinking synthetically as discussed in Chapter 7) and teaching knowledge was
being defined in the person of the teacher and the classroom (as knowledge in-person, in-
place, discussed in Chapter 9). The two associations provided venues and communities to
propose, argue, and affirm these emerging ideas.
Revisiting diversification and pluralization

The human map presents how the ELT knowledge base was articulated; it does so through
people and their interests. The diversification of people is represented in the expanding
network of language teaching organizations that affiliated with the two major professional
associations, TESOL and IATEFL. This geographical diversification distinguished among
kinds of ELT work, such as teaching by age of student or type of context as well as functions,
such as materials writing, administration and testing, that lay beyond immediate classroom
teaching. This diversification brought with it a pluralization of the knowledge that would
make up the base of ELT. The development of the specialized interest groups within the
professional associations which, combined with the expansion of affiliated local
organizations and branches, demonstrates how language teaching knowledge was evolving.
Table 10.3, summarizes the specialized interests in the knowledge base in five strands:
learners and settings; teaching content; pedagogy; professional role; and teachers.
TESOL Interest Section IATEFL Special Interest Comments

Group
Learners and Settings
Adult Education (1974) English for Speakers of Other Parallel also to TESOL’s Refugee
Languages (2001) Concerns
Bilingual Education —
Intensive English Programs —
English as a Foreign Language —
Elementary Education (1977) Young Learners (1987) Renamed Young Learner
Teaching, (2009)
Higher Education —
Secondary Schools —
Refugee Concerns (1983) English for Speakers of Other Parallel also to TESOL’s Adult
Languages (2001) Education
— Learner Independence (1986) Renamed Learner Autonomy
(2006)
Teaching Content
Applied Linguistics (1974) —
— Literature and Cultural Studies Combined into Literature,
(1989) Cultural and Media Studies
(2003)
English for Specific Purposes English for Specific Purposes
(1992) (1994)
Intercultural Communication Global Issues (1995) Parallel also to TESOL’s Social
(1996) Responsibility
Pedagogy
Computer-Assisted Language Computers (1982) Renamed Learning Technologies
Learning (1984) (2002)
Video (renamed Video and Video (1985) Combined Literature, Cultural
Digital Media) (1989) and Media Studies (2003)
Media (1996)
Speech Pronunciation and Pronunciation (1986)
Listening (1996)
Second Language Writing —
(2005)
Social Responsibility (2009) Global Issues (1995) Parallel also to TESOL’s
Intercultural Communication
Professional Role
Program Administration (1984) English Language Teachers Renamed Leadership and
Management (1988) Management (2010)
Materials Writers (1986) Materials Writing (2013)
— Business English (1988)
— Testing Evaluation and

Assessment (1986)
Research (1991)
Teachers
International Teaching —
Assistants (1983)
Teacher Education (1983) Teacher Development (1985)
Teacher Training and Education
(1988)
Nonnative Speakers of English —
in TESOL (2008)
Table 10.3 Specialized interests: Strands in the ELT knowledge base
Using these categories, a synopsis of this information shows learners and setting as the
major focus (nine groups across the two associations, of which three align. The categories of
content, pedagogy, and professional role, with four, five, and five groups each respectively,
show a higher degree of alignment. This would make sense given that the knowledge base has
generally been defined by what (content) and how (pedagogy and role), as argued in Chapter
9. The last category, teachers, is in some ways the most intriguing. It highlights two aspects of
the ELT knowledge base: one (educating teachers) links to general education and other forms
of teaching; the other (non-native teachers/international teaching assistants) showcases
teachers’ geo-political identities—a concern unique to language teaching.
A caveat
This analysis does not attempt to be definitive in any sense. There are certainly other ways
these interests could be parsed and subdivided; some might cluster groups under different
names, or might place specific groups in different categories. The point here is to show the
topography of this human map, how interests have coalesced around certain foci, which has
created features of the ELT knowledge base. Like any features of a landscape, these
distinctions in the ELT knowledge base are now accepted and even taken for granted. But it is
worth remembering it was not always this way. In reaching into language teaching contexts
that were increasingly diverse (in terms of ages, cultures, politics, and social issues), the
singular one-size-fits-all version of teaching knowledge anchored in behaviorism could not
accommodate the work to be done. This expanding demand led to new and specialized
knowledge, to address learners’ needs and expectations, to incorporate new pedagogical
tools and technologies, and to specify roles teachers were assuming beyond the classroom, all
of which redefined how the work of teaching itself was done.
The geography-map metaphor, which organizes this chapter, is a somewhat incongruous one.
Human geographer Diarmid Finnegan (2013) points out that the phrase, ‘geography of
knowledge’, which is the basis of the chapter’s title, ‘is, at first glance, an unexpected
combination of terms. ‘Geography’ suggests descriptions of the Earth. ‘Knowledge’, on the
other hand, implies an immaterial realm of ideas and human cognition’ (n. p.). This
combination of two seemingly incompatible terms can serve an important function in
reminding us of the interplay of people and ideas in creating and sustaining definitions of
what is worth knowing. Tracing the socio-professional face of knowledge is complicated
particularly in English language teaching, given the two pathways through which people
prepare to teach. The metaphor of knowledge-geographies is meant to help tease apart some
of the complexity. Each of the three maps highlights particular features of the overall ELT
knowledge landscape. The basic structure of dual pathways divides teacher preparation
between national education systems, focused on geographically bounded needs and outcomes,
and alternative routes, which credential a borderless version of teaching expertise. The map
of implementation shows features common to both pathways that shape how ELT teaching
knowledge is presented to new teachers. The human map lays out the socio-professional
dynamics of the knowledge base through the development of TESOL and IATEFL as the
leading ELT teachers’ associations.
Overlaying the perspectives of these three maps shows that things are not neat, that one
single map cannot really match the territory, and it highlights some of the dynamics which
make the knowledge base of ELT unique. As the geographer Finnegan (2013) says of this
process, ‘Locating knowledge or tracing its migrations unsettles these common perceptions
and points to the material and social nature of knowing’ (n. p.).
Note
1 While Grabe et al. (2000) include education as a discipline, others—particularly in the
field of education itself (for example, Shulman, 1996) have argued otherwise. (See also
Chapter 4.)
11
Reflecting: thinking and knowing in teaching situations
When we go about the spontaneous, intuitive performance of the actions of everyday life,
we show ourselves to be knowledgeable in a special way. Often we cannot say what it is we
know. We try to describe it, we find ourselves at a loss, or we produce descriptions that are
obviously inappropriate.
(Schon, 1983, p. 49)
Reflecting, a mental activity that teachers do as they think in teaching situations, is examined
here from two dimensions. The chapter looks at how reflection has been conceptualized by
Schon (1983, 1987) in the key ideas of ‘situations of practice’ and ‘action-present’ and how
second language teacher education practices have implemented these ideas. In using these
concepts, teacher education has translated concepts of reflecting into a professional notion of
reflection-as-repair that can be managed in teacher education. The idea of reflecting has been
turned into a ‘Technical Rational solution’ for the problem of thinking and knowing in
teaching situations. In narrowing the concept to reflection-as-repair, much is lost that can help
to better understand how reflecting, thinking, and knowing interrelate in teaching.
Reflecting, thinking, and knowing

An immediate question that comes to mind is how reflecting is related to thinking (discussed
in Chapter 7 and Chapter 8) and knowing (discussed in Chapter 9 and Chapter 10). The short
answer is that these are three ways of referring to the mental work teachers do, each
highlighting particular aspects. A slightly more nuanced response would be that reflecting
combines knowing stuff with using it to think with in particular situations; this is the line of
argument pursued here. Further, this combining creates opportunities to intervene in and to
operationalize aspects of thinking and knowing, which is what teacher education activities try
to do. Reflecting can be seen as offering a way into the less accessible aspects of the
teacher’s mental work. This access depends, however, on how reflecting is conceptualized.
Clearly defined concept or catch-all?

Of the various ideas that have taken hold in educational policy and in second language teacher
education, reflection is probably the most widespread but the least well understood. Rhetoric
that calls for teacher to ‘engage in reflective practice’, to ‘reflect on what they do’ has now
become fundamental in both pre-service preparation and in-service professional development
across educational systems at the policy levels of national teaching standards (for example, in
Chile and in Vietnam) and in the statements of professional associations, for example, TESOL
(Gottlieb, Katz, & Ernst-Slavit, 2009). Reflection is also central in program design and in
forms of teacher assessment, for example, in portfolio assessment (Fernsten & Fernsten,
2005). Likewise, reflection has been articulated in the ELT literature from the early work of
Wallace (1991) and Richards and Lockhart (1994), to the work of Farrell (2004, 2007, 2013)
and others. But the prevalence of the term raises some basic questions about what it means. Is
‘reflection’ a clearly defined concept or has it become a catch-all? And how does it connect
thinking and knowing in teaching?
(Re)conceptualizing reflection: situations of practice and action-

present
Starting from Dewey and Schon
Discussions of reflection generally describe its broad outlines as a process of thinking that is
triggered in a particular space and time. Thus it is not accidental that the concept was
introduced and took hold in second language teacher education during the 1990s, when the
third generation of conceptualizing thinking (Chapter 7) and knowing (Chapter 9) were
defining the mental work of teaching in situated terms as thinking heuristically and knowing
in-person in-place. In the preface to their book, Reflective Teaching in Second Language
Classrooms, published in 1994, Richards and Lockhart argued that ‘experience alone is
insufficient as the basis for [teacher] development’ and that ‘critical reflection can trigger a
deeper understanding of teaching’ (p. 4). Thus, to paraphrase Schon, on whose work the
notion of reflection in education largely rests, reflection became the term for how teachers as
professionals think in action.
Dewey and ‘habitual vs. intelligent action’
Conceptualizing reflection in teaching is usually traced to the work of John Dewey. In How
We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process,
Dewey (1933) drew a distinction between what he called ‘habitual’ and ‘intelligent’ action.
The former is the result of habit, of experience that automated a response to a situation. The
latter comes from considering the situation as a way into acting on it. An everyday example of
the distinction for me is how students decide where to sit when they come into class. If it is a
regular class that is on-going, they will often sit where they usually do—next to a friend, at a
seat they like because of where it is (the view, proximity to the door, etc.). This is habitual
action. If the usual seat is not available (it is already taken, the friend is absent, or perhaps if
the student wants something different or needs to leave early, so wants to be near the door),
he chooses a different place to sit. This action is ‘intelligent’ in Dewey’s meaning of the word
because the student engages his intellect as he considers factors in the situation to make his
decision. In this process of acting intelligently, his habitual response is problematized—he
reflects on it—as he thinks about both the factors and the decision.
Applying this distinction to situations in teaching, Dewey defined its locus: ‘The teacher
must have his [sic] mind free to observe the mental responses and movement of the student …
The problem of the pupils is found in the subject matter; the problem of the teacher is what the
minds of the pupils are doing with the subject matter’ (1933, p. 275). When teachers respond
out of habit, they are unlikely to see ‘what the minds of the pupils are doing with the subject
matter’. When teachers think about what students are doing—engaging their intellect—they
shift attention from the subject matter to the minds of the student. This process, which is
reflecting according to Dewey, may result in a different response or it might affirm the usual
action. Thus reflecting results in thinking, but not necessarily acting, differently.
Schon and Technical Rationality

Schon (1983) makes a similar distinction. He calls ‘habitual action’ a ‘Technical Rational’
response, which he argues bases ‘professional activity … i n instrumental problem solving
made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique’ (p. 21). This thinking
differs from professional thinking, or ‘intelligent action’ in Dewey’s terms, that happens in
‘problematic situations characterized by uncertainty, disorder, and indeterminacy’ (1983, p.
15–16). Schon attributes his language here directly to Dewey (endnote 37, p. 357). He calls
these ‘situations of practice’. They are ‘messes’, Schon says quoting Russell Ackoff, whom
he identifies as ‘one of the founders of operations research: Managers do not solve problems:
they manage messes’ (p. 16). Each situation of practice is distinct, which means it is not
amenable to general principles, and therefore to a Technical Rational approach of habitually
used solutions and generalizations.
Situations of practice—perceiving what is messy

Schon’s definition makes a subtle but fundamental point. The situation of practice is,
according to him, a function of a way of seeing what is happening; it is not in the situation per
se. So for instance, one teacher may see a student who is confused and respond to the
confusion by re-explaining the point; but another teacher, who may know the student’s
background with the topic, may ask a question to pinpoint the difficulty. Neither way of acting
is ‘good’ or ‘bad’; the difference lies in how each acts in the situation—the first teacher uses
the familiar response of further explanation, while second responds heuristically to engage
with the situation. Schon is making a phenomenological argument here that the uniqueness is
not in the situation itself, but in how the individual approaches, thinks about, and ‘frames’ it,
‘professional practice has at least as much to do with finding the problem as with solving the
problem found.’ Locating what is puzzling or problematic in a situation of practice and
engaging with it is what Schon calls ‘problem setting’, which to him is a ‘recognized
professional activity’ (1983, p. 18).
The point about perceiving situations as needing intelligent action (instead of a habitual,
Technical Rational, response) is deceptive, however. The fact that perception can operate in
any situation does not mean that the goal is to act intelligently in every circumstance. To do so
would be physically and mentally impossible, both Dewey and Schon argue, so people
choose which situations to examine reflectively. But choosing introduces a second issue. As a
phenomenological orientation, one person cannot perceive the situation on behalf of another.
This means that problem setting depends on the individual’s awareness in the situation, to
which many things can contribute (energy, interest, self-confidence, and so on). Together these
points raise the difficulty of implementing reflection in teacher education. To give two
examples: while they can identify needed actions in a classroom situation, trainers cannot see
them on behalf of the trainee. Or in an in-service setting, a supervisor may choose aspects of
a lesson to focus on in a post-observation meeting and the teacher may accept these aspects
because of the power relationship. However, the teacher may not actually perceive the
aspects as problematic him/herself.
Problem setting
Problem setting is using professional knowledge in practice, as Schon describes it, ‘In order
to convert a problematic situation to a problem, a practitioner must do a certain kind of work.
He [sic] must make sense of an uncertain situation that initially makes no sense.’ He outlines
the steps in the process: ‘When we set the problem, we select what we will treat as the
“things” of the situation, we set the boundaries of our attention to it, and we impose upon it a
coherence which allows us to say what is wrong and in what directions the situation needs to
be changed’ (Schon, 1983, p. 40; italics added).
Schon argues that professionals think in different ways depending on the problem they are
facing. They can see a situation as a problem, which then connects it to a solution, or they can
see the situation as a problematic, which opens it to possible avenues of action. In other
words, that the situation shapes—and indeed drives—the thinking as a problem or as
problematic, rather than the reverse. Professional thinking is not simply applying what is
known to the problem at hand; it involves determining the parameters of the situation, what is
and is not problematic.
The problem and the problematic
In distinguishing between perceiving a situation as a problem and as problematic, Schon
offers a different way of characterizing how people think and use what they know in
situations. The noun ‘problem’ represents a fixed version of a more fluid situation; that
reification allows for—and supports—the Technical Rational approach of problem solving.
The adjective ‘problematic’ describes an orientation to the situation, perceiving that the
habitual response does not (or may not) work under the circumstances. The distinction also
brings with it different verbs. A situation may be ‘seen or perceived’ as problematic, but it is
‘defined or understood’ as a problem. Both terms describe the person in the situation, but with
different emphases. Calling a situation a ‘problem’ focuses on the situation itself and potential
ways to address it, whereas calling it ‘problematic’ allows for how the person thinks about
the situation. This distinction led Schon to argue that the main work of the professional lies in
reframing the situation from problem to problematic, which he calls ‘construct[ing] a new
way of setting the problem.’
Problem setting is triggered by curiosity, by the professional’s perceptions of certain
attributes of the situation, which Schon identifies as ‘complexity, uncertainty, instability,
uniqueness, and value conflict’ (p. 18). In other words, there is in the situation something that
the person feels does not fit or feel right, that is working differently (better or worse) than
expected. In the classroom seating example, the intelligent action for the student of finding a
new seat might be triggered by seeing the usual seat is taken, or by wanting a change of scene,
or choosing to sit with someone different. The point being that these triggering circumstances
may be small, even trivial, but more often they arise, as Schon notes, from more serious value
conflicts.
‘Action-present’—making a difference in the situation

Schon argues that the second key aspect of reflecting on a situation is the time frame. He calls
this time frame, ‘action-present’, which he defines as ‘the zone of time in which action can
still make a difference to the situation’ (p. 62). Action-present is a period of time as
perceived by the individual, in which she sees actions as potentially making a difference in
reaching a desired outcome. The idea has several interesting facets. Schon uses a hyphenated
term, compounding the action with when it happens to underscore current time and suggest a
contrast with past or future actions. The temporal quality is open-ended, however, which is
key. The ‘present’ in ‘action-present’ is bounded by the person’s perception of the actions
potential to influence the situation. This definition again shows Schon’s phenomenological
orientation—that time is also a perception that shapes how the person thinks about and uses
knowledge as a basis for acting (which, we have to remember, can also include the action of
not doing anything).
Temporally bounding the situation of practice in this way (by the individual’s perception
that the action may affect it) seems to make action-present a circular idea, but this is where its
conceptual power lies. For Schon, the professional defines the situation of practice by
perceiving in it some ‘uncertainty, disorder, and indeterminacy’ and then acts based on the
perceived temporal horizon of action-present, during which time she believes she can affect
the situation. This process of reflecting—of thinking and using knowledge in the situation—
involves, at its most basic, finding meaning in a set of circumstances that appear confusing.
As Schon puts it of ‘making sense of an uncertain situation that initially makes no sense.’
The two forms of reflection, in and on action

These two ideas of ‘situation of practice’ and ‘action-present’ are key to how Schon theorizes
the process of reflection, but they are generally overlooked in favor of his use of the
prepositions ‘in’ and ‘on’ action. Because a ‘situation of practice’ and its ‘action-present’
horizon are in the mind of the individual, they remain essentially inaccessible. They have to
be recognized, defined, and articulated by the individual. In contrast, reflection in and on
action seem easier to get at and to work with publicly, in the context of teacher education, for
example. Schon describes reflection-in-action as happening while the action is happening,
which he contrasts with reflection-on-action, which takes place after the action is seen as
complete.
Of the two forms of thinking, reflection-in-action is the most often misrepresented because
it is inaccessible. It happens as Schon describes it, ‘When [the practitioner] finds himself
[sic] stuck in a problematic situation which he cannot readily convert to a manageable
problem, he may construct a new way of setting the problem’ (p. 63). The fluidity and
evanescence of the process makes it difficult to capture or manipulate, which is why its ex
post facto counterpart, reflection-on-action, is usually the focus. As Schon describes
reflection-on-action:
Practitioners do reflect on their knowing-in-practice. Sometimes, in the relative tranquility of
a postmortem, they think back on a project they have undertaken, or a situation they have lived
through, and they explore the understandings they have brought to their handling of the case.
(Schon, 1983, p. 61)
There can be diverse reasons for doing so; he adds. ‘They may do this in a mood of idle
speculation, or in a deliberate effort to prepare themselves for future cases’ (ibid.). The irony
is that this process of looking retrospectively has the effect of converting acting into action,
and thinking while acting into thoughts about actions. It seems to accomplish exactly the
reification of thinking that Schon meant to avoid.
Reflection-on-action has been the more widely emphasized in education and in language
teaching. This idea of rethinking a course of action and its effects, and learning from
experience as Dewey (1933) described it, has an intuitive logic that has made it widespread
in teacher education. There are also implementional reasons for this attention to reflection on
action and the ‘relative tranquility of a postmortem’ to use Schon’s phrase. These reasons
(taken up in later in the chapter) have to do with the nature of the relationship between
thinking and using language about an event. But to Schon, the whole in/on-action distinction
seemed much less rigid than it is often made out to be: ‘When a practitioner reflects in and on
his practice, the possible objects of his reflection are as varied as the kinds of phenomena
before him and the systems of knowing-in-action he brings to them’ (p. 62).
Linda and Beth: two incidents of teaching in two early-childhood classrooms

Schon’s ideas of situations of practice and action-present are key ways of understanding how
the notion of reflection operates. The two ideas help to locate the aspects of the situation that
shape how thinking and using knowledge work in context. Schachter (2014) offers two
examples of what this looks like as teachers talk about their work. These examples come from
her study of the ways in which early childhood teachers use ‘pedagogical reasoning’
(discussed in Chapter 9) as they are teaching. To gather data in reasoning, Schachter
interviewed teachers using a stimulated recall protocol, which is itself a process of
reflection-on-action. In the procedure, the teachers were videotaped during an agreed-upon
episode of teaching. They then reviewed the tape with the researcher, Schachter, and talked
about what they were thinking at the time (see Schachter & Freeman, 2015). The following
examples from Schachter’s study illustrate how teachers frame situations of practice and
define action-present as they reflect on-action using the stimulated recall technique.
Linda—the difference between ‘sister’ and ‘daughter’

In the first incident, Schachter had filmed ‘Linda’, working with children in a literacy activity.
Shortly afterwards, they reviewed the video and Linda commented on what she was doing.
CONTEXT: Linda is asking the children to tell her words that start with the letter ‘D’.
Some of the children are having a difficult time thinking of words. Linda is
giving clues to one boy, ‘Your sister, she is your mom and dad’s … what …?
Not a son but a …’ Then Cameron helps out and answers ‘daughter’. A third
child says, ‘I thought it was a sister.’
LINDA: ‘… I said, “It’s Mom and Dad’s [leaves a blank space]” because they didn’t
know that word. That was a hard concept for them. But I try to explain it and
engage them so that they can distinguish between the different words and
thoughts and classifying them. Because I’m a teacher.’
(Schachter, 2014, p. 123)
Linda explains the confusion she saw happening in the situation as these three-year olds were
prompted to come up with ‘daughter’ as a word beginning with ‘D’. She frames the
problematic aspect between ‘sister’ and ‘daughter’ as ‘distinguish[ing] between the different
words and thoughts and classifying them’, and she acts immediately to remedy it. Among the
many explanations she might give for focusing on the difference, Linda mentions her role ‘as a
teacher’. As complex as the specifics of her reasoning may be, Linda’s explanation goes to a
social fact essential to her thinking, that the teacher’s work is to make sure children grasp
categorical meanings of words.
Beth—rewriting the number ‘2’

The second incident illustrates how a small, seemingly inconsequential classroom move—
rewriting something from the board—is framed as potentially problematic. Schachter
explains she was interviewing ‘Beth’ about what had happened during ‘circle time’, an early
literacy activity during which the children take turns telling stories and anecdotes while
sitting in a circle. Beth stops the video to explain why she had taken the time to erase the
number ‘2’, which she had written on the board. Schachter quotes directly from Beth’s
explanation:
I’ve got to remember the right way to make a 2 because the 2’s have changed, … there’s no
little loop or anything … I need to have everything the correct way on the board. Because it’s
print and … the kids take in so much on a secondary level they don’t know they’re learning
and if they see something and it’s done the wrong way on the board they’re just going to
internalize it. Whether it sticks or not nobody’s really going to know for a while. But I just
like it to be the right way so I try not to make a big deal about it and just … erase and write
over it and do it that way. It’s just a thing that to me is important.
(Schachter, 2014, p. 47)
The situation of practice revolves around this tension in how Beth thinks about this small act
of rewriting the 2. Her reasoning starts from the premise that ‘if [the kids] see something …
done the wrong way on the board, they’re just going to internalize it.’ But then she
immediately concedes that only time will tell, ‘whether it [the correct form] sticks or not
nobody’s really going to know for a while’. Her action-present in this instance is open-ended.
While she erases the 2 immediately, she recognizes that it is hard to know if or when the
action will matter to the children’s learning. In this exchange, Beth confesses both the
temporariness and the temporality of this small action in her teaching, when she sums the
situation up as ‘just a thing that to me is important.’
Situation of practice Action-present

Linda ‘distinguish[ing] between ‘I said “It’s Mom and Dad’s … [leaves a blank space] because
[between sister and they didn’t know that word [and] because I’m a teacher.”‘
daughter] the different
words and thoughts and
classifying them’.
Beth ‘I’ve got to remember the ‘Whether it sticks or not nobody’s really going to know for a
right way to make a 2 while. But I just like it to be the right way … It’s just a thing that
because the 2s have to me is important.’
changed [and … I need to
have everything the
correct way on the
board].
Table 11.1 Linda and Beth: Situations of practice and action-present in their own words
Getting at thinking and knowledge

In some ways these two teaching episodes are not that different from one another. Linda and
Beth are each teaching little children; the lessons both focus on early first-language literacy
practices; and the incidents themselves seem very minor—clarifying the difference in
meaning between two similar words or erasing and rewriting a number so it is easily read.
However, when what each teacher sees as problematic in the incident is unpacked, thinking is
revealed that might go unnoticed. Suddenly there are thoughts underlying actions that seem
trivial, there are particular reasons, all of which can become accessible to others, in theory at
least. This dynamic of reflection-on-action—that it can potentially make public a whole
world of thinking and using knowledge that would otherwise be hidden from the outsider’s
eye—helps to explain its widespread popularity in teacher education. Conceptually it makes
sense that part of a ‘professional’s thinking in action’ (to use Schon’s title) involves thinking
about—reflecting on—those actions. While reflection-on-action is essentially done
individually, it is often shared through using language to talk or write about what has
happened. This sharing makes it public, with the assumption that the private reflections and
the public talk or writing about them are one and the same.
Languaging reflection-on-action
Language offers a way into reflection-on-action in the public realm, as the accounts given by
Linda and Beth illustrate. As users of professional knowledge, Linda and Beth share a
common aim—to support their children’s learning—and each works with that aim in mind.
The incidents might have gone unremarked, but for Schachter’s involvement as a researcher.
Through the use of the stimulated recall procedure, we gain access to how the teachers
explain what they do and thus their private thinking becomes public. Language is the means.
As they watch the videos and talk about what they see, Schachter plays the role of interlocutor
as each teacher reflects on what happened. This private-into-public process, which is often
connected to reflection-on-action, creates a sort of voyeuristic access, as Schachter remarks
about the incident with the misshapen 2, ‘An observer of this moment of practice would not
be able to see the complex process of pedagogical reasoning informing this teacher’s
decision to erase the number and rewrite it. She is using various strands of information to
reason about this moment of practice’ (p. 47).
Implementing reflection
Reflecting, as a process of thinking and using knowledge in situations, became an established
practice in second language teacher education for reasons having to do with the nature of the
relationship between thinking and languaging an event. Since live-action data collection
measures are largely impractical in the context of a highly interactive, social activity like
teaching, the accounts generated by the reflective process are ‘on’, rather than ‘in’, action.
The ‘relative tranquility of a postmortem’ of reflection-on-action, as Schon called it, lends
itself directly to talking and writing. When people use language about an activity they are
involved in, they tend to narrate it, which creates a separation between the lived present and a
languaged past. In the two excerpts from Schachter’s study, Linda and Beth attach language to
the specifics of the incident as they narrate what they did. Languaging the incidents gives
reasoning a certain ‘postmortem’ quality that makes reflection-on-action amenable to
designing activities in teacher education, and to researching how they work.
Reflection in second language teacher education

As the entree to the space between habitual and intelligent action, reflection-on-action has
provided the foundation and the rationale for inquiry-oriented strategies in second language
teacher education. As Richards and Lockhart (1994) asserted, ‘Critical reflection examining
teaching experiences is a basis for evaluation and decision-making and as a source for
change’ (p. 4). Wallace argued that reflection defines being professional:
It is (or should be) normal for professionals to reflect on their professional performance,
particularly when it goes especially well or especially badly. They will probably ask
themselves what went wrong or why it went so well. They will probably want to think about
what to avoid in the future, what to repeat, and so on.
(Wallace, 1991, p. 13)
Reflection in teacher education, as Wallace’s statement suggests, has usually been translated
into questioning classroom actions with an eye to improvement—’what to avoid in the
future’—or perhaps understanding—’why it went so well’. In pre-service contexts, the goal
has been to develop the orientation and interest among new teachers to do this type of thinking
as they begin their careers. In in-service professional development, the intent of reflective
activity is generally to revive and support engagement in classroom teaching through re-
establishing Dewey’s focus on ‘what the minds of the pupils are doing with the subject
matter.’ Both pre- and in-service approaches to reflection usually center on the concept of
inquiry as a starting point for the process.
Inquiry
Inquiry-oriented teacher education strategies range from the primarily individual (for
example, Farrell, 2013) to collaborative work among peers (for example, Farrell, 2004;
Richards & Lockhart, 1994). Across this spectrum, however, Schon’s framing of inquiry has
been lost or shortchanged. The reflective process, Schon argued, is triggered by problem-
posing, which he defines as a gap or lack of alignment between how the practitioner is seeing
the situation and the usual actions taken to deal with it. But in teacher education activities, this
dissonance in perception can often be reduced to problem-solving; to prompting the teacher to
respond to some discomfort over what is not working in the classroom and to fix it rather than
to figure out what is happening.
Reflection-as-repair
Second language teacher education builds this version of reflection-as-repair into many
designs: in clinical teaching arrangements like peer and practice teaching, in planning and
evaluating lessons, in portfolio assessments of practice, and so on. These activities make the
ex post facto analyses of reflection-on-action part of learning to be a professional. There is a
premise that, as a form of teacher education pedagogy, learning to think reflectively
professionalizes teaching by aligning thought processes with those in other lines of work
(such as clinical psychologists and architects in Schon’s (1983) examples). In this push to
teach reflection, with the accompanying assumption that it will professionalize teachers’
thinking, the underlying mechanics of the process are often lost, which is the point of this
close reading and analysis.
Reflection in situations of practice and action-present

The emphasis on post-mortem reflection is well established in second language teacher
education from an implementational standpoint. That said, however, it is worth reexamining
the generally accepted definition of reflection-as-repair, as the process of problem-solving
aimed at improvement. This definition can overshadow the reflective process with a
Technical Rational expectation that improvements are solutions. Expert teaching then
becomes in effect recognizing and solving problems drawn from this repertoire of experience.
Instead of the companion ideas of problem and solution, we can go back to the process of
reflecting as one of perceiving, as argued earlier. Recognizing that the perception defines the
situation, and that ephemeral designation triggers ideas about what to do, gives the process a
different focus. Consider two ways of framing a situation. The teacher might observe the
students were ‘noisy’ or ‘bored’ by what was happening in the activity. This orientation could
point to possible actions that would make the students ‘quieter’ (‘less noisy’) or ‘engaged’
(‘not bored’), thus possibly solving the problem. Couched differently though, as a perception
that the students seemed ‘noisy’ or ‘bored’, can reorient the teacher towards if and why this
might be happening, and it leaves what to do about the situation as a separate matter (at least
for now).
Reflection as perceiving
Focusing on reflection as perceiving introduces questions of where to look, which
reintroduces the overlooked ideas of ‘situation of practice’ and ‘action-present’ discussed
earlier. If reflecting is understood as thinking and using knowledge in situations, as I have
said, then the central question becomes how ‘situation’ is defined in space (as a ‘situation of
practice’) and in time (as ‘action-present’). In terms of space, Schon outlines three parts of
the situation: the person’s role in it [A], which is related to how he or she is perceiving what
is problematic [B], and the values [C—E] that seem to be dissonant. These values include,
according to Schon, the norms [C] for what ‘usually happens’, ideas about why it may be
happening [D], and affective reactions [E]. Together these elements can reframe the situation
of practice as well as action-present as the time horizon for taking action. As Schon
summarizes, ‘Conscious of the dilemma, [the practitioner] may attribute it to the way he [sic]
has set his problem, or even the way he has framed his role. He may then find a way of
integrating, or choosing among, the values at stake in the situation’ (p. 63).
Figure 11.1 Elements of a situation of practice that shape the action-present
An example from peer teaching: ‘You mean in the lesson? Or next time?’
To put these terms in a context, let us suppose a trainee is ‘teaching’ a practice lesson. The
norms [C] associated with role [A] of teacher assume the trainee is in charge of what happens
in the lesson [D], and there are feelings associated with what it means to do so ‘effectively’
[E]. How the trainee has played the role of teacher ‘sets the problem’ [B] and becomes the
focus of the feedback discussion as the group ‘reflects on’ how the lesson went. Imagine the
following exchange:
‘At the beginning,’ one trainee might comment to the peer who taught, ‘you seemed really
nervous [feelings], at least from the way you were talking … But then you got into it and
looked more like a teacher [norms] when you were assigning the groups [strategies], and I
think that part went really well.’
‘What does “really well” mean in this context?’, the trainer might ask, reframing the
situation of practice.
‘Well, the students were working well in their groups’ [norms], another trainee might say.
‘Except for the threesome in the corner; they were off task [problem setting] … looking at
their mobile phones’.
‘What could you have done to get them back into the activity?’, the trainer might say
opening up the action-present.
‘You mean in this lesson or next time?’, asks the trainee teacher looking for a definition of
action-present.
This type of feedback session, which seems fairly typical of reflective activities in second
language teacher education, asks the trainees to reflect-on-action by framing problems in the
practice teaching situation, the solutions to which are meant to apply beyond the specific
situation. This ambiguity in the time horizon—caught in the trainee’s query, ‘You mean in this
lesson or next time?’—removes the individual’s ability to act from the idea of action-present.
The comment that ‘the threesome in the corner were off task’ is taken as a fact—not a
perception—of the situation, which makes it a ‘problem’. Then, when it is reframed by the
trainer as hypothetical with the question, ‘What could you have done to get them back into the
activity?’, the trainee has to imagine a course of action that might apply sometime in the
future.
Languaging experience
The device of separating the present and future is endemic in reflective teacher education
activities, with at least two potential consequences. It makes reflecting a post hoc form of
thinking and it removes agency—the teacher’s potential to act—from the immediate equation.
In designing activities to use or ‘stimulate’ reflection, teacher educators will usually situate
the work in the present while asking trainees to comment on past actions. Language provides,
as we have said, the mechanism for this repositioning. Farrell (2013) notes this temporal gap
as he outlines how to use writing as a reflective activity for teachers: ‘When writing, a person
must pause for a short time … in order to organize thoughts somewhat before putting them on
paper … This pausing is the first step in reflective writing because it is the launching pad for
what is to follow’ (p. 57; original italics). The pause punctuates what is happening in the
immediate present to provide the space to put it into words. In the peer teaching example, the
pause comes when the lesson ends and the talk of the feedback session starts. These acts of
languaging have the effect of converting a messy present into what can sound like a more
ordered, reasoned past.
Audience
Farrell goes on to contrast the ‘pausing’ that occurs in writing with what he calls the
‘spontaneous nature of speaking’. This way of languaging experience can seem more
immediate and closer to the messiness of what is happening in the lesson. He explains, ‘When
people talk, most just say what is on their mind within reason and with a slight bit of prior
thought … Speaking is typically relatively instantaneous and interactive with another person
or persons …’ (p. 57). Any time we use language, we assume an audience to whom what we
say or write will make sense. In writing, that audience might only be the teacher writer
herself or it could include others, but in speaking the audience is obvious: They are the others
who are present. In the peer teaching example, the audience is the group; they are the people
who are trying to make sense of what happened in the lesson, and the trainer’s voice is
privileged by his position. Farrell concludes by contrasting these two forms of languaging and
underscoring the implicit formula in which reflection is equated with reflection-on-action:
‘The time needed to write is a natural check on these tendencies of spontaneous speech. The
act of writing (as reflective practice) has a built-in reflective mechanism that makes it an
ideal tool for helping teachers pause and thus engage in systematic reflections of the practice’
(p. 57).
Inner and outer worlds

Reflection, as it is practiced in teacher education activities, is a process of reframing the
outer classroom world using inner resources of meaning and experience. This dynamic of
how the inner impacts the outer work is driven by perception, which can trigger different
ways of thinking about the situation—as ‘a problem’ or as ‘problematic’. As Figure 11.2
suggests, how the situation is perceived can lead to what Dewey called ‘habitual’ or
‘intelligent’ actions in response. When this dynamic between inner and outer worlds is
captured in language through formalized teacher education reflective activities, it gets frozen
in time, and separated from the immediacy of the current situation.
Figure 11.2 Reflection: The dynamic between inner and outer worlds
Arguments for reflection in teaching and teacher education depend on distinguishing kinds of
thinking. Routine or habitual thinking reacts to situations using existing knowledge to frame
and make meaning of what is happening; these are Technical Rational responses that make the
situation fit existing explanations and actions to address the problem. In contrast, reflective or
intelligent thinking draws on sources of knowledge beyond the immediate first reaction. This
form of thinking allows the actor to see the situation of practice as inconclusive and messy,
thus opening up a range of possible actions. The argument is that this second type of thinking
suits classroom teaching. Using knowledge in teaching situations is more complex and
messier than simply applying it. Since any classroom situation has aspects that are unique, it
follows that the knowledge base of teaching needs to include more than disciplinary concepts
and accumulated wisdom of practice as sources of Technical Rational solutions to teaching
problems. Reflection is meant to counteract this view. Reflective activity in teacher education
is generally based on two premises. First, improvement in teaching comes when teachers can
turn actions that are automatic and routine into ones that are considered. Second, this shift
from automatic to considered actions supports a more professionalized view of teaching. To
paraphrase Schon’s (1983) title, when teachers ‘think in action’ in this way, they are acting as
‘professionals’.
PART FOUR
A design theory (Parts one and two)
Introduction to Part Four
The two chapters in this final part of the book introduce a design theory for teacher education.
As a ‘theory’, the statement outlines a social learning process, which is based on the notion of
social facts that circulate through two forms of community—of activity and of explanation.
The central premise is a socio-cultural one: (discussed in Chapter 6) that as teachers use the
social facts of their professional community, they are ‘renaming’ their experiences, which
allows then to ‘reconstruct’ what they are doing in practice. The renaming involves using the
social facts of the community in place of their usual way of talking and thinking. The
reconstruction can be as subtle as understanding something in a different way, or as major as
doing something differently. Renaming is the semiotic version of reconstructing; it addresses
the hidden side of teaching, while reconstructing alters the public side.
The statement can also serve as a blueprint for organizing, evaluating, and studying what
happens in pre- and in-service teacher education, which is what makes it a ‘design’ theory.
While it is derived from my work as a second language teacher educator, the fundamentals are
applicable to teacher education or other forms of professional preparation and learning.
There are seeds of this design theory, starting in Chapter 1, where the core idea of social facts
is first introduced. In both Parts Two and Three, the use of social facts as a form of
professional explanation is mentioned, particularly in the context of evolving understanding of
thinking (Chapter 7) and knowing (Chapter 9). The full theory is laid out here, at the end of
the book, to help unify these preceding arguments and to provide a bridge to the use of the
ideas.
How Part Four is organized
The last two chapters describe the two parts of the theory. Chapter 12 lays out the elements—
social facts and communities—and Chapter 13 discusses how these elements work together in
learning and change. Readers may find the summary figures (Figure 12.1 and Figure 13.1)
helpful as maps of the overall argument, as well as the diagrammatic representations in
Figure 13.2 and Figure 13.3.
The three appendices outline uses of the theory in designing language teacher education at
the level of activities (Appendix A) and programs (Appendix B), as well as thoughts about
how the theory explains teacher education assessment practices (Appendix C). The
discussion is in generic terms (rather than in specific case studies) in order to hopefully
broaden its potential applicability and usefulness.
12
A design theory—Part one: social facts and communities
Design problems are usually among the most complex and ill-structured kinds of problems
… encountered in practice … because they have ambiguous specification of goals, no
determined solution path, and need to integrate multiple knowledge domains.
(Jonassen, 2000, p. 80)
This chapter resumes the argument, begun in Chapter One, that second language teacher
education has been largely defined by prescriptive ideas about what the content should be and
how it should be taught. An alternative, based on a social practice theory (discussed in
Chapter 6), is proposed as a design theory that supports organizing as well as studying
teacher education activities and programs. The theory starts from social facts and how these
developed and circulate among participants to establish communities.

The premise
There is a premise threaded through previous chapters about how second language teacher
education relates to teacher education in other subject areas. It is captured in the phrase, ‘the
same things done differently’. There are ways in which educating second language teachers is
similar to educating teachers in other content areas—the ‘same things’ part of the premise. But
second language teacher education is not simply a version of teacher education generally—
and that is the ‘done differently’ part. While it borrows and uses terms, concepts, and even
research findings from general teacher education, the ways in which these are used differs in
second language teacher education. These differences stem from language; unlike other
content areas, in second language teacher education the content to be taught (language) is also
the means of teaching it and further, it is also the means by which people learn to teach it
through teacher education. Second language teachers study language as content through
language as process. This fundamental isomorphism, which was introduced in Chapter One
and diagramed in Figure 1.4, creates a unique set of circumstances for language teacher
learning as well as a distinctive set of conditions in which to design language teacher
education, and through which to carry out its activities.
This chapter shifts the conversation to how to create and manage second language teacher
education opportunities, given this basic isomorphism. It is about how to do ‘the same things’
(the practices of teacher education) ‘differently.’ But the proposal outlined here applies
equally to educating second language teachers as well as to educating teachers in other
content areas or circumstances.
The same things done in the same ways
There is an intricate syllogistic argument underlying this last point, however. To say that
language is like any school subject matter, defines second language teacher education as a
version of teacher education in one particular content area. In this view, language teachers are
prepared to teach languages just as science teachers are prepared to teach science. But
language doesn’t fit this equation since it is both the content and how that content is taught, as
discussed earlier. Nevertheless, language is often taken as just a content area based on
disciplinary views of content learning and teaching discussed in Chapter 4. This approach,
which is common to most teacher preparation in tertiary education institutions, makes second
language teacher education essentially ‘the same things done in the same ways.’
Different things done differently

The inverse position—that language works differently from other subject matters—is also
problematic, however. To say that second language teacher education is a unique form of
teacher education underscores the nature of language as content and how that content
circumscribes and redefines every aspect of educating second language teachers. This
position has underwritten, however tacitly, the development and expansion of short-term
alternative route training discussed in Chapter 5 and Chapter 10. The spread of English
globally (for example, Canagarajah, 2013; Graddol, 1997; Kumaravadivelu, 2012) has
supported these intensive training designs (as discussed in Chapter 10), which are more
established and widespread in English language teaching than other subject matters.
Basically, the designs argue that ‘different things’ (language teaching) can be ‘done
differently.’
The shared assumption of the primacy of content

These two positions—the ‘same things done in the same ways’ and ‘different things done in
different ways’—share a common assumption about the primacy of content: that what the
teacher is to teach must be the centerpiece of teacher education. Both positions underscore the
view that learning to teach involves mastering content and how to teach it, or knowing content
in its teachable form, although they arrive at different conclusions about how to organize that
professional learning. Neither position is based in an explicit theorization about how teachers
actually learn to teach the content in the context of formal preparation. Rather, they adhere to
the general approach to learning embedded in the social environment: knowledge-
transmission, which still predominates in tertiary settings, as discussed in Chapter 4, or
situated learning, which supports the design of intensive, alternative route training, as
discussed in Chapter 5.
There is a third position that offers a synthesis in this ‘same-same’ or ‘different-different’
dialectic. It takes what is ‘different’ about educating second language teachers as a basis for
understanding how people learn to teach under any circumstance. A proposal like this, while
it needs to be theoretically grounded, needs to elucidate the successes and problems in
various ways of educating teachers. In other words, it needs to help us understand what works
and what doesn’t work, and to suggest why in either case. To do these things, the proposal
should meet several conditions: it needs to be conceptually robust, with clear antecedents to
general theories of learning and it should address the unique specifics of second language
teacher education. Most importantly it needs to translate easily and directly into the practices
of teacher education, which accomplishes two things—it allows a better understanding of
what is believed to work (or not to work) in teacher education, and it supports the design of
new activities and programs.
A teacher education design theory (Part one)
These three conditions define what a ‘design theory’ does; it is a theory that both explains
what is happening and helps develop new ways of doing things. As a theory, it describes how
teacher education happens and represents those processes for analysis. The design aspect
emphasizes that the theory can be used proactively to plan and evaluate teacher education
practices. A design theory is not intended prescriptively; the aim here is not to describe good
language teaching or good language teacher education. Rather it is meant to describe and
represent the elements that go into teacher education.
This design theory of teacher education is anchored in second language teacher education
as the first point of reference:
Part one
Teacher education provides tools and opportunities to use them, which allow participants
to rename their experiences and thus to (re)construct what they do (their practices) as
users of language who also are teaching it. The tools are the social facts of the teacher
education environment. People participate in this environment on two levels
simultaneously: They do certain things (activities) and then come to think in certain ways
about what they do. These ways of doing and of thinking constitute communities.
Part two
To join, participate, and to be taken as a member of a new group on these two levels,
individuals articulate what they do (their experiences) in terms that make sense to the
group by using their social facts. Over time, using these social facts becomes second
nature to explain what they do. In this way, an individual is part of the group when these
articulations are no longer remarked on; the social facts blend in and are accepted as
explanations by the group.
The theory is meant as a descriptive representation of the elements that can create teacher-
learning opportunities. To my way of thinking, a design theory captures what is going on, in
this case as people are learning to teach. It should represent the processes that are at work
and how those processes are orchestrated, and propose elements and relationships between
them that can describe current practices as well as ones that might be developed.
The description is broken into two parts. The first is, in a sense, the ‘theory’ dimension of
the design theory, and the second represents its use in ‘design’. Part one (see Figure 12.1),
which is the topic of this chapter, addresses how groups come about as communities by using
particular social facts. The discussion continues in the next chapter, with Part two (see Figure
13.1), which elaborates how people enter into and become fully part of communities through
how they use social facts. Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 together unpack the key elements of the
design theory. The aim is to connect the elements to previous arguments and to explain them in
terms that can be operationalized.
Figure 12.1 A teacher education design theory: Part one (annotated)
The annotations in Figure 12.1 and Figure 13.1, refer to the sections that follow in which
that element is developed.
Tools and opportunities [A]

The design theory defines the central function of teacher education as providing participants
with tools and opportunities to use them. Both the ideas of tools, and opportunities for use
come from social practice theory discussed in Chapter 6. The tools become meaningful as
they are used, so when trainees refer to the ‘PPP’, they are using it as tool to divide the
temporal flow of the lesson. As a social fact, the acronym ‘PPP’ packages this temporal
organization in one single label that is shared and recognized by other members of the
community. The opportunities to use this particular tool might come in planning the lesson or
discussing it afterwards; interestingly, they will not occur during the lesson itself unless a
trainee is addressing other teachers. In other words, this particular tool is one that teachers
use about teaching. But during the ‘practice’ phase of the lesson, the trainee may decide to
‘use group work’, and there would be opportunities for him or her to use this tool in teaching,
perhaps telling the students, ‘We’re going to do group work’, as well as about the lesson, as
in ‘I thought the group work went really well.’)
This view of tools and opportunities differs markedly from the broadly held view that the
goal of teacher education is to provide particular knowledge and pedagogical skills, and to
develop teacherly dispositions. This conventional goal, which is shared equally by general
teacher preparation at the tertiary level and in alternative route programs, focuses designs on
disciplinary knowledge as the basis of teaching content (discussed in Chapter 4), which
combines with practice-based settings like internships and practice teaching arrangements to
develop pedagogical skills (discussed in Chapter 5).
Social facts [B]

Recognition and use
In making the goal of teacher education to provide tools, the design theory takes a slightly
different tack. A tool has two dimensions, its recognition as a tool and its use in that way,
which are essentially two sides of the same coin. In using a particular tool, the individual
invokes recognition of the activity of which the tool is a part; that recognition entails a group
or community. Think about children playing soccer with a soccer ball. The tool is the soccer
ball and how it is used creates an activity that is recognizable as a soccer game. The children
could be playing the game with a ball they made (out of plastic shopping bags, perhaps) and if
they follow the rules of the game (using their feet to kick and pass the ball, not using their
hands to touch it, for example), the activity would likely be recognizable as a soccer game. A
tool carries with it the normative ways of being used. These normative ways of use are held
by the groups who use the tool (or who aspire to use it), which connects to the element of
‘communities’ [D] in the design theory.
Unlike the soccer ball, however, the tools used in educating teachers are mostly symbolic
ones. These tools are the social facts that the teacher education community recognizes. The
term ‘social fact’ calls attention to ‘facts’ as forms of social agreement, which can seem to
contradict the notion of facts as ‘objective’ and incontrovertible. The difference is a non-issue
though. Whether one holds facts as objective truths about the world or as socially agreed-
upon views of that world, the facts need to be accepted in order to circulate and be used.
Accepting facts is not the same as agreeing with them as true or explanatory. Actually, arguing
about or disagreeing with a particular fact or group of facts simply underscores the social
nature of facts.
Social facts and belonging
As discourse terms, social facts demarcate those who know and who do not know what they
mean. Knowing how to use social facts appropriately defines a person as part of that
community; neologisms and acronymic use accelerate this social process. This dynamic of
belonging creates an identity as an insider within that community. The terms prescribe ways
of seeing and being in the world. Continuing with the ‘PPP’ example, this social fact can be
used to divide lesson time into three parts by designating different purposes. Using PPP as a
social fact, new teachers can organize time into activity, know the ostensible purpose of each
segment of the lesson, and perhaps learn to assess what they do in terms of that purpose.
These teachers can talk and write about what they do, using these distinctions.
Social facts simultaneously circumscribe ways of seeing and being in the world. A new
teacher using the social fact of ‘PPP’ would have a way to distinguish between sitting and
chatting with students and teaching a lesson. Parts of the lesson can be associated with the
different, incremental purposes of presenting, practicing, and producing the target language. It
also means that spending time doing other things falls outside these three categories. By
ascribing value to certain forms of perception and behavior, social facts define worlds of
thought and action and thus they function as tools within socio-professional activity.
Social facts over time
Social facts are not static. Like any tools, they are influenced by where, when, how, and even
with whom they are used. A prime example are the shifting terms used as social facts in the
United States to refer to students who come to school speaking a home language other than
English. There are at least three terms, without a full exegesis, that have been used over the
last 50 years: ‘English as a Second Language student’; ‘Limited English Proficient student’;
and ‘English Language Learner’. Each term links the individual’s control over English with
the fact that he or she is a student in school, while not making explicit that English is the
medium of instruction. As social facts, the various terms arguably serve the same purpose of
differentiating among the school-aged population in relation to the language of instruction,
English. Each term does so in distinct ways that emphasize and proscribe different features of
the situation.
‘English as a Second Language student’ says that the student has another ‘first’ language.
‘Limited English Proficient student’ changes the basis of definition to a deficit view, by
implying that students who are not ‘limited’ in their English must all otherwise be
proficient. This turns control over, and proficiency in, English into a vehicle for
intelligence with content.
‘English Language Learner’ suggests similarly that students who are not referred to in this
way must already know, and therefore not be learning, English. By this logic, a student in
Grade 1 and one in Grade 10 must already know the English they need for their respective
studies and not have somehow learned it along the way.
The idiosyncratic shortcomings of each term, while secondary, illustrate two aspects of the
creation of social facts. First, social facts are driven by a discerned need—in this instance,
for a term to describe the student in terms of the language of instruction. This need arose in
United States public education in part through the application of civil rights law to schooling
in the 1960s. The rapid acronymization of each term—as ‘ESL student’, ‘LEP student’, and
‘ELL’—is further evidence of both the need and its use. Second, the social facts change
although the underlying phenomenon remains. As the terms re-label the situation, the social
facts shift, and this can often only be seen in retrospect. For example, a new term, ‘emergent
bilingual’ is now in circulation and will perhaps replace ‘ELL’. Interestingly this new version
of the social fact drops reference to ‘English’ entirely and makes no reference to schooling or
language of instruction. It focuses instead on psychologizing the individual’s core abilities
and identity, which further rejects the deficits implied in the terms ‘LEP’ and even ‘ELL’.
Local and professional languages [C]

Social facts, like the terms above, generally come from social and political discourses, but
there are clearly other sources as well. The socio-cultural setting plays a central role in
creating a local vernacular. As tools, social facts function in two spheres: one, which could
be called professional language, and the other, local language. The former draws its facts
from the academic disciplines and professional practices of the community, like the various
terms for English learners in schools discussed above; the latter generates meaning out of
local experience, that is bounded by specific time and place (actual or virtual). While
particular words themselves can and do move between the two forms of language, the
referents are anchored in these two distinct realms of discourse. The word, ‘English’, in the
example of naming students, obviously functions in both the professional and local languages
of English language teaching. When it is part of a label used to determine a student’s
academic identity, ‘English’ is a disciplinary-professional social fact. It refers to a
constellation of socio-participatory issues that are part of academic oracy and literacy in the
language of instruction.
An example of this crossover in social facts is the elaboration of English as a Foreign
Language, and its acronym ‘EFL’, which has been adapted as an acronym to Mandarin
Chinese and ‘CFL’. Changing the language reference from English to Chinese doesn’t
fundamentally alter the social fact, but it does import many of the ramifications. For instance,
‘CFL’ teachers are usually assumed to be ‘native speakers’ as ‘EFL’ teachers often were
during 1960s and 1970s, when the social fact was coined. Combinations and permutations in
use create the fabric of social facts that function as tools in learning to teach.
In using disciplinary and professional social facts as tools, new teachers build an identity
in the activity of teaching. As in the ‘PPP’ example earlier, they start to sound as though they
know what they are doing when they start to talk, write, and sound like language teachers. As
Gee (2008, p. 82), quoted in Chapter 2, put it: ‘Physicists do physics. They talk physics. And
when they are being physicists, they see and value the world in a different way than do non-
physicists.’ This identity remains an abstraction until it is localized, however. The social
facts, and professional language, do not function detached from a specific context. To put it
another way, a language—whether professional or local—only functions if others can
understand it. Users of social facts need to make the facts work for them where and when they
use them. The process by which social facts make sense in terms of where and how they are
used is shorthanded in the term ‘communities’.
Communities [D]
Orientation to the lived texture of situated experience
The term ‘community’ is widely used in education, but it is usually not unpacked, perhaps
because the definition can seem self-evident. Groups loosely referred to as ‘communities’
exist on two levels, the actual and the virtual. Communities can be—and usually are—seen or
observed; they are also encountered through what they say and do. Rampton (1998) captures
this overlay of visible and semiotic when he refers to the term ‘community’ [as an] orientation
to the lived texture of situated experience (p. 12). The term brings up issues that are both
definitional and functional, however. The complication is that a group’s purpose or function
contributes to—and indeed even circumscribes—how it is defined. So is a group a
‘community’ because of what it is or because of what is does?
Communities of practice
In educational writing, most definitions draw from situated learning theory, which describes a
community as ‘a set of relations among persons, activity, and world, over time and in relation
to other tangential and overlapping communities …’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 98). This
statement describes a group as a ‘community of practice.’ But rather than clarifying the
definition, the term—’community of practice’—actually compounds ambiguities. Rock (2005,
pp. 77–78) points out, ‘Clearly the term [community of practice] involves communities—
collectives of people—and practices—frameworks for doing… [A]s a whole, [it] presents a
particular combination of practice and community … being defined simultaneously by each
and underpinned by social negotiation’ (original italics). These two elements combine to
describe a group of people doing something with some sort of interaction. The function of the
group is glossed as a ‘practice’: ‘shared “behaviors” or shared “ways of doing things”
through talk, convictions, or norms’ (Rock, 2005, p. 78).
Working together
As a term, ‘community of practice’ suggests shared reasons for working together; these are
referred to by Wenger (1998) as ‘mutual engagement’ and ‘joint enterprise’. There is also a
commonly accepted means, or ‘shared repertoire’, to accomplish what they are meant to do.
In this instance, the social facts used by a group are its shared repertoire. In the ‘PPP’
example, the group of trainees are jointly ‘engaged’ in the ‘enterprise’ of practice teaching (to
use Wenger’s words) using the ‘shared repertoire’ of terms about teaching, such as ‘PPP’.
These three attributes make them—for that period of that activity—a community of practice.
This definition introduces two points that are worth emphasizing. First, communities are not
permanent entities, as the conventional sense of the word suggests; they exist in and for a
particular activity. Second, intention and purpose are key. A group comes about as a
community because they have something (the joint enterprise) they want to do together (their
mutual engagement). Thus in this analysis, a group of students in a classroom may—but
doesn’t necessarily have to—be a community of practice.
Simply being together in time and space doesn’t make the group a community; they need to
have a reason to work together and they need to be involved in that shared work. Language
teaching methodologies are, in this view, ways of attempting to generate mutual engagement
and joint enterprise among students as they go about doing particular activities. Doing a
substitution drill as a joint enterprise in an ALDM classroom may engage students
behaviorally, but not mentally, whereas doing gap-fill, problem-solving activity in a
communicative lesson may strengthen their fuller mutual engagement. In the first activity, the
shared repertoire is limited to the language patterns they are using; in the second, it expands
to include students’ experiences and knowledge related to the gap-fill.
Purpose and cross purpose
In social practice theory, as discussed in Chapter 6, purpose is key; it is how meaning comes
about in doing the activity. Learning teaching is a complex process. It can involve diverse
purposes—the teacher educator has one intention, which the participants may share,
collectively or individually, and they may have their own purposes. Simply saying that
trainees working together are a community of practice begs the question of how these
purposes coincide or diverge. As Little put it:
If we theorize about the significance of professional community, or make claims [about them].
we must be able to demonstrate how communities achieve their effects. This will require
examining the specific interactions and dynamics by which professional communities
constitute a resource for teacher learning and the formation of teaching practice.
(Little, 2003, p. 917)
To understand how purpose works, we need to look more closely at how social facts get used
by participants to gain entry into and become full members of a community that is learning to
teach. This is the subject of the next chapter, which continues the design theory.
To my way of thinking, a design theory serves as a descriptive representation of what is going
on, in this case as people are learning to teach. It represents the processes at work, how these
processes are orchestrated, and it proposes elements and relationships between them that can
describe current practices as well as ones that might be developed.
13
A design theory—Part two: renaming experience to reconstruct
practice
Things like words, artifacts, gestures, and routines are useful … because they are
recognizable in their relation to a history of mutual engagement [and] also because they
can be re-engaged in new situations … All have well-established interpretations, which
can be re-utilized to new effect …
(Wenger, 1998, p. 83)
This chapter continues the discussion of the design theory for language teacher education by
examining how individuals participate in the activity. There are two aspects to participation:
joining the group and being a full member. The theory differentiates between two forms of the
group, as a community of activity and a community of explanation, which interact in how
individuals use social facts to enter and participate in activity. It argues that these two
communities have distinct functions, but use one set of facts, which leads to tensions and
misalignments in social explanations. These tensions, like the levels of contradictions in
socio-cultural theory (detailed in Chapter 6), are productive; they create learning and the
possibility of change.
Two parallel communities

The first community is defined by its participants and by what it does. The starting point is a
community as a group of people; this collectivity is defined in actual, visible terms. There is
a second virtual and tacit community that functions in parallel. This other community is
defined by what it does together as well as by how it thinks. The first community exists
through what it does as collective activity. It is observable, which is community in the
generally understood sense of the term: a group of people who see themselves (and are
usually recognized by others) as doing or being involved in a recognizable form of activity.
A classroom is a community by this definition; it is a group doing activities to support
learning of a particular content. While we see what they are doing, we are also ascribing
meanings to their activity. An observer, for instance, might refer to the classroom as an
‘advanced-level English class’ or ‘Grade 4 class’ or even ‘the class from hell’, each of which
are meanings that are attributed to what is observed. This recognition happens in and through
language. Language can be used to describe what the group is doing and to label the activity;
it is language about what is happening. This language combines and overlaps with the
language that is part of doing the activity, its shared repertoire, which we could call language
in the activity. The ‘advanced-level English class’ might be ‘discussing a newspaper article’,
for example; this language is about the activity that describes what is going on. A student
might say, ‘This article says that …’, and a classmate might disagree, saying, ‘… but it’s a
right-wing newspaper so what do you expect?’ This language is being used in doing the
activity. The same words are being used in different ways for different purposes.
Narrative 13.1—At program orientation

The orientation for this year-long post-graduate program in language teaching was an
intensive and inclusive event. There were self-introductions by students and faculty, group-
building exercises, and presentations on the program structure and course sequence. At
one session on the program philosophy, faculty held a ‘fishbowl’ discussion about two of
the central tenets in the program: the relation between language learning and teaching
and the notion of autonomous learning. They talked about how two program principles
—’Learning tells you how to teach’ and ‘You are your own best resource’—were manifested
in the program’s activities and curriculum. Students listened; some asked questions, but it
was a pretty cerebral undertaking.
Ten months later at the end of the program, there were the usual celebratory events,
including a dinner followed by student and faculty skits. One group of students mimicked
the opening of the program, playing each of the faculty and imitating particular gestures,
speech mannerisms, and even clothing. The skit’s discussion probed the meaning of the
‘two program principles’—’Learning is a peach’ and ‘You are your own best racehorse.’
Students and faculty laughed uproariously, while family members and friends were
confused and somewhat amused. Afterwards, one person asked a student, ‘What was that
about the peach?’
In one sense, this is a story about the common language that developed in this learning
community. But the terms ‘common language’ and ‘learning community’ disguise the
complexity of the process, and particularly how language and community develop in relation
to each other.
Language about/language in activity

Language is the main resource used in most communities, the principal shared repertoire.
Wenger (1998) describes the shared repertoire of a community of practice, it as ‘resources
for negotiating meaning’ which include ‘routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories,
gestures, symbols, genres, actions, or concepts that the community has produced or adopted in
the course of its existence, and which have become part of its practice’ (pp. 82–83). The
epigrammatic statements, Learning tells you how to teach and You are your own best
resource, fall in this loose category of what Wenger calls ‘words, tools, [and] ways of doing
things’. They functioned as social facts, common, meaningful resources for students and
faculty that distilled operating principles about teaching and learning and about how one was
supposed to learn to teach in the teacher education program. Although they were about how
the program operated, the statements were also part of language in its ongoing activity,
starting at orientation and persisting in the shared repertoire of the community to the formal
closing event. Social facts circulate primarily through language used by the community. They
form the repertoire of meanings for the group. As Wenger says, ‘I call a community’s shared
set of resources a repertoire to emphasize both its rehearsed character and its availability for
further engagement in practice’ (1998, p. 83; original italics).
A teacher education design theory (Part two)
Returning to the design theory, Figure 13.1 builds on Figure 12.1 to summarize how social
facts work through local and professional languages to create and sustain communities.
Figure 13.1 A teacher education design theory: Part two (annotated)
Terms of reference
Social facts function referentially in two ways. They circulate within a community as its
shared repertoire to define what is and can be talked about; as argued in Chapter 12, they
‘prescribe and proscribe’ a world. ‘World’ is used here in the sense of Stevick’s often quoted
(1982, p. 6) ‘world of meaningful action’ (see Arnold & Murphey, 2013). Without language,
and without the social facts it expresses, the group literally has no way to refer to what is
happening. This language in the community is how the group refers to what it does; it is how
the group works together to take actions that are (or can be) ‘meaningful’.
Social facts can be referential in another way, however, when the language is about what
the community does. This form of reference doesn’t always show up as talking about what the
community does; in other words it can be more than linguistic. Language about the community
can manifest as humor, as happened with the two epigrammatic social facts that were
parodied in the closing skits. Joking, humor, sarcasm, parody all depend on knowing the
reference, which is what the social fact provides. These forms of language play anchor the
group in and to itself by including those who ‘get the joke’ and understand its reference. They
can also leave others outside that world of meaning and action, although not necessarily
intentionally.
Two forms of community

Just as in the story of the two program principles (Narrative 13.1), social facts are defined by
the communities that use them. To capture this process, the design theory differentiates
between two forms of community, which helps both to understand how communities work as
well as how to design teacher education activities that create and use social facts. The
summary of the design theory in Figure 13.1 says that people participate in the teacher
education environment on two levels simultaneously: One involves doing certain things;
the other coming to think in certain ways about what they do. These two forms of
participation are identifiable in different ways and they show up differently in what the
community does.
C/a—Community of activity[D]
Conventionally, as we have said, communities are defined in terms of what they do. ‘Doing’
here means more than physical activity; in Wenger’s (1998) definition of community of
practice, it includes sharing purposes, ways of working, and tools and resources. In the
design theory, this form of observable collective work is referred to as a community of
activity, which coincides with conventional uses of ‘community of practice’ in much of the
educational research literature.
A community of activity (C/a) is a group of people who are doing a recognized or
recognizable activity—for example, queuing in line, having a classroom discussion, square-
dancing, or ordering a meal in a restaurant. The particular form of activity has a past or
heritage, which is what makes it recognizable; because we have seen others do the activity in
a similar fashion, we can give it a shared meaning, as when we might say, ‘Oh, I wonder what
they’re queuing for?’ or ‘We’re not discussing that right now.’ This recognition also allows
us to make value judgments about how the activity is being done, as in ‘You dance well; I
enjoyed being your partner’, and to disagree about another participant’s judgment, as in ‘That
waiter was really slow when he took our order’ …’Really, I thought he was fine … Just very
attentive.’
Visible, recognizable, and sensible

There are three aspects of a community of activity:
1 the actions are visible and
2 recognizable as meaningful
3 and/or sensible to others within that community.
‘Recognizable’ here means that others in the community of activity know what is going on,
while ‘sensible’ means they can understand—or make sense of—why the actions are
happening. These two aspects—being recognizable and making sense—are closely
intertwined, but heuristically it is useful to separate them. For instance, the first time I
observed a Japanese classroom in which students stood to answer the teacher’s question, I
recognized the action must have something to do with nominated turn-taking in combination
with showing respect for the teacher’s role. But given my own cultural background and
perspective, it did not strike me as a sensible way to manage participation. In a similar vein,
a trainee may recognize an activity, say putting students in groups, from socialization as a
student and the apprenticeship of observation, but may not be able to make sense of it from
the perspective of being the teacher.
These elements of visibility and recognition are in a sense tautological, which is how they
are meant to be: the actions are recognized as meaningful by those who know what they are.
As Vygotsky (1963) and other socio-culturalists (for example, Wertsch, 1985) have argued in
outlining the idea of the zone of proximal development, this tautology is a basic learning
mechanism that provides entry into the community. Individuals who are new to the group can
exercise their potential for membership by taking part in the activity—by doing what others
do—even though they may not yet make sense of it completely. Acting ‘as if’ is actually a
common experience in everyday situations such as a new job or social settings, as well as
more obvious ones like cross-cultural encounters. Practice teaching designs, for example, are,
in essence, performances in which trainees are supposed to act visibly as teachers so that they
can make sense of what they are doing.
C/e—Community of explanation[D]
There is a parallel form of collective life in the group, how the participants make meaning
together, which is where social facts live. This form of the group is a community of
explanation, a group of people that share common ways of reasoning about the world, or
particular aspects of it. The design theory hinges on the interrelation between this virtual
community, which makes and uses meanings, and its visible counterpart, the community of
activity.
The most recognizable instance of a community of explanation are speakers of a language.
The notion of ‘speech community’, developed by Hymes (1974) and Gumpertz (1982), shifted
the focus from language to ‘the situations, uses, patterns, and functions of speaking as an
activity in its own right’ (Hymes, 1968, p. 101). As Rampton (1998) pointed out, the term
‘postulates the basis of description as a social rather than a linguistic entity’ (p. 3). A
community of explanation, as one form of speech community, uses a common language, which
shows up in and as social facts just as in the program orientation example (Narrative 13.1).
Linguistic analysis can examine and document how language does this work of making social
facts for a community of explanation, but the point here is that communities of explanation can
be located in and through the language they use about what they do (although it is not the sole
means of documenting them).
Alignment between communities of activity and of explanation

The two forms of community—one of activity and the other of explanation—are the
operational fulcrum of the design theory. As defined here, a community of action does
recognizable activities and a community of explanation captures reasoning about those
activities that can make them meaningful and perhaps sensible. The relationship between
these two forms of community brings up the question of how actions and reasoning connect, or
how communities of activity and of explanation align. As Rampton (1998) noted somewhat
acerbically, ‘… “community” can’t only be seen as co-participation in locally embedded
practice—analysis has to extend to the ways in which “community” serves as a symbol and
sign itself’ (p. 14). There does not seem to be a one-to-one relationship between the two
forms of community; if there were, everything we do would make sense to us and, more
crucially, there would be little space for dynamism or change. If our actions always made
sense to us, if we always operated in ways that were always meaningful, reasoned, and
reasonable, the system would be solipsistic; everyone would always make sense and nothing
could or would change. This isomorphism between activity and explanation does exist, some
might argue, in extreme forms of political or religious ideology: in most cases the alignment
is partial and changing.
Plurilingual uses of explanatory resources

People use multiple explanatory resources to make meaning or sense in and about their
actions. In figuring out why we do things, we draw from many sources of explanation, which
may be more or less salient to the situation. The connections are largely based on our
experience and how we generally explain a particular type of action. But the explanation also
depends on circumstances: on what we are doing, why it needs explaining, and to whom. To
be able to function in these two ways, explanation has to be plurilingual. We draw on
whatever meaningful resources we have (and can) that will make sense within and to the
given community. For instance, in a class discussion when a few men take and hold the floor
and a woman comments that ‘Men do that a lot’, the explanation appeals to gender as a
community of explanation—to other women and perhaps men who agree and recognize that
behavior. She might have said, ‘My brothers do that a lot’, which shifts the community of
explanation to family as well as gender.
Using plurilingual resources allows participants to explain actions within a present
community of activity by referring to social facts drawn from other communities of
explanations. This function of displacement, which is a widely acknowledged function of
symbols and signs (for example, de Saussure, 1913/1983), is what permits explanations to
travel across time and space. We know that we can use language to speak or write about
things and people who are not physically present; we can use explanations in similar ways to
make sense of the present in terms of communities that are not actually there. As discussed in
Chapter 11 for example, the community of activity might be a group of teachers who are
reflecting on their individual classrooms. They draw explanatory resources from various
communities of explanation—their classes, their experiences, their professional training—but
ultimately they need to make sense to each other, and to the group itself.
Articulation[E]
Participating in activities through using certain symbolic tools is central to theories of
situated learning, as discussed in Chapter 5. The process, which has been described as an
‘apprenticeship’ (for example, Rogoff, 1998) or ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (Lave &
Wenger, 1991), is about achieving membership or belonging. This idea is central to how
communities of practice operate. Individuals can come into a community that is new to them
through what they do, through how they participate in the particular social practices of that
community of activity. They try, in effect, to ‘walk the walk’ of the new community. In this
design theory, the process of negotiating entry to a community of activity and explanation is
called articulation.
Articulation as working to be recognized

As a social process, articulation is how people work to become fully recognized participants
in a given community of activity. As social-cultural theorists have pointed out, what unfolds is
essentially a process of learning that comes about through participating as an individual in a
social setting. Wertsch (1991) outlines this interrelation, quoting Minick on Vygotsky (1978):
‘[A]ctions are at one and the same time components of the life of the individual and of the
social system’ (p. 47). Articulation, as it is used in this design theory, is the process of
coming to act as if one were a full member of the given community of activity. It is judged by
how the individual is using its explanatory resources to accomplish its activities. In using the
social facts partially or inappropriately, the process becomes visible to members of the given
community. It is evident in the actions and words that the individual, while working to enter
the community, is not yet a full member. The process of articulation shows this partial fit,
which is why it is noticeable. Once the alignment between the community’s activity and how
they use social facts is achieved, participation becomes part of the social and semiotic fabric
and is no longer remarked on. In other words, articulations then become socially appropriate
explanations.
Explanation[F]
Explanation is a parallel process to articulation. It occurs when what the individual does and
says is no longer remarked on by others in the community. When participants are using social
facts in ways appropriate to that community of explanation, they fit in and belong. The
explanations are unmarked in the community of activity because they are ‘walking the talk’.
As Fleck (1979), cited in Chapter 1 explained about social facts, ‘The explanation given …
can survive and develop within a given society only if this explanation is stylized in
conformity with the prevailing thought style’ (p. 2). Striving to gain this fit is key to how
newcomers use social facts; first they articulate the community’s activity and then as they
become full participants, they are able to explain it.
Entering into activity through articulation and explanation

The interplay between articulation and explanation is the central dynamic of the design
theory:
Over time, using these social facts becomes second nature to explain what the community
does. They come to belong to the group when these articulations are no longer remarked
on; they blend in and are accepted as explanations by the group. Figure 13.2 shows the
interplay of these two processes.
Figure 13.2 Entering into activity through articulation and explanation: Aligning community of
activity (C/a) with community of explanation (C/e)
As newcomers participate in the activity of the community (C/a), they articulate its principal
activities using the social facts of that community of explanation (C/e) to others in the
community (C/a). This process of articulation is how they can make sense of what is going on
to themselves for the rest of those involved. The process moves into explanation as
participants use the semiotic resources—social facts—according to the conventions and
norms of the community of explanation (C/e). The orientation fishbowl (Narrative 13.1) was
an instance of launching social facts—the two principles, ‘learning tells you how to teach’
and ‘you are your own best resource’—into a new community of activity (the teacher
education program) as a fledgling community of explanation.
The words used to describe this process of gaining membership (articulation) and
achieving full participation (explanation) in the community—to notice/noticeable; to remark
on/remarkable; and to recognize/be recognized or recognizable—outline a rough progression
through which a newcomer to a community of activity moves towards full participation. The
orientation fishbowl was designed to make the students as participants aware of the program
principles as key social facts. Socio-cultural theorists (for example, Vygotsky, 1963; Wertsch,
1991) described this same progression in the use of signs as tools. Initial attempts to use the
community’s social facts—its words, discourse, gestures, and ways of acting and being—may
get noticed by participants because the attempts do not conform with the ways in which the
collective uses those facts. The lack of alignment, which is noticeable, may not be remarked
on unless community members recognize what the newcomer is trying to do, in other words
unless the community’s participants can see how the newcomer is trying to use its social facts.
So recognition marks an acknowledgement that this use of social facts makes sense to the
community within its framework of explanation.
Re-balancing order
Explanations have the effect of restoring the social order and meaning within the community
of explanation. The following illustrates the process of rebalancing social norms by using an
acceptable explanation. It comes from a study of professional development in which Lillge
(2015, p. 146) documented how teachers’ thinking was impacted by a literacy training
intervention. How to convey to students the notion of purpose in writing arose as a major
concern: should their teaching focus directly on the formulaic elements of various written
genres that embody different purposes? Or should teachers work in more organically
responsive ways to help students learn to identify how audience and purpose connect through
choices of writing genre?
In one interview, a teacher talks about a student called Damien, who had graduated from
high school and was now enrolled in a pre-session academic program before beginning at
university.
TEACHER: In the summer, Damien had to take an English class, and he would e-mail me
his papers, [but] in college your professor’s not going to give all this instruction
on format. And that’s why to me it’s so important that my kids can format any
essay prompt that they’re given.
The essay topic involved describing an event that ‘had had an impact’, which seemed
relatively straightforward. The teacher explained:
T: Damien was so lost; he sent me this paper … He started off … : ‘Hi, my name
is Damien Brown.’ His professor didn’t say, ‘This is an argument essay. And
this is a synthesis essay. And this is a compare-and-contrast essay.’
The teacher concluded when Damien wasn’t given a format to follow, he reverted back to
middle-school writing.
The speaker, his former teacher, reconciles Damien’s essay writing misstep (‘he wasn’t
given a format to follow’) by using the social fact of ‘he reverted back to middle-school
writing’. The explanation resolves a noticeable misalignment in what he had to do by
describing how what did/did not make sense to him and why. She explains teachers know that
students rely on the names of essay genres (‘formats’) in the process of maturing as writers
through high school. In other words, these formats—’argument essay … synthesis essay …
compare-and-contrast essay’—were social facts in this community of activity teaching high
school writing, but they aren’t used explicitly as facts in the university writing class. Damien,
as a writer new to the university setting and not finding the familiar facts to cue him, writes a
self-introduction.
Her comments show how a group uses social facts to create explanations that are
meaningful to them. This circular quality of belonging—that explanations are meaningful to
those who recognize them—is the central dynamic of social learning and participation. It is
like watching the world go around from the carousel: you have to get on it and once you’re on
the carousel, you see the world from that perspective and what was static now goes around.
The circularity of articulation and explanation is central to the design theory. It suggests that
what makes teacher education activities work (or not work) hinges on this dynamic of
belonging and alignment (see Appendix A). Participants will have multiple ways to explain
what is happening, so the challenge is to establish the social facts of the teacher education
community as the accepted ones. When working on spelling with adult learners in literacy for
example, the explanation that a student ‘hasn’t yet mastered sound–symbol correspondence’
supplants the explanation that he ‘is a bad speller’.
Misaligned situations: tensions, currency, and portability in social facts

Tensions
Because activities, like the essay writing above, happen in social worlds, they are messy.
Something you do that makes sense and is unremarkable in one setting can seem misaligned
and noticeable under other circumstances. A joke told to the right listener is funny; but told to
a different person, or even to the same person under different circumstances, may fall flat.
This dynamic of how social facts play out in situations is central to their use. Situations in
which the activity and its explanation are misaligned create tensions. These tensions are
commonplace because there is never a one-to-one relationship between a community of
activity and its corresponding primary community of explanation. Like the levels of
contradiction in activity systems described in Chapter 6, tensions provide the dynamism
connecting activities and explanations. People draw on explanatory resources plurilingually
from across their communities of explanation to reconcile the tensions and misalignments they
encounter in the activities they are doing. It is natural to look for the explanation that seems to
hold the greatest value, meaning it is most recognizable and persuasive to the community.
In the process of aligning explanations, participants try to address and resolve tensions
between the specifics of the activity and the community to whom it needs to be explained. The
explanatory dynamic depends on social facts being shared in the community, a community that
is determined by being recognizable in what they are doing. So the activity delineates the
community, which uses the social facts. Damien’s former teacher explains what he did as if
she were talking to her peers as fellow teachers of high school writing. Her explanation
shows both the displacement of the social facts, discussed earlier, and the way in which they
can summon a community. This process of (re)aligning explanations with activities
reestablishes parity and balance between what has happened in the activity and the
explanation. It gives that sense of the familiar, ‘So that’s why that happened.’ ‘That’s why they
did that.’ ‘That makes sense …’, in which ‘that’ refers to an activity which the rest of the
statement explains.
Currency and portability
The (re)alignment process depends on two things. First, that the social facts particular to the
tension perceived in the situation have currency, that these facts can explain what happened.
Our worlds are full of social facts that have currency but are not actually accurate; for
example, the notion that ‘sitting in a draft can bring on a cold’ has wide currency but is
medically inaccurate. The currency supports the second key attribute of explanations: that
specific social facts can travel between different communities of activity, in other words that
they are portable. These two aspects are referred to here as: currency (how the social facts
are used to address a particular tension in an activity) and portability (how the facts can
travel across circumstances and settings). They are central to how social facts do the work of
communities.
The currency and value of the facts come from resolving tensions to restore what is seen as
normal and expected about the activity in the social situation (how essay writing is talked
about among this group of high school English teachers, for example). They can only function
in this way if the social facts offer some portability, meaning that they can be moved across
circumstances and settings with reference to a common activity (from essay writing in high
school to essay writing in university, for example). The community of activity (in this
example, essay writing) in these two settings (high school and university) may use the social
facts differently (essay formats are explicitly discussed in high school but seem to be tacitly
assumed in the essay prompt in university). The social facts (here, essay formats) may have
different currency in the two communities of explanation, but they still serve in explaining
what happened with Damien’s essay draft for this community of high school literacy teachers.
The explanatory power of the facts is portable. Clearly this portability is key to teacher
education, like most professional training. The aim is to introduce and learn to use the social
facts of language teaching in initial preparation, and then to see those facts travel into the on-
going work as a classroom teacher. This portability shapes how teachers make sense of what
happens in their teaching, and to whom, as in the example of Damien’s English teachers.
Two communities with distinct functions and one set of facts

The phrase—two communities with distinct functions, and one set of facts—summarizes the
whole design theory.
Two parallel communities: People take part in two parallel communities, one of activity
that is visible and public (C/a) and the other parallel community of explanation (C/e) that
offers collectively recognizable explanations for those activities.
With distinct functions: Each community has a particular function—the community of
activity does the work and the community of explanation makes sense of it.
Creating and using a set of social facts: Social facts are the glue connecting these two
communities; they are used to signify or value the activity as meaningful to the community
of explanation.
Against this collective backdrop, individuals make sense of a particular activity they are
doing (or they see or hear about others doing) using their community’s social facts that
explain it.
These points could describe a closed, tautological system in which activities were
solipsistically explained, except for the fact that individuals are always part of multiple
communities of explanation and draw from those semiotic resources. Because a person has
access to multiple ways of making sense of an activity, what we have called ‘plurilingual
explanations’, they can potentially make sense of the same activity in different ways. These
various explanations can be in tension with each other. To address and resolve the tension,
individuals choose the social facts that work to explain the activity to the community by
which they want to be recognized. Belonging to a community drives all this; it creates an
identity. Contrary to the Groucho Marx aphorism, people do want to be part of a club that
would have them as members. Figure 13.3 is a diagrammatic summary of the design theory.
Figure 13.3 (Mis)alignment in communities of explanation (C/e) and of activity (C/a)
An individual [X] is doing an activity [f], which is typically explained under the
circumstances in the setting using social fact SFf1; the solid line connects a community of
activity [C/a1] with a particular community of explanation [C/e1]. Facing an essay without a
prompt, Damien writes a self-introduction, which would fit with his high school essay
writing experiences. However, the person [X] can also draw on explanatory resources
[Explanation–SF#], the dotted line, connects other communities of practice [C/a# …] and of
explanation [C/e# …] for the activity [f’]. Damien emails his high school teacher the draft,
seeking confirmation that he is writing the appropriate essay, which suggests he is
noticing a potential misalignment in the genre. The two activities [f] and [f’] may be
similar, but they can be explained differently because they each invoke distinct social facts
[SF1 versus SF#]. Essay writing is essay writing, except that it isn’t. In high school there
are scaffolds available in the prompts; in university there may not be. These alternate forms
of explanation will be in tension with each other because they offer different ways of making
sense of the same activity [f]. The tension in explanation hinges on whether the activity is
seen as ‘the same’ or as ‘different’.

Recognizing a meaningful connection between the activity [f] and [f’] depends on the
currency, or explanatory power, of the two explanations to the community of explanation
[C/e1]. It depends on the extent to which the social facts of the alternative explanation
[Explanation–SF#] are portable, that they can be applied meaningfully to activity [f]. In this
sense, the phrase ‘the same things done differently’, describes this process by which
‘different’, alternate social facts are used to explain the ‘same’ activity.
Two summary examples

Two examples illustrate this process:
1 In an applied linguistics class, the professor writes on the board ASmoking is forbidden
and asks, ‘What is the word “smoking”?’ A student says, 1’In elementary school, we used to
call it an -ing word.’ 2’Actually here it is a gerund’, the professor replies.
2 After observing a lesson, the supervisor asks the new teacher how it went. 1’I was
disorganized; everything felt choppy … ‘, the teacher blurts out. 2’Maybe you were
nervous?’ the supervisor offers, ‘It’s a new class with these students, and with me here
observing.’
In these scenarios, the social facts used to explain the situation are couched in professional
language of the professor or supervisor, which glosses or translates the local language
explanation offered by the student or new teacher. The explanatory power of the facts lies in
the situation, that a member of the professional community is using them. Their social and
professional relationship dictates that the student or new teacher will use the new language, at
least in this situation. As someone seeking entry to the new community of explanation in order
to be identified with it, it makes sense to do so.
Example Applied linguistics Lesson observation

Activitya Explaining a grammatical termA Discussing the lesson
Explanation1 an -ing word ‘disorganized … felt choppy’
Explanation2 ‘a gerund’ ‘nervous [because] a new term
with these students, and being
observed’
Tension / (Mis)alignment Between previous term and the Why the new teacher felt less
one used in applied linguistics than competent
Explanatory fact Explaining ASmoking as a Explaining teacher’s feeling as
2’gerund’ 2’nervousness due to …’
Table 13.1 Two summary examples of (mis)aligned explanations
Three points are worth underscoring here. First, the new social facts are offered in the
situation; it would be impossible to separate them from it since that is how they are
meaningful. Second, belonging and identity are what drive the use of the new facts. This
offers an alternative way to look at the dynamics of power and role. It emphasizes the
postulant’s motivation (the student or new teacher in these examples), which is generally
implicit in belonging, that ‘I want (or need) to sound and be like you’. Third, all explanatory
resources continue to be available. The student can still refer to smoking as ‘an –ing word’
and the new teacher can still feel ‘disorganized by the choppiness of the lesson’. But now
each of them has two ways to explain it.
These multiple forms of explanation allow social facts to travel, to be portable, and to
have currency across situations, circumstances, and activities. And to endure, which I
realized was happening in the case of the program principles in Narrative 13.1.
Narrative 13.2: social facts endure

In one of the first studies I did of language teacher learning (Freeman, 1993) I followed
students from the graduate program into the field to observe them as teachers. Many ideas
emerged from that experience to become the seeds of this design theory. These were often
triggered by what didn’t seem to fit or make sense to me as a researcher. One example
came in interviewing these newcomers to language teaching. They would talk about what
didn’t work in the lesson (as new, and even experienced, teachers often do), about how
their expectations and what happened didn’t match up. But what struck me was that they
never said these problems could be explained by the fact that students could not learn the
language. They might talk about their students as ‘bored’, ‘unmotivated’, ‘uninterested in
the content’, but they simply never said the student was incapable of language learning. In
the schools, they certainly heard about students who ‘couldn’t write’, or ‘were math-
phobic’, or ‘couldn’t do chemistry’. These seemed to be the often used, readily available
explanations, but these newcomers never used them.
As I thought about it, I began to see a connection. The newcomers I was interviewing
had just completed a teacher education program in which one of the basic social facts was
expressed in the aphorism that ‘Learning tells you how to teach’. This social fact was not
debated; it simply was. It undergirded how they learned to talk about teaching generally
and what they did themselves as language teachers. In examining language learning—the
theories, the research, as well as their own experiences—they came to assume the
language-learning capacity as given. This social fact made their job how to access and
support that capacity, to let it ‘tell you how to teach’. The social fact seemed so enmeshed
in their work and thinking that, when I was there with them, it shaped how they explained
to me what they did.
Why call this theory a design theory?

The question—why call this theory a design theory?—is a reasonable one to end on. The
theory is meant to work in two ways. One is to serve in understanding what goes on, for better
or worse, more or less effectively, in what is done in teacher education. In this sense, it
should function descriptively to offer a set of terms to label what is done to a new set of
social facts. This is its use as a ‘theory’. The other use, which is closely connected to the
first, is the ‘design’ dimension. Here the framework can function proactively to prescribe to
ways of doing teacher education. However, these prescriptions will not be based on
disciplinary history, professional whim, or institutional fancy. Instead, the design theory ought
to provide a reasoned basis on which to evaluate, to reform, and to innovate in educating
second language (as well as other) teachers.
Appendix A
Using the theory in language teacher education activities

The design theory presented in Chapter 12 and Chapter 13 arose primarily out of my own
work as a language teacher educator. But to be honest, it had less to do with getting that work
done—organizing and implementing teacher education activities as well as the larger
programs that housed them—than it did with figuring out what seemed to make these things
work. This concern for process usually involved sorting through participants’ formal and
informal feedback, in conjunction with my own observations and those of my fellow teacher
educators. There was a productive interaction, and at times tension, between these two types
of information—the participants’ and the teacher educators’. It promoted a kind of meta-
language about the work we were doing, and thus began to make accessible certain key ideas,
which became the building blocks of the design theory. These building blocks are a good way
to approach how to use the theory in organizing and implementing teacher education designs.
Design moves from the theory

In Chapter 12, the design theory argues that social facts are central to how communities of
explanation make sense of what they are doing. These social facts are generated through what
individuals do (or don’t do) as participants in a specific community of activity. Access to
these processes starts with the social facts to be established and the social activities that
create and sustain them. The principles of this access can be laid out as a group of design
moves, which are like a set of operational corollaries to the theory itself. For instance, if
social facts [SFs] come about through what participants do in a community of activity [C/a],
then defining that community of activity, and describing what it should be doing, offers a
place to start.
An ongoing example: the language-learning biography

Early on in a methodology course, the trainer asks the trainees to recall their experiences
learning other languages formally and informally and write briefly about them. This activity
could be organized in various ways.
The different participatory pathways contribute to generating social facts, which are
articulated in the reporting phase in this activity. The three variations in Table A.1 illustrate
how pathways of participation animate different types of communities of activity (C/a). In the
table below, the pathways are arranged on a continuum from those that focus more on
individual participation (on the left) to more collective engagement (on the right). The theory
holds that the more participants interact in scaffolded ways, the more likely they are to need
the new social facts and have occasion to use them.
Circulating Using tools Reporting
The trainer could have the The trainer could use some sort To close the activity, the trainer
trainees talk with one another of tool in this process: might:
about what each had written: i) a worksheet with two i) ask trainees to reread and
i) with a partner columns, for formal and annotate their own lists
ii) in a ‘cocktail party’ informal learning, which based on comments they
circulating freely the trainees complete had heard
iii) with a goal—in a sequence a) before they start to talk ii) collect observations about
of brief conversations with b) while they are formal and informal learning
at least three other people. circulating on
Or the trainer might give each a) a poster paper
trainee: b) the whiteboard
ii) a handful of different iii) have trainees look at how
colored Cuisenaire rods many rods each has
(see Chapter 6), with the collected and which colors
instruction to give one to (which shows from whom);
each person she or he talks discuss what this might
to. show about participation.
Table A.1 Participatory pathways for generating social facts
In Table A.2, the pathway in the left-hand column [Ai, A-2, A-3] is a basic reflective activity
with a partner discussion; the one in the middle column [B-1, B-2, B-3] increases trainees’
interaction, though somewhat randomly. The pathway on the right [C-1, C-2, C-3] involves
more interaction, which is scaffolded by a metric (talking to at least three people).
Set-up: Trainees recall experiences learning other languages formally and informally and write briefly
about them.
Activity Design A B C
Circulating [A-1] Talk with a [B-1] Talk in a cocktail [C-1] Talk to at least
partner. party. three people.
Using tools [A-2] Two-column [B-2] Two-column [C-2] Different colored
worksheet before. worksheet while. rods to show who talks
to whom.
Reporting [A-3] Trainees reread [B-3] Trainer collects [C-3] Trainees look at
and annotate own lists. observations on who has which rods,
a) poster paper or and talk about what this
b) the whiteboard. data means.
Table A.2 Activity variations: Individual to collective engagement
Circulating
This phase in each pathway sets up slightly different assumptions about participation:
exchanging ideas with one specified person in column A, with several other people in column
B, or with a defined number of unspecified people in column C. From a trainee’s standpoint,
it is tacitly underscored that knowing what other people think, and what their experiences are,
matters [column A], that there is likely variety in those opinions and experiences [column B],
and/or that the variety matters and should be consciously harvested [column C].
Using tools
Two different physical tools are interwoven into these pathways: the two-column worksheet
and the Cuisenaire rods. The first tool records a distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’
learning; the second creates a visible trace of who has talked to whom. These tools are
combined differently in each pathway. If the trainees write before talking with peers [A-2],
the worksheet is a tool to record their own ideas. If they write while they are circulating [B-
2], it becomes an impromptu record of their conversations. As in the way the circulating is
organized in the activity, there are assumptions implicit in the different ways of using the
same tool. Writing first [A-2] underscores individual experience; writing during the activity
[B-2] turns the worksheet into a social record.
Reporting
The trainer’s decision (whether planned or spontaneous) about timing turns the worksheet into
a slightly different tool when it comes to the reporting phase of the activity. If the trainees
write about their own experiences before they circulate [A-2], the tool can be used
comparatively when they return to the worksheet afterwards to annotate what they have
written in relation to what they have heard [A-3]. If the trainees record ideas while they are
circulating, the worksheet becomes a collective record.
The reporting, when the trainer collects their thoughts [B-3], can substantiate this
collective value. Using poster paper [B-3 (a)] versus the whiteboard [B-3 (b)] in the general
discussion sets up different assumptions and values about the collective record. The poster as
a record may survive the activity to be brought back at a later time. (The whiteboard, which
is most likely erased at the end of the session, is an evanescent record.)
As a tool, the Cuisenaire rods also focus the activity differently. Using them to track who is
talking to whom while they exchange experiences [C-2] makes participation patterns visible.
The trainer might have different motivations for using this tool. Perhaps participation has
been uneven and some trainees have tended to dominate or to avoid working with others. Or
perhaps the trainer wants the activity to serve two purposes, as a discussion of language
learning and also to set up subsequent study of participation patterns. As the trainee hands out
the three rods, the tool can track a path through the social space, of the ‘cocktail party’ [B-1],
with a specific metric of talking to three people [C-1]. In reporting on the activity, the trainer
uses this visible record as a basis for discussion [C-3].
Using tools to create social facts: an ongoing example

The ways these tools are used leads to different social facts.
The worksheet captures trainees’ language learning experiences and defines a way to
categorize them as ‘formal’ or ‘informal’.
The rods track patterns of participation (who talks to whom).
Both tools let trainees articulate aspects of their experience, either as language learners or
as participants in the activity.
It would be misleading to see the worksheet-tool as connected only to the content of the
activity and the rods-tool to the process, however. Both tools create and sustain content,
although it is different content used in different ways.
There are several levels of potential content:
individual trainee’s experiences learning other languages formally and informally
the variety of those experiences among individuals and
the commonalities within that variety.
The way the trainer decides to report on the circulating activity helps to establish which of
these levels is the central concern.
The trainees’ individual notes on the worksheet ([A] and [B]) reinforce distinctions among
them, but leave the commonalities open. The trainermediated collective closing discussion
facilitates (and actually forces) some articulation of common patterns across these
experiences.
Pathways to content: converting time into social experience

The design of the activity—whether it is fully intentional, partially thought through, or simply
carried out—lays out pathways of participation for trainees. The actual content of the activity
is established through those pathways. This process of fashioning meaning is what Gattegno
(1987) referred to as ‘converting time into experience’, which he defined as the goal of
education.
Setting up/doing/closing activities

Participation takes place over time, which is clear in the stages of the training activity
detailed in Table A.1 and Table A.2. The way an activity is set up positions the content that
will come from it; that content unfolds and is built through how the activity is done. The tools
used in the activity facilitate the process. In this example, the worksheets are records of
experience; the rods track who has talked to whom. How the activity is closed—the reporting
phase in this example—establishes its meaning within the community of activity. Individuals
have their own experiences of the activity and thus may derive different meanings, but the
closing can name what become the take-away social facts.
The tools used in closing an activity can show the social facts that have been developed.
Writing up common themes on poster paper [B-3 (a)], or capturing the same information on a
whiteboard [B-3 (b)], which would inevitably be erased, illustrates this catalyzing process.
The poster creates what Wenger (1998) called a potential boundary object, which can ‘serve
to coordinate the perspectives of various constituencies for the same purpose’ (p. 106). By
leaving the poster visible in the training room and even perhaps referring to it subsequently,
the contents become part of the fabric of the community of activity.
Sense-making and social facts

Teacher education activity designs that create opportunities for individuals to summon,
identify, and voice their own experiences are fundamental to sense-making. To the extent that
these designs allow comparison among individual experiences, they build the community of
activity. If individual experiences are aggregated using a shared set of terms, they can become
the social facts of that community. Comparison is the central mechanism of sense making.
Anyone learning to be a language teacher brings two sources of experience to the teacher
education process: experiences as a student in schools and organized educational settings,
and experiences as a user of the language. This is discussed in Chapter 2 (see Figure 2.2).
These two forms of socialized experience are generally intermingled. Whether the language
has been learned in the world and is now to be used by teachers in school (which trajectory is
referred to as ‘native speaking’ ability in Chapter 3) or the language was learned in school
and is now used by new teachers, these experiential sources comingle as foundational in
learning to be a second language teacher.
Creating social facts from experience

The language-learning biography activity discussed above could be one example of how a
preparation program might unpack the two socializations. In setting up the activity as a
contrast between ‘experiences learning a new language formally and informally’, the training
situation highlights two sources of experience as potentially relevant to teaching. The way in
which the activity unfolds creates content out of these two experiences. The comparative
structure (‘learning languages formally and informally’) sets up a social fact—that there is
something in the discourse of second language acquisition called ‘instructed language
learning’. This idea of instructed language learning is an example of how new social facts
unfold. The fact arises out of a comparison with language learning in the world (perhaps
called ‘uninstructed’). It suggests that the role of language teaching methods is to bridge that
distinction by making language learning in the classroom more like language use in the world.
The various ways the activity could unfold create content that gives meaning to this
distinction. At first the meaning is individual, but then, through the design of the activity’s
participatory pathways, the meaning becomes increasingly shared and collective. The poster
paper, as a tool in closing the activity, is a boundary object representation of both the social
fact and the participation that generated it within and for this group of trainees and their
trainer as a community of activity.
Discussion
This example illustrates several aspects of social facts and how they are created in and
through communities of activity.
A social fact is an indivisible unit of meaning used within the community of explanation.
A fact is an abbreviation that the community uses and accepts; it works as shorthand for
complex thinking. For example, people talk about ‘getting sick with the flu’, but the
medical community has a different social fact for the same phenomenon. The common flu is
around every winter during ‘flu season’; the medical social fact is distinguished by ‘strains
of flu’ that are circulating at a particular time.
It is misleading to think of social facts in solely linguistic terms; they exist in many
semiotic forms. It is a social fact of teaching, for example, that in most classroom
environments, the students will sit facing the teacher. The specific form of address for the
teacher is another social fact of teaching: in some classrooms, teachers are called by their
family names, in others by their given name, in others by their title. The social fact is that
there is a way to address the teacher; it is manifested through different ways of doing so.
Social facts are not always reducible to particular terms or words. This irreducibility is
part of their power, usefulness, and their emblematic importance in furnishing social
explanations that connect a community of activity to a community of explanation.
A social fact is either right (and unremarkable) or wrong (and stands out). However, the
boundaries of a particular fact may be negotiated. For example, would reading aloud to a
child be an instance of instructed language learning? Would that depend if it happened in a
classroom? At home before bedtime? Negotiating what is and is not part of a particular fact
is part of the meaning-making process.
Social facts are referenced and used, but they are rarely defined directly or explicitly. They
come up and are meaningful in what the community is doing, through its activities.
The distinction between articulation and explanation (described in Chapter 13) hinges on the
appropriacy of use of the facts of the community. The following scenario from the training
example illustrates how that process can work.
Summarizing the example

Figure A.1 summarizes the ongoing training example. The worksheet and the rods used as
tools help to explicitly create the new social facts. They provide tangible, kinesthetic
evidence of both the meaning of instructed language learning (the worksheet) and of how that
meaning evolved in the community of activity (the rods). In this way, the two tools together
make apparent to participants the overlap between the two communities of explanation (C/e),
of being a student and of being a language learner (represented by the overlay in Figure A.1).
Figure A.1 Ongoing training example
When the fact is used appropriately, it goes unremarked within the community; this is the
process of explanation. When it is used inappropriately, the use may be corrected or more
likely just ignored; this attempted use is articulation. But to the degree that the use attracts
attention, it can help those who are new to the community to sort out the parameters of
meaning.
Appendix B
Using the theory in language teacher education programs

Teacher education is a hybrid setting, in which one community of activity with its
accompanying community of explanation is being used explicitly to ‘teach’ or introduce
another. In language teacher education, for example:
The community of activity could be a pre-service training or alternative route course.
The communities of explanation could include not only the professional language of the
course or program, but a number of local languages from the socialization experiences of
being a student and of being a user of the target language (sometimes called ‘cultural
knowledge or background’).
The explicit, foundational social facts would be ‘student’ and ‘teacher’ roles, and ‘content’
to be learned (like the example of the language-learning biography ‘instructed language
learning’ in Appendix A).
The tacitly held social facts would include those from socialization like ‘studenting’ and
using the target language (see Figure 2.2).
Learning new social facts, like any novel meanings, is a process of sense-making; it is
essentially learning terms in a new discourse. Many of these terms will rename aspects of
activity, so, for example, greeting students at the start of the lesson might be renamed in
professional terms as ‘setting a class climate’. Trainees in a course or program are drawing
on two communities of explanation (being a student and being a language learner) to build
these new social facts. The explanatory resources of these two communities create a hybridity
in second language teacher education designs. Trainees are caught between the studenting in
the training room and the teaching-learning practices of the language classroom, which
combination generates new social facts.
Designing in explanations
The central process in the design theory is how articulation becomes explanation, in other
words, how newcomers become part of a community of explanation by taking on its
discourse. This process is clearly located at the level of program design. The twin processes
of articulation and explanation happen in the sequence of programmatic learning opportunities
offered by the teacher education program. This sequence is usually organized into input and
practice followed by application of those inputs. This trajectory generally holds both within
individual lessons and modules, as well as across the course or program. As social processes
of joining and belonging, articulation and explanation happen; they can be taken for granted or
more explicitly planned. The more the opportunities are engineered (as in the example in
Appendix A), the more likely it is that articulation can catalyze into explanation, thus
converting newcomers to the discourse into fuller members of the community. If this
conversion process is left to happen untended, individuals may or may not successfully
engage with the new community of explanation.
Catalyzing new explanations

This conversion process may happen in many places in the sequence of a teacher education
program; catalyzation is basically a way of designing for, and thus accelerating and to some
extent shaping the conversion. The basic sequence of input, practice, and application, which
undergirds teacher education as a fractal structure in the organization of activities, courses1,
and programs, helps to organize how conversion can be catalyzed in professional learning.
At the level of activity

The ongoing training example in Appendix A illustrates how a new social fact might be
catalyzed through the ways in which pathways of participation are organized. Referring to
Table A.1, imagine the following version of the activity:
Participation pathway Scenario (from Table A.1)

Circulating using tools Trainees circulate in a ‘cocktail party’ (B-1) using
a worksheet (B-2) with the goal of talking to at
least three people to find commonalities (C-1).
Reporting The trainer closes the activity by collecting their
worksheet observations on a poster (B-3, a).
Table B.1 Organizing pathways of participation to catalyze learning
The conversion from articulation to explanation may be catalyzed depending on how the
trainer manages this phase of the activity. The more the trainer puts the studenting experience
and the language learning experience at odds (see Figure A.1), the more these two
communities of explanation will surface and vie with each other. Consider the following
vignette.
In the closing training activity, the trainer divides a poster into three columns: ‘formal
language learning’, a blank middle column, and ‘informal language learning’. In the first
column are written: ‘took tests’, ‘studied from a book’, ‘asked questions of the teacher’. In
the third, there might be: ‘listened a lot’, ‘tried things out’, ‘pointed to show what I meant’.
Then a trainee comments:
TRAINEE: It helped me to be corrected when I made mistakes in the new

language.
The trainer writes the comment in the middle column, which has been left blank, between the
‘formal’ and ‘informal’ lists.
TRAINER: Corrected by …?
TRAINEE: I meant corrected by a teacher.
TRAINER: Does it have to be a teacher?
TRAINEE: Yes
TRAINEES: No, not necessarily …
TRAINER: OK, we’ll leave it here in the middle column for now.
This vignette brings up the role of explicit correction in the social fact of instructed language
learning and engages the two communities of studenting and language learning with each
other. But the point is not to resolve the engagement, but to let it stand. By doing so, the trainer
signals the complexity of the new social fact and the explanatory resources that it assembles.
If the summary poster with the trainees’ comments about ‘instructed language learning’ is
brought back in subsequent sessions, the tension between the two communities of studenting
and using the language is reintroduced semiotically. I have found, interestingly, that trainees
will often refer to these artifacts by pointing to and sometimes talking about them, almost as if
the physical representation is a reminder of the tension between forms of explanation and an
affirmation of the new fact.
At the level of a module or course

Catalyzing tensions in explanation can be a central part of designing teacher education
courses or modules. Here it is helpful to think about within- and across-course designs:
Within-course designs involve sequences of activity, which take place over time within the
same course or module, that create circumstances to develop explanatory resources and
catalyze tensions in explanation. These designs are generally within the control of an
individual teacher educator.
Across-course designs involve applying these same principles across several different
courses or modules in a program. These designs often involve several faculty members and
can entail negotiation around a common objective. Although they can be more difficult to
accomplish, across-course designs usually have more impact precisely because they
engage the teacher educators who are designing them in fashioning a shared community of
activity to generate particular explanatory resources. Narrative 13.1 would be an example.
Within-course designs
The challenge is that the course itself is a community of activity, usually with a predominant
community of explanation from the course topic. For example, courses in second language
acquisition or in methodology are each associated with particular facts and explanatory
resources; these would be instantiated in particular ways of studenting within the topic. In a
second language acquisition course, trainees might be expected to participate by listening to
teacher-led input and by reading more extensively from certain genres (such as accounts of
research studies). In a methodology course, they might also be expected to take part as
learners in demonstration lessons and to peer teach. In both instances, there are certainly
ways to organize the input so that it is presented through participatory pathways that ‘walk the
talk’ to align with the new community of activity of classroom language teaching. The
language-learning biography example in Appendix A outlines an activity that could be used
appropriately in either course.
The challenge is engineering tensions within the explanatory resources. This generally
means setting up explicit comparisons either via sub-group experiences with the larger
community of activity (as in the three pathways in the example in Appendix A), or within
individual participants over time (as happens with reflective activities).
Comparisons via sub-group experiences

This strategy entails organizing specific sub-group experiences which align with particular
social facts.
In the methodology course for example, a demonstration lesson might subdivide the class
into learners and observers of the lesson. This takes a single community of activity (the
whole class) and divides it into two sub-communities, each with a distinct role and way to
participate.
To define participation pathways in the lesson, the trainer might ask some learners to
participate as language learners, and others to be observers. The trainer could assign the
observers specific tasks and give them tools to do the task. This instruction sets up two
distinct forms of participation—being a language learner versus being an observer of the
language learning process.
These two forms of participation could then converge in closing the activity if the
observer-learners were asked, using their emic and etic perspectives, to assemble a view
of one person’s language learning in the demonstration.
This within-course design, summarized in Table B.2, draws on different explanatory
resources within the same overall community of activity of the course. Orchestrating a
contrast between emic and etic perspectives in the demonstration lesson introduces
considerable complexity into what could be taken as the singular experience of ‘watching’
and ‘experiencing’ a teaching method. Closing the activity in a way that emphasizes the
perspectives of learning and observing learning and interweaves the experiences of
individuals and of groups in each role, supports a range of new facts.
Demonstration lesson Discussion Explanatory resources
Emic Being a language learner Experiences of learning Resources in – emic
in the lesson in the lesson— perspectives
commonalities and 1) as an individual
differences learner
2) as shared by the
group
Etic Being an observer of Experiences of Resources about – etic
that learner observing the perspectives
commonalities and 1) as an observer
differences (of the a) of an individual
observed learner and as learner
observers)
b) of the class
2) as shared by the
group
Table B.2 Using sub-groups to bring both emic and etic views to a learning experience
The same demonstration lesson could generate different social facts depending on the
course, as a community of explanation, that was housing it, as shown in Table B.3.
In a second language acquisition course

Descriptive versus introspective studies of
language learning
Positivist versus phenomenological
orientations
In a methodology course
Individual learning experiences within a
method
Fidelity of the methods implementation
Table B.3 Different course; different social facts with same demonstration lesson
The perspectives as a learner and as an observer, as well as the levels of individual and
shared experiences in these roles, establish reference points that are catalyzed through the
activity of comparative analysis. In this process, trainees articulate the new facts; it is
important to understand that this articulation is not simply verbal and language-based; it is
more broadly semiotic. The learner and observer roles create temporary identities that
articulate different perspectives—emic and etic—on what is happening. Organized in this
way, the class as a community of activity actually instantiates the structure of the social fact.
In contrast, consider how having the entire class watch a video of the demonstration lesson
would create a different community of activity with little catalytic opportunity to articulate
these facts. Everyone, trainees and trainer, would be observing a demonstration at a remove
so their common experience would be as viewer of the video. The discussion could only be
descriptive, with no first-hand personal referents.
Experience as participating in an activity about something

The contrast of the live versus the videotaped demonstration lesson illustrates a central
distinction in how experience can be tapped in the development of social facts. In teacher
education at all levels, from activity to course to program, experience can be parsed as
participating in an activity about something. Table B.4 summarizes this difference.
Participate (activity) in (pathway) about (experience) Explanatory resources

Live demonstration As learners Language learning Own learning
lesson (emic; in the lesson)
As observers Language learning (etic; Observed learning
immediate as observers) Observer experience
Video-taped As viewers Language learning (etic; Descriptive information
demonstration lesson removed via video) of lesson
Table B.4 Contrasting a live demonstration lesson with a video-taped demonstration
In this example, in the live demonstration, trainees participate in the activity of either learning
a new language or observing that language learning, whereas in the video-taped
demonstration, everyone watches the lesson. The topic is the same but the participation
pathways are very different, which leads to distinct experiences and thus to using different
explanatory resources.
The design principle can be summarized as experiences create explanatory resources
within an activity.
Across-course designs
Across-course designs bring a level of complexity and coordination, which is both a strength
but can also make them harder to organize. Most university based pre-service teacher
preparation takes places in a socio-professional culture that emphasizes individual teacher
educators and their teaching. While programmatic collaboration in planning and delivering
teacher education programs is now fairly common, these efforts exist against the backdrop of
‘the academy’ as the community of activity. Decisions and functions from staffing to
scheduling, from assignments to grading, from student admissions to student advisement, all
contribute to this community and the way it does business. These views are very rarely fully
shared across teacher education faculties, with the consequence that building robust new
communities of explanation in these programs is harder to do.
Alternative route training programs often differ markedly in this regard. They are generally
cohort-based and intensive, which means that participants become socially invested in the
group. They usually set their own schedules, which are often separate from the timetabling of
the larger institution. Evaluation often differs from the conventional grading paradigm, and
trainers or teacher educators usually work in teams. These organizational features, which are
found in professional schools (see Mertz, 2007; Philips, 1998), increase opportunities for
across-course design.
Summarizing design ideas

Table B.5 summarizes the design ideas discussed in Appendix A and Appendix B.
Terms Elaborations
Community of activity [C/a] 1 Activities happen in time and place.
2 Recognizable activity defines the participants
doing it.
3 Norms make an activity recognizable to
participants and to others.
4 A community of activity is recognizable
through the shared activity and its norms.
Community of explanation [C/e] 5 Doing the activity, and expressing norms
about it, involves making sense of it.
6 A community of explanation is identifiable in
its use of shared meanings to make sense of
activity.
7 Participants use shared meanings to explain
the activity.
8 Newcomers try to use shared meanings to
articulate activity in noticeably inappropriate
ways for that community.
Social Fact(s) [SF] 9 Are commonly used meanings shared by the
community of explanation.
Tensions/contradictions [T/C] 10 Tensions occur when various social facts
are/can be used to explain the same activity.
The contrast in explanations highlights the
different communities that hold those facts.
Table B.5 Summary of design ideas

Appendix C
Thoughts on assessment
The ways in which explanatory resources play out in teaching experiences are probably most
evident in the assessment process.
Three scenarios
A In a short-term intensive alternative route program, the trainee’s performance during the
series of practice teaching sessions is evaluated by peers and by the trainer, drawing on
expectations and practices from the training curriculum. At the end of the course, an
assessor (who also trains using the same curriculum but in another institution) visits the
course, meets with trainees and reviews samples of their work to corroborate the trainer’s
evaluations, and notes outlying judgments and procedural anomalies.
B In a residency teacher preparation program, trainees spend a full academic year in
various forms of scaffolded apprenticeships in the school. The trainee, classroom teacher,
and the residency supervisor meet periodically to evaluate the trainee’s performance using
school and residency program goals, which are laid out in the detailed rubric for
classroom practice.
C university-based pre-service teacher preparation program culminates in the trainee
spending several months working full time in one classroom. The university supervisor
observes the teaching periodically and meets with the trainee, and sometimes with the
classroom teacher, to evaluate the trainee’s performance in terms of teacher preparation
program standards.
These scenarios position the worlds of teacher education and of classroom teaching
differently. From the vantage point of the design theory, the differences surface clearly in how
the assessment practices depend on—and indeed promote—a common professional language
among participants. How do the teacher education and teaching worlds as communities of
activity structure the use of their respective social facts and explanatory resources?
Analyses
Scenario A: the alternative route program
In scenario A, the alternative route program is designed as a community of activity
(C/aCERT) to promote to a single set of facts and explanatory resources through the training
curriculum, which provides a common language of teaching and learning (C/eCERT).
The assessment of practice teaching is local and intra-mural by the trainer. It is
corroborated by the external assessor, who uses the same social facts (C/eCERT) to validate
these judgments.
The primacy of a single, overarching community of explanation (C/eCERT) arguably focuses
trainees’ participation on using those explanations.
Articulation with the social facts of the curriculum happens continually in the course. The
teaching experience is another setting with its new subcommunity of activity (C/aPT) (of
trainees-as-teachers, trainers, and students) in which those facts are used to talk about the
teaching that is happening there.
As they learn to articulate what ‘is going well’ and what ‘needs improvement’, trainees use
the facts of the alternative route program as a community of explanation (C/eCERT>PT).
The visit of the assessor provides an opportunity for trainees to glimpse the explanatory
import of the facts beyond the local setting. It is somewhat like a visit by a fluent ‘native’
speaker to a school language class, which lets students ‘really’ use the target language.
Scenario B: the residency program

This community is a unified community of explanation, organized around a single set of social
facts.
The community of activity is the school, and the teacher education program is organized as
a residency within that setting (C/aRES).
This shapes the communities of explanation and the social facts they need and use (C/eRES).
There is a common professional language of teaching and learning (as in scenario A),
which is used during the assessment conferences and documented in the various
observations tools (such as rubrics, performance expectations, etc.).
These facts do not necessarily travel beyond the residency design as a community of
explanation (C/eRES), unlike in scenario A. The design clearly prepares trainees to teach in
the setting; the degree to which that setting is replicated and recognized beyond itself is
less clear. This makes the assessment practices a leap of faith from the trainee’s
perspective.
Scenario C: the university-based hybrid programs

There is one, often fragile, community of activity here: the student teaching placement
(C/aPLCMNT).
It is architected out of two robustly existing communities—the university teacher education
program, (C/aUNI) and the school, (C/aSCH)—each of which has its particular, potentially
competing, community of explanation, (C/eUNI) and (C/eSCH).
There is often little common language between them. In discussions following the
observations, the university supervisor uses facts, which usually come from work the
trainee has done in university (C/eUNI).
As explanatory resources, these facts may or may not coincide with the school site as a
community of explanation (C/eSCH). These tensions often surface in comments about
student teaching, such as ‘university training is too theoretical’ or ‘forget what they taught
you at the university, this is how we do things here’. These archetypal comments suggest
the underlying positions between the two settings in which the school, although it hosts the
student teaching placement, often remains subordinate to the university.
Programmatic initiatives such as laboratory schools, professional development schools, or
school-university partnerships have sought to redesign this interface in order to strengthen
a common community of activity (C/aPLCMNT) and balance the two communities of
explanation, (C/eUNI) and (C/eSCH). Where successful, these initiatives actually create an
amalgam community, which can evolve its particular vernacular of explanations. Often
though, the facts used in the vernacular explanations are drawn from the two ‘home’
communities of explanation (C/eUNI) and (C/eSCH) and re-voiced as explanatory resources
for the placement experience.
Summary
These three scenarios illustrate the complex ecologies of participation and meaning that
underlie teacher education designs. Activities call for explanations, which is simply to say
that, in doing things, trainees talk. In talking, they use language to make sense of what they’re
doing, to others in the activity and to themselves. Trainees explain what is happening to each
other and in that process to themselves. This becomes the basis for assessing what they do.
References
Abell, S. K., Park Rogers, M. A., Hanuscin, D. L., Lee, M. H., & Gagnon, M. J. (2009).
Preparing the next generation of science teacher educators: A model for developing PCK
for teaching science teachers. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 20(1), 77–93. doi:
10.1007/s10972-008-9115-6
Alatis, J. (Ed.). (1990). Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and
Linguistics, 1990. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
Alatis, J. (Ed.). (1991). Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics
1991. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
Alatis, J. (Ed.). (1994). Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics
1994. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
Alatis, J., Stern, H., & Strevens, P. (Eds.). (1983). Georgetown University Round Table on
Languages and Linguistics, 1983. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
Allwright, D., & Bailey, K. (1991). Focus on the language classroom: An introduction to
classroom-research for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Allwright, D., & Hanks, J. (2009). The developing language learner: An introduction to
exploratory practice. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages. (2014). Standards for foreign
language learning: Preparing for the 21st century. Retrieved from www.actfl.org
An, S., Kulm, G., & Wu, Z. (2004). The pedagogical content knowledge of middle school
mathematics teachers in China and the U.S. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education,
7(2), 145–172. doi: 10.1023/B:JMTE.0000021943.35739.1c
Anthony, E. (1963). Approach, method, and technique. English Language Teaching Journal,
17(2), 63–67. doi: 10.1093/elt/XVII.2.63
Anyon, J. (1981). Social class and school knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 11(1), 3–42.
Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1179509
Argote, L., & Ingram, P. (2000). Knowledge transfer: A basis for competitive advantage in
firms. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82(1), 150–169. doi:
10.1006/obhd.2000.2893
Arnold, J., & Murphey, T. (2013). (Eds.) Meaningful action: Earl Stevick’s influence on
language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bailey, K. M. (2006). Language teacher supervision: A case-based approach. Cambridge,
UK and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Ball, D. L. (1993). With an eye on the mathematical horizon: Dilemmas of teaching
elementary school mathematics. Elementary School Journal, 93(4), 373–397. Retrieved
from https://www.mathematik.tu-dortmund.de/ieem/cms/media/BzMU/BzMU2009/
Beitraege/Hauptvortraege/BALL_Deborah_BASS_Hyman_2009_Horizon.pdf
Ball, D. L., Thames, M., & Phelps, G. (2008). Content knowledge for teaching: What makes
it special? Journal of Teacher Education, 59(5). 389–407. 10.1177/0022487108324554
Barahona, M. (2015). English language teacher education in Chile: A cultural historical
activity theory perspective, New York, NY: Routledge.
Barnard, R., & Burns, A. (Eds.). (2012). Researching language teacher cognition and
practice. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Bazerman, C. (1988). Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the
experimental article in science. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Benedict-Chambers, A. (2014). Developing professional vision for practice: Preservice
teachers using students’ scientific ideas in simulations of practice. Doctoral dissertation,
University of Michigan. Retrieved from
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/107187
Blair, R. (Ed.). 1982. Innovative approaches. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Bligh, R. (2012, November 13). Are teachers born and raised (not trained)? The Washington
Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-
sheet/wp/2012/11/13/are-teachers-born-not-made/
Bolster, A. (1983).Toward a more effective model of research on teaching. Harvard
Educational Review, 53(3), 294308. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.53.3.0105420v41776340
Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of the research on what
teachers think, know, believe and do. Language Teaching, 36(2), 81–109.
doi:10.1017/S0261444803001903
Borg, S. (2006). Teacher cognition in language teaching. London: Continuum.
Borg, S., & Albery, D. (2015). Good practice in INSET: An analysis of the DELTA. In R.
Wilson & M. Poulter (Eds.). Assessing language teachers’ professional skills and
knowledge (pp. 37–61). Cambridge: Cambridge English Language Assessment.
http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/teaching-english/cambridge-english-teaching-
framework/Retrieved June 2015.
Braine, G. (2010). Nonnative English speaker teachers: Research, pedagogy, and
professional growth. New York, NY: Routledge.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (1999/2004). How people learn:
Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
British Association for Applied Linguistics. (1997). Notes on the History of the British
Association for Applied Linguistics—1967–1997. Produced on the occasion of the 30th
BAAL annual meeting, University of Birmingham. Retrieved from
http://www.baal.org.uk/dox/history_of_baal.pdf
Brooks, N. (1964). Language and language learning: Theory and practice. New York, NY:
Harcourt Brace.
Brown, H. (1994). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy.
White Plains, NY: Pearson-Longman.
Brown, J., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning.
Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42. doi: 10.3102/0013189X018001032
Brumfit, C., & Johnson, K. (Eds.). (1979). The communicative approach to language
teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burns, A. (1999). Collaborative action research for English language teachers.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burns, A., Freeman, D., & Edwards, E. (2015). Theorizing and studying the language-
teaching mind: Mapping of research on language teacher cognition. Modern Language
Journal, 99(3), 585–601.
Burton, R. R., Brown, J. S., & Fischer, G. (1984). Skiing as a model of instruction. In B.
Rogoff, & J. Lave (Eds.). Everyday cognition: Its development in social context (pp.
139–150). Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Cambridge Teacher Development Scheme. (2015). Cambridge English Teaching
Framework. Retrieved from http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/teaching-
english/cambridge-english-teachingframework/
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global Englishes and cosmopolitan
relations. New York, NY: Routledge.
Cazden, C. (1982). Contexts for literacy: In the mind and in the classroom. Journal of
Reading Behavior, 14(4). 413–427. Retrieved from
http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/14/4/413.full.pdf
Cazden, C. (1988). Classroom discourse: The language of teaching and learning.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Chacón, C. T. (2005). Teachers’ perceived efficacy among English as a foreign language
teachers in middle schools in Venezuela. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(3), 257–
272.
Chomsky, N. (1959). Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language, 35(1), 26–58.
Chomsky, N. (2002). Syntactic structures. Walter de Gruyter: Amsterdam.
Chvany, C. (1995). Alexander Lipson—Contributions for him and by him. The Slavic and
East European Journal, 39(4), 609–613. doi: 10.2307/309111
Clandinin, D. J. (1986). Classroom practice: Teacher images in action. London: Falmer
Press.
Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1986). Rhythms in teaching: The narrative study of
teachers’ personal practical knowledge of classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education,
2(4), 377–87. doi:10.1016/0742-051X(86)90030-2
Clark, C., & Peterson, P. (1986). Teachers’ thought processes. In M. C. Wittrock, (Ed.),
Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 255–296). New York, NY: Macmillan.
Clarke, M. (1994). Dysfunctions of the theory/practice discourse. TESOL Quarterly, 28(1).
9–26. doi: 10.2307/3587196
Cohen, D., Raudenbush, S., & Ball, D. (2003). Resources, instruction, and research.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25(2), 119–142.
doi:10.3102/01623737025002119
Coleman, H. (2011). Developing countries and the English language: Rhetoric, risks, roles
and recommendations. Dreams and realities: Developing countries and the English
language, 9–21.
Coleman, H. (Ed.). (2011). Dreams and realities: Developing countries and the English
language. London: British Council.
Collins, A. (1988). Cognitive apprenticeship and instructional technology. Cambridge,
MA: Bolt, Beranek, & Newman Consulting Technical Report.
Council of Europe. (2001). Common European framework of reference for languages:
Learning, teaching and assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Creswell, J. W., & Miller, D. L. (2000). Determining validity in qualitative inquiry. Theory
into Practice, 39(3), 124–130. doi: 10.1207/s15430421tip3903_2
Criado, R. (2013). A critical review of the presentation-practice-production model (PPP) in
foreign language teaching. In R. Monroy, (Ed.), Homenaje a Francisco Gutiérrez Díez (pp.
97–115). Murcia, Spain: Edit.um.
Cross, R. (2010). Language Teaching as sociocultural activity: Rethinking language teacher
practice. The Modern Language Journal, 94(3), 434–452. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-
4781.2010.01058.x
Curran, C. (1976). Counseling-learning in second languages. Apple River, IL: Apple
River Press.
Cushing-Leubner, J., & Bigelow, M. (2014). Principled eclecticism and the holistic
approach to language teaching and learning. In S. Çelik (Ed.), Approaches and principles
in English as a foreign language (EFL) education (pp. 254–263). Ankara, Turkey: Egiten.
Davies, A. (1991). The native speaker in applied linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Day, C. (1999). Developing teachers: The challenges of lifelong learning. London: Falmer
Press.
de Saussure, F. (1913/1983). A course in general linguistics. London: Duckworth
Publishing.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of
education. New York, NY: Macmillan.
Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the
educative process. Boston, MA: D. C. Heath & Co.
Deyes, T. (1982). Eclecticism in language teaching. World Englishes, 2(1), 15–18. doi:
10.1111/j.1467-971X.1982.tb00512.x
Diller, K. (1977). The language teaching controversy Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Dudley-Marling, C., Abt-Perkins, D., Sato, K., & Selfe, R. (2006). Teacher quality: The
perspectives of NCTE members. English Education, 38(3), 167–193. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40173336
Dunkin, M., & Biddle, B. (1974). The study of teaching. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, &
Winston.
Elbaz, F. (1983). Teacher thinking: A study of practical knowledge. London: Croome Helm
Publishing.
Ellis. R. (2008). The study of second language acquisition. 2nd. ed. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Engestrom, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to
developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit.
Engestrom, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Y.
Engestrom, R. Miettenin, & R. Punamaki (Eds.). Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 19–
38). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Engestrom, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Towards an activity theoretical
transformation. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156.
doi:10.1080/13639080020028747
English Opens Doors (EOD). (2014). Program Information. Retrieved from
http://www.centrodevoluntarios.cl
English Profile. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.englishprofile.org/
English Program in Korea (EPIK). (2014). Program information. Retrieved from
http://www.epik.go.kr
Farr, F. (2010). The discourse of teaching practice feedback: A corpus-based investigation
of spoken and written modes. New York, NY: Routledge.
Farrell, T. (2004). Reflective practice in action: 80 reflective breaks for busy teachers.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Farrell, T. (2007). Reflective language teaching. London: Continuum Publishers.
Farrell, T. (2013). Reflective writing for language teachers. Sheffield England: Equinox
Publishing.
Fernsten, L., & Fernsten, J. (2005). Portfolio assessment and reflection: enhancing learning
through effective practice. Reflective Practice, 6(2), 303–309. doi:
10.1080/14623940500106542
Finnegan, D. (2013). Geography of knowledge. Oxford Bibliographies. doi:
10.1093/obo/9780199874002-0057
Fleck, L. (1979). Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Fleck, L. (1935/1981). Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Ford, M. (2008). ‘Grasp of practice’ as a reasoning resource for inquiry and nature of
science understanding. Science and Education, 17(2–3), 147–177. doi: 10.1007/s11191-
006-9045-7
Ford, M. & Forman, E. (2006). Redefining disciplinary learning in classroom contexts.
Review of Educational Research in Education, 30, 1–32. doi:
10.3102/0091732X030001001
Freeman, D. (1982). Observing teachers: Three approaches to in-service training and
development. TESOL Quarterly, 16(1), 21–28 doi: 10.2307/3586560
Freeman, D. (1989). Teacher training, development, and decision making: A model of
teaching and related strategies for language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 23(1),
27–45. doi: 10.2307/358750
Freeman, D. (1993). Renaming experience/reconstructing practice: How teachers develop
their conceptions of classroom practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 9 (5/6), 485–
497.
Freeman. D. (1996). Redefining the relationship between research and what teachers know.
In K. Bailey and D. Nunan (Eds.). Voices from the language classroom: Qualitative
research in second language education (pp. 88–115). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Freeman. D. (2002). The hidden side of the work: Teacher knowledge and learning to teach.
Language Teaching, 35(1), 1–13. doi: 10.1017/S0261444801001720
Freeman, D., Coolican, M., & Graves, K. (2011). Learning to teach Spanish: Identifying,
inducting, and supporting apprentice teachers in the Ann Arbor Languages Partnership. In J.
Macalister and I. S. P. Nation (Eds.). Case Studies in Language Curriculum Design (pp.
129–146). New York, NY: Routledge.
Freeman, D. & Johnson, K. E. (1998). Re-conceptualizing the knowledge-base of language
teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 32(3), 397–417. doi: 10.2307/3588114
Freeman, D. & Johnson, K. E. (2005). Response to Tarone and Allwright. In D. Teddick
(Ed.). Second language teacher education: International perspectives (pp. 25–32). New
York, NY: Routledge.
Freeman, D., Katz, A., Garcia Gomez, P., & Burns, A. (2015). English-for-teaching:
Rethinking teacher language proficiency for the classroom. English Language Teaching
Journal, 69(2), 129–139. doi: 0.1093/elt/ccu074
Freeman, D., Katz, A., LeDrean, L., Burns A., & Hauck, M. (2013). The ELTeach Project
—Report on the Global Pilot, 2012. Boston, MA: National Geographic Learning.
Retrieved from http://www.elteach.com/elteach/media/documents/elteach_gpr_9-20-
13.pdf
Freeman, D., & Richards, J. C. (Eds.). (1996). Teacher learning in language teaching.
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Freudenstein, R. (1985). The influence of Robert Lado on language teaching in Europe. In D.
Tannen & J. Alatis (Eds.). Languages and linguistics: The interdependence of theory,
data, and application (pp. 1–11). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Gattegno. C. (1976a). The common sense of teaching foreign languages. New York, NY:
Educational Solutions Worldwide.
Gattegno, C. (1976b). On mistakes. Educational Solutions Newsletter, 6(2 & 3), 2–4.
Retrieved from http://issuu.com/eswi/docs/1104_-2_-3-on-mistakes-december-1976-
february-19
Gattegno, C. (1987). The Science of Education –Part One Theoretical Considerations.
New York, NY: Educational Solutions.
Gebhard, J. G. (1984). Models of supervision: Choices. TESOL Quarterly, 18(3), 501–514.
doi: 10.2307/3586717
Gee, J. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. Philadelphia, PA:
Falmer Press.
Gee, J. (2008). A sociocultural perspective on opportunity to learn. In P. Moss. (Ed.).
Assessment, equity, and opportunity to learn (pp. 76–108). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Georgetown University Round Tables on Languages and Linguistics. (2014). General
Information. Retrieved from https://repository.library.georgetown.edu
Gilbert, M. (1992). On social facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Goldin, S. (2010). Studenting: An historical and sociological study. Doctoral dissertation,
The University of Michigan. Retrieved from
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/78856
Golombek, P. (1998). A study of language teachers’ personal practical knowledge. TESOL
Quarterly, 32(3), 447–464. doi: 10.2307/3588117
Golombek, P. R., & Johnson, K. E. (2004). Narrative inquiry as a mediational space:
Examining cognitive and emotional dissonance in second language teachers’ development.
Teachers and teaching: Theory and practice, 10(3), 307–327. doi:
10.1080/1354060042000204388
Gottlieb, M., Katz, A., & Ernst-Slavit, G. (2009). Paper to practice: Using the TESOL
ELP Standards in preK–12. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
Gower, R., & Walters, S. (1987). The teaching practice handbook. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Grabe, W., Stoller, F., & Tardy, C. (2000). Disciplinary knowledge as a foundation for
teacher preparation. In. J. K. Hall & W. Eggington. (Eds.). The sociopolitics of English
language teaching (pp. 178–204). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Graddol, D. (1997). The future of English? A guide to forecasting the popularity of the
English language in the 21st century. London: The British Council.
Graddol, D. (2006). English Next. London: The British Council
http://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/sites/ec/files/books-english-next.pdf
Gregg, K. (1986). Review of The input hypothesis: Issues and implications, by S. Krashen.
TESOL Quarterly, 20(1), 116–122. doi: 10.2307/3586392
Gumpertz, J. (1982). Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hargreaves, D. (1977). A phenomenological approach to classroom decision making.
Cambridge Journal of Education, 7(1), 12–20. doi:10.1080/0305764770070103
Harmer, J. (1996). Is PPP dead? Modern English Teacher, 5(2), 7–14. Retrieved from
http://www.scribd.com/doc/143089649/Is-PPP-dead-Harmer#scribd
Harris, L. M., & Bain, R. B. (2010). Pedagogical content knowledge for world history
teachers: What is it? How might teachers develop it? Social Studies, 102(1), 9–17. doi:
10.1080/00377996.2011.532724
Hawkins, D. (1974). I, Thou, It. In The informed vision: Essays on learning and human
nature (pp. 48–62). New York, NY: Agathon Press.
Haycraft, J. (1965). Babel in London. London: Hamish Hamilton.
Haycraft, J. (1998). Adventures of a language traveller. London: Constable.
Hayes, D. (Ed.). (2015). Innovations in continuing professional development of English
language teachers. London: The British Council.
Higgs, T. (Ed.). (1984). Teaching for proficiency, the organizing principle. Lincolnwood,
IL: National Textbook Company.
Hoban, G. (2002). Teacher learning for educational change. Buckingham: Open University
Press.
Holliday, A. (1994a). The house of TESEP and the communicative approach: The special
needs of state English language education. English Language Teaching Journal, 48(1), 3–
11. doi: 10.1093/elt/48.1.3
Holliday, A. (1994b). Appropriate methodology and social context. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Howatt, A. (1984). A history of English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Howatt, A., & Smith, R. (2014). The history of teaching English as a foreign language, from
a British and European perspective. Language and History, 57(1), 75–95. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/1759753614Z.00000000028
Hubbard, R., & Power, B. (1993). The art of classroom inquiry: A handbook for teacher-
researchers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Hutton, C. (2010). Who owns language? Mother tongue as intellectual property and the
conceptualization of linguistic diversity. Language Sciences, 32(6), 638–647. doi:
10.1016/j.langsci.2010.06.001
Hymes, D. (1968). The ethnography of speaking. In Fishman, J. (Ed). Readings in the
sociology of language (pp. 99–138). The Hague: Mouton.
Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. (2014a). Program Information. Retrieved
from http://www.jetprogramme.org/e/introduction/index.html
Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. (2014b). Frequently Asked Questions 2.7–
2.10. Retrieved from www.jetprogramme.org/e/faq/faq02elig.html#2-7.
Jenkins, J. (2009). English as a lingua franca: Interpretations and attitudes. World Englishes,
28(2), 200–207. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-971X.2009.01582.x
Johnson, J., & Poulter, M. (2015). Teachers’ language competence. Studies in Language
Testing, 42, 179–198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, K. E. (1992). Learning to teach: Instructional actions and decisions of preservice
ESL teachers. TESOL Quarterly, 26(3), 507–535. doi: 10.2307/3587176
Johnson, K. E. (2006). The sociocultural turn and its challenges for L2 teacher education.
TESOL Quarterly, 40(1), 235–257. doi: 10.2307/40264518
Johnson, K. E. (2009). Second language teacher education: A sociocultural perspective.
New York, NY: Routledge.
Johnson, K. E., & Golombek, P. (2002). Teachers’ narrative inquiry as professional
development. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, K. E., & Golombek P. (Eds.). (2011). Research on second language teacher
education: A sociocultural perspective on professional development. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Johnston, B. (1999). The expatriate teacher as post-modern paladin. Research in the
Teaching of English, 34(2), 255–280. Retrieved from
Jonassen, D. (2000). Toward a design theory of problem solving. Educational Technology
Research and Development, 48(4), 63–85. doi: 10.1007/BF02300500
Kelly, L. G. (1969). Twenty-five centuries of language teaching: 500 BC to 1969. Boston,
MA: Newbury House.
Kelly, M. (2004). European profile for language teacher education: A frame of reference.
Southampton: University of Southampton.
Kincheloe, J. (1991). Teachers as researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to
empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge.
Kleinsasser, R. C. (1993). A tale of two technical cultures: Foreign language teaching.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 9(4), 373–383. doi:10.1016/0742-051X(93)90004-Z
Knapp, J. (2012, September 11). Op-ed: Good teachers are made, not born. Seattle Times.
(September 11, 2012).
Krakowski, M. (1961). Review of Language and language learning: Theory and practice
by Nelson Brook. The German Quarterly, 34(3), 305–307. Retrieved from
Krashen, S. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning. Oxford:
Pergamon Press.
Krashen, S., & Terrell, T. (1983). The natural approach: Language acquisition in the
classroom. Hayward, CA: Alemany Press.
Kumaravadivelu, B. (1994). The postmethod condition: (e)merging strategies for
second/foreign language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 28(1), 27–48. doi:10.2307/3587197
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2012). Language teacher education for a global society. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Lado, R. (1964). Language teaching, a scientific approach. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Lampert, M. (2001). Teaching problems and the problems of teaching. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
Lampert, M. (2009). Learning Teaching in, from, and for practice: What do we mean?
Journal of Teacher Education. 61(1/2), 21–34. doi: 10.1177/0022487109347321
Lampert, M., Boerst, T., & Graziani, F. (2011). Organizational resources in the service of
school-wide ambitious teaching practice. Teachers College Record, 113 (7), 1361–1400.
Retrieved from http://www.tcrecord.org/
Lantolf, J. P., & Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second
language development (Vol. 398). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (1986) Techniques and principles of language teaching. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Larsen-Freeman, D. & Freeman, D. (2008). Language moves: The place of ‘foreign’
languages in classroom teaching and learning. In J. Greene, G. Kelly, & A. Luke. (Eds.).
Review of Research in Education, 32(1), 147–186. doi: 10.3102/0091732X07309426
Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory life: The social construction of scientific
facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lave, J., & Wenger E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lazarton, A. (1995). Qualitative research in applied linguistics: A progress report. TESOL
Quarterly, 29(3), 455–472. doi:10.2307/3588071
Leont’ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness, and personality. (M. Hall, trans.).
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
Lillge, D. (2015). When Does Literacy Professional Development Work? Unpublished
doctoral dissertation. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Lipson A., & Molinsky, S. (1977). A Russian Course. Columbus OH: Slavica Publishers.
Little, J. W. (2003). Inside teacher community: Representations of classroom practice.
Teachers College Record, 105(6), 913–945. doi: 10.1111/1467-9620.00273
Liu, S. (2013). Pedagogical content knowledge: A case study of ESL teacher educator.
English Language Teaching, 6(7), 128–138. doi: 10.5539/elt.v6n7p128
Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Loughran, J., Mulhall, P., & Berry, A. (2004). In search of pedagogical content knowledge
in science: Developing ways of articulating and documenting professional practice.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 41(4), 370–391. doi: 10.1002/tea.20007
Lowyck, J. (1986). Post-interactive reflections of teachers: A critical appraisal. In M. Ben-
Peretz, R. Bromme, & R. Halkes. (Eds.). Advances in research in teacher thinking (pp.
172–187). Lisse, Netherlands: Swetz and Zeitlinger.
Lozanov, G. (1978). Outlines of suggestology and suggestopedy. London: Gordon and
Breach.
Malderez, A., & Wedell, M. (2007). Teaching teachers. London: Continuum International
Publishing Group.
Marton, F. (1981). Phenomenography: Describing conceptions of the world around us.
Instructional Science, 10(2), 177–200. doi: 0.1007/BF00132516
Mauger, G. (1953). Cours de langue et de civilisation françaises 1er et 2e degrés. (1st ed.)
Paris: Hachette.
McLaughlin, B. (1987). Theories of second language learning. London: Edward Arnold.
Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S. (2009). Teaching unplugged: Dogme in English language
teaching. Surrey, England: DELTA Publishing.
Medgyes, P. (1992). Native or non-native: Who’s worth more? ELT Journal, 46(4), 340–
349. doi: 10.1093/elt/46.4.340
Mertz, E. (2007). The language of law school: Learning to ‘think like a lawyer’. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A
framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record. 108(6), 1017–1054.
Retrieved from http://punya.educ.msu.edu/publications/journal_articles/mishra-koehler-
tcr2006.pdf
Moje, E. B. (2007). Developing socially just subject-matter instruction: A review of the
literature on disciplinary literacy teaching. Review of Research in Education, 31, 1–44.
Retrieved from http://www-
personal.umich.edu/~moje/pdf/Journal/DevelopingSociallyJustSubjectMatterInstruction.pdf
Monteiro, C. (2013, July 31). The making of an effective teacher: born or made? [Web log
post] Retrieved from http://www.newteachercenter.org/blog/making-effective-teacher-
born-or-made
Monte-Sano, C. (2011). Learning to open up history for students: Pre-service teachers’
emerging pedagogical content knowledge. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(3), 260–272.
doi: 10.1177/0022487110397842
North, B. (2000). The development of a common framework scale of language proficiency.
New York, NY: Peter Lang.
North, B. (2007). The Common European Framework of Reference: Development,
theoretical and practical issues. Babylonia, 1(7), 22–29. Retrieved from
http://www.nationaalcongresengels.nl/cgi-bin/North-Ede-Wagingen%202007-paper.pdf
Nunan, D. (1987). Communicative language teaching: Making it work. English Language
Teaching Journal, 41(2), 136–145. doi: 10.1093/elt/41.2.136
Nunan, D. (1990). Action research in the language classroom. In J. Richards, & D. Nunan.
(Eds.). Second language teacher education (pp. 62–81). New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Nunan, D. (1992). The teacher as decision-maker. In J. Flowerdew, M. Brock, & S. Hsia.
(Eds.). Perspectives on Second Language Teacher Education (pp. 135–65). Hong Kong:
City Polytechnic.
Nunan, D. (1996). Hidden voices: insider perspectives on classroom interaction. In K.
Bailey, & D. Nunan. (Eds.). Voices from the language classroom (pp. 41–56). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Pennycook, A. (1989). The concept of method, interested knowledge, and the politics of
language teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 23(4), 589–618. doi: 10.2307/3587534
Pennycook, A. (2007). Global Englishes and transcultural flows. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Pettis, J. (2003). A question of definitions: An investigation through the definitions and
practices of communicative and task-based approaches. TESL-EJ, 7(3). Retrieved from
http://tesl-ej.org/ej27/f1.html
Philips, S. U. (1998). Ideology in the language of judges: How judges practice law,
politics, and courtroom control. Oxford University Press.
Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pierce, B. N. (2000). Identity and language learning: Gender, ethnicity and educational
change. White Plains, NY: Longman.
Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. New York, NY:
Penguin Books.
Polanyi, M. (1974). Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Polkinghorne, D. (1983). Methodology for the human sciences: Systems of inquiry. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Prabhu, N. S. (1990). There is no best method–why? TESOL Quarterly, 24(2), 161–176.
doi:10.2307/3586897
Pulverness, A. (2015). A brief history of Cambridge English Language Teaching
Qualifications. Studies in Language Testing, 42, 11–32. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Rampton, B. (1998). Speech communities. In J. Verschueren, J. Ostman, J. Blommaert, & C.
Bulcaen. (Eds). Handbook of Pragmatics (p. 134). Philadelphia/Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Read, C. (1985). Presentation, practice and production at a glance. In A. Matthews, M.
Spratt, & L. Dangerfield. (Eds.), At the chalkface: Practical techniques in language
teaching, 17. London: Addison Wesley Longman.
Reddy, M. J. (1979). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about
language. In A. Ortony. (Ed.). Metaphor and thought (pp. 284–310). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Reves, T., & Medgyes, P. (1994). The non-native English speaking EFL/ESL teacher’s self-
image: An international survey. System, 22(3), 353–367. doi: 10.1016/0346-
251X(94)90021-3
Richards, J., & Hino, N. (1983). Training ESOL teachers: The need for needs assessment. In
J. Alatis, H. Stern, & P. Strevens. (Eds.). Applied linguistics and the preparation of
second language teachers: Towards a rationale (pp. 312–326). Washington DC:
Georgetown University Press.
Richards, J., & Lockhart, C. (1994). Reflective teaching in second language classrooms.
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Richards, J., & Rodgers, T. (1986). Approaches and methods in language teaching. New
York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Rivers, W. (1968). Teaching foreign-language skills. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Rock, F. (2005). ‘I’ve picked some up from a colleague’: Language, sharing, and
communities of practice in an institutional setting. In D. Barton & K. Tusting. (Eds.).
Beyond communities of practice (pp. 77–104). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rogoff, B. (1995). Observing sociocultural activity on three planes: participatory
appropriation, guided participation, and apprenticeship. In J. P. Del Rio, & A. Alvarez.
(Eds.). Sociocultural studies of mind (pp. 139–164). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rogoff, B. (1998). Cognition as a collaborative process. In D. Kuhn & R. S. Siegler. (Eds.).
Cognition, perception and language. Vol. 2, Handbook of child psychology (5th ed.), (pp.
679–744), New York: Wiley.
Rosenholtz, S. J. (1988). Schools, social organization and the building of a technical
culture. New York, NY: Longman.
Ryle, G. (1949/2009). The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson.
Saljo, R. (1982). Learning and understanding: A study of differences in the construction of
meaning of a text. Goteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.
Savignon, S. (1991). Communicative language teaching: State of the art. TESOL Quarterly,
25(2), 261–277. doi: 10.2307/3587463
Schachter, R. (2014). Early childhood teachers’ use of information to reason about and
enact moment-to-moment instruction. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Michigan.
Retrieved from http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/110370
Schachter, R., & Freeman, D. (2015). Using stimulated recall interviews to study teachers
and teaching: A brief introduction to the research methodology. In L. Patricia, & R.
Rodrigues. (Eds.). Temas e Rumos nas Pesquisas em Linguística (Aplicada): Questões
empíricas, éticas e práticas (pp. 223–243). Campinas: Editora Pontes.
Schaerer, R. (2007). The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Multi-
faceted and intriguing. Babylonia, 1(7), 7–11. Retrieved from
http://babylonia.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/2007-1/schaerer.pdf
Schon, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in practice. New
York, NY: Basic Books.
Schon, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for
teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Sfard, A. (1998). On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of choosing just one.
Educational Researcher, 27(2), 4–13. doi: 10.3102/0013189X027002004
Shavelson R. (1973). What is the basic teaching skill? Journal of Teacher Education, 24,
144–151. doi: 10.1177/002248717302400213
Shulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard
Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22. Retrieved from http://hepg.org/her-
home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-57,-issue-1/herarticle/foundations-of-
the-new-reform_461
Shulman, L. (1996). Disciplines of inquiry in education: An overview. In R. Jager (Ed.),
Complementary methods for researchers in education (pp. 3–19). Washington DC:
American Educational Research Association.
Sinclair, J., & Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse: the English used by
teachers and pupils. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Singh, R. (Ed.). (1998). The native speaker: Multilingual perspectives. New Delhi: Sage.
Stenhouse, L. (1985). How research can improve teaching. In J. Rudduck, & D. Hopkins.
(Eds.). Research as a basis for teaching–Readings from the work of Lawrence Stenhouse
(pp. 49–51). London: Heinemann.
Stevick, E. (1976). Memory, meaning, and method: Some psychological perspectives on
language learning. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Stevick, E. (1980). Teaching languages: A way and ways. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Stevick, E. (1982). Teaching and learning languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Storer, N. (1967). The hard sciences and the soft: Some sociological observations. Bulletin
of the Medical Library Association, 55(1), 75–84. Retrieved from
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC198502/
Swain, M., Kinnear, P., & Steinman, L. (2015). Sociocultural theory in second language
education: An introduction through narratives. 2nd edn. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Swan, M. (1985a). A critical look at the communicative approach (1). ELT Journal, 39(1),
2–12. doi: 10.1093/elt/39.1.2
Swan, M. (1985b). A critical look at the communicative approach (2). ELT Journal, 39(2),
76–87. doi: 10.1093/elt/39.2.76
Tarone, E., & Allwright, D. (2005). Second language teacher learning and student second
language learning: Shaping the knowledge base. In D. Teddick. (Ed.). Second language
teacher education: International perspectives (pp. 5–24). New York, NY: Routledge.
Thornbury, S., & Watkins, P. (2007). The Certificate of English Language Teaching to
Adults [CELTA] course trainer’s manual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thuleen, N. (1996, October). The grammar-translation method. Website article. Retrieved
from http://www.nthuleen.com/papers/720report.html
Tsui, A. (2003). Understanding expertise in teaching: Case studies of second language
teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tsui, A., & Law, D. (2007). Learning as boundary-crossing in a school–university
partnership. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(8), 1289–1301.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2006.06.003
Ur, P. (1996). A course in English language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
US Peace Corps. (2015). History. Retrieved from
http://www.peacecorps.gov/about/history/
Van Driel, J. H., Verloop, N., & de Vos, W. (1998). Developing science teachers’
pedagogical content knowledge. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35(6), 673–
695. doi: 10.1002/ (SICI)1098-2736(199808)35:6
van Ek, J. A. (1975). Systems development in adult language learning: The threshold level
in a European unit/credit system for modern language learning by adults. Brussels:
Council of Europe. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED108482.pdf
Vygotsky, L. (1963). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wajnryb, R. (1998). Telling it like it isn’t—exploring an instance of pragmatic ambivalence
in supervisory discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 29(5), 531–544. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(97)00076-3
Wallace, M. (1991). Training foreign language teachers: A reflective approach.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weingart, P. (2010). A short history of knowledge formations. In R. Frodeman, J. Klein, &
C. Mitcham. (Eds.). The Oxford handbook of interdisciplinarity (pp. 3–14). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Wenger, E. (1987). Artificial intelligence and tutoring systems: Computational and
cognitive approaches to the communication of knowledge. Los Altos, CA: Morgan
Kaufmann Publishers.
Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. New York,
NY: Cambridge University Press.
Wertsch, J. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Wertsch, J. (1991). Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wertsch, J. (1995). The need for action in sociocultural research. In J. Wertsch, P. del Rio,
& A. Alvarez (Eds.). Sociocultural studies of mind (pp. 56–74). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Wheeler, G. (2003). Krashen–A victim of history. TESOL Canada Journal/ Revue TESL du
Canada, 20(2), 92–99.
Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Widdowson, H. G. (1985). Against dogma: a reply to Michael Swan. ELT Journal, 39(3),
158–161. doi: 10.1093/elt/39.3.158
Wilkins, D. (1976). Notional syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wineburg, S., Martin, D., & Monte-Sano, C. (2012). Reading like a historian: Teaching
literacy in middle and high school history classrooms. New York, NY: Teachers College
Press.
Wong Filmore, L. & Snow, C. (2000). What teachers need to know about language.
Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Retrieved from
http://people.ucsc.edu/~ktellez/wong-fill-snow.html
Woods, D. (1996). Teacher cognition and language teaching. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.
Woodward, T. (1992). Ways of training. Canterbury: Longman.
Woodward, T. (2001). Planning lessons and courses: Designing sequences of work for the
language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zakeri, A., & Alavi, M. (2011). English language teachers’ knowledge and their self-
efficacy. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2(2), 413–419.
Index
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V
W X Y Z
(Page numbers annotated with ‘t’, ‘f’ or ‘n’ refer to tables, figures, or notes, respectively.)
A
academic language
184n
across-course designs
263
266–7
ACTFL see American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages
action research
143–4
action-present
211–13
217–21
activity theory
93–4
95–101
105–12
agency
138–44
148
176
Alatis, J.
64–5
194
Allwright, D.
143
alternative route training
73–4
90–2
168–70
185–205
269–70
American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
58–9
a-methodological (eclectic) teaching
127
128–30
166–70
Anthony, E.
131–3
134
135
137
anthropology
57
59
applied linguistics
57
61
Arnold, J.
239
assessment
10
269–71
Audio-lingual Direct Method
25
119–23
124
125–6
164–5
Australian Migrant Education Program
141
authenticity
87
88–9
134–5
automaticity
121
122
124
autonomy (learner autonomy)
124
166
background knowledge
5–7
41–2
43–54
BAK model
147–8
154–8
161–2
Bailey, K.
143
Ball, D.
12–13
176–7
179
Barahona, M.
99
Barnard, R.
149
Bazerman, C.
63–4
68
behaviorism
120–1
164–5
Benedict-Chambers, A.
99–103
Biddle, B.
157
Bigelow, M.
127
Blair, R.
122
Bligh, R.
44–5
53t
70t
Boerst, T.
82
Bolster, A.
35
borderless expertise
187–8
189t
197
200
205
Borg, S.
147
149
153t
154
158–60
161–2
193
‘born expertise’
41
42
43–54
70
bounded activity systems
97–9
Bransford, J. D.
104
British Association for Applied Linguistics
190–1
Brooks, N.
120–1
Brown, A. L.
104
Brown, J.
74–5
86
90
91–2
Brumfit, C.
26
Burns, A.
149
C
C/a (community of activity)
240–4
245
248–51
257–9
Canagarajah, S.
77
Cazden, C.
25
150
C/e (community of explanation)
242–3
244–5
248–51
257–9
261–7
Centro de Voluntarios (Chile)
49
50
52
Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA)
90
186
190
193
Chacón, C. T.
181
CHAT see cultural-historical activity theory
Chile, educational policy
49
50
52
208
Chomsky, N.
132
165
Clandinin, D. J.
171
175
Clark, C.
147
149
152–4
157
158–9
160–1
Clarke, M.
170–1
classroom talk
Inquiry-Response-Feedback structure (IRF)
22–3
25
31–3
Teacher–student interaction
29–33
88–9
141
155–62
180–2
classrooms
7
21–7
174–5
seating arrangements
94–5
108–9
cognitions
147–8
158–60
161–2
Cohen, D.
12–13
collective learning
90–2
collegiality
82
Collins, A.
74–5
90
91–2
Common European Framework
22
59
77–8
79–81
communicative language teaching (CLT)
24
25–7
128
130–6
148
communities
18
193–204
234–52
of explanation
60–1
63–71
126–7
194
234
242–3
244–5
248–51
257–9
261–7
of practice
194
234–6
240–4
245
248–51
257–9
Community Language Learning
122–4
166
conferences
64–71
179
Connelly, F. M.
171
172
content
xi–xii
7
20–9
78–9
82–3
180–2
228–9
form vs. use
28–9
purpose-as-use
20–4
27
reflexivity
27–9
55–9
reification
33
111–12
situated content
76–81
171–5
theoretical models
172–5
176–82
context
21–4
26
74–5
immersion programs
78–9
82–3
180–2
and teachers’ thinking
152–62
and time
104–5
156–8
160
continuous professional development
7
8
9
45–6
192–204
Coulthard, M.
25
Council of Europe
22
77
79
134
course content see content
course design
xii
225
227–36
237–52
Cross, R.
29–31
Cuisenaire rods
103–4
107–9
110–12
255
256
cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)
93–4
95–101
105–12
Curran, C.
122
124
Cushing-Leubner, J.
127
D
Day, C.
9
10
de Saussure, F.
243
decision-making
149–52
154–8
161
DELTA see Diploma of English Language Teaching to Adults
design theory
xii
225
227–36
237–52
Dewey, J.
47
49
82
83
87
163
208–9
210
212
217
220–1
Deyes, T.
128–9
Diller, K.
85
Diploma of English Language Teaching to Adults (DELTA)
186
193
disciplinary communities
60–1
63–71
126–7
194
234
disciplinary knowledge
9–10
55–71
115–16
139–43
163–5
190–2
diversification
194
195–7
202–4
Duguid, P.
74–5
90
91–2
Dunkin, M.
157
early childhood education

213–15
eclectic teaching
127
128–30
166–70
education policy
22
49–52
59
77–8
79–81
208
Edwards, E.
149
Elbaz, F.
171–2
175
184n
Ellis, R.
61
Engage-Experience-Explain framework (EEE)
99–101
Engestrom, Y.
110
English language teaching
49–52
56
73–4
78–9
81
83–6
173
181–2
234
knowledge-base
185–205
English Opens Doors Program (Chile)
52
English Program in Korea (EPIK)
49
50
51
52
errors (learner errors)
123t–4t
125–6
evidence-based practice
130
138–43
exemplification
170–1
174
175
experience
9–10
41
42
43
45–54
256–8
266
expertise
70
106–7
187–8
189t
197
200
205
‘born or made’ debate
41–2
43–54
F
Farrell, T.
208
220
feedback
88–9
123t–4t
125–6
219–20
Finnegan, D.
204
205
Fleck, L.
16–17
244
Ford, M.
56
Forman, E.
56
Freeman, D.
8–9
32–3
71
115
119
141
143
149
157
170
174–5
251
French language teaching
5
22–3
48
59–60
Freudenstein, R.
56
59
63
Frost, Robert
6
7
games
98–9
Gattegno, C.
122
124
125
256
Gee, J.
34
56
234
generations
115–16
119–45
145t
163–83
generative grammar
120
132
165
Georgetown University Roundtables on Languages and Linguistics
64–8
83–6
German language teaching
27
28f
Goldin, S.
35
Golombek, P.
172
Gottlieb, M.
208
Gower, R.
168–9f
Grabe, W.
191
205n
grammar translation method
25
27
Graziani, F.
82
Gregg, K.
166
167
168
group work
90–2
Gumpertz, J.
242
GURT Roundtables see Georgetown University Roundtables on Languages and Linguistics
H
habitual action
208–9
220–1
Hanks, J.
143
Hargreaves, D.
119
Hawkins, D.
11–12
13
Haycraft, J.
73–4
76–7
81
83
87–9
90
Hayes, D.
8
heuristic space
139–43
higher education institutions
60–1
186
269
270–1
Hino, N.
83–6
historical perspectives, second language teaching
xi
115–16
119–45
145t
163–83
history
57
59
Hoban, G.
141
Holliday, A.
66
186
Hong Kong Conferences on Second Language Teacher Education
64
68–70
Hubbard, R.
143
hybrid disciplines
55–71
179
Hymes, D.
242
IATEFL see International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language

identity
33–6
60
75–6
88–9
124
170–5
179
251
immersion programs
78–9
82–3
180–2
implementational maps
189–90
initial teacher training (ITT)
7
10
185–205
269–71
residency teacher preparation programs
269
270
see also qualifications
inner vs. outer worlds
220–1
input hypothesis
166–7
inquiry-oriented teacher education
217
Inquiry-Response-Feedback structure (IRF)
22–3
25
31–3
in-service teacher education
7
8
9
10
45–6
192–204
inside-out view, teacher education see pronominal view, teacher education
institutions
60–1
82
intelligent action
208–13
220–1
interdisciplinarity
56
see also hybrid disciplines
International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL)
194–204
International House
73
88
90
IRF structure see Inquiry-Response-Feedback structure
isomorphic relationships
11–16
242–3
J
Japan Association of Language Teachers (JALT)
84
Japan English Teaching (JET Program)
49–51
52
Japanese language teaching
29–31
82–3
Jargon Generator (training activity)
139
140f
job interviews
5–6
Johnson, J.
190
Johnson, K.
26
Johnson, K. E.
71
174–5
Johnston, B.
187
K
Katz, A.
208
Kelly, L. G.
164
184n
Kincheloe, J.
143
Kleinsasser, R. C.
31
Knapp, J.
45–6
‘know-how made over time’
9–10
41
42
43
45–54
knowledge
background knowledge
5–7
41–2
43–54
147–8
154–8
161–2
BAK model
147–8
154–8
161–2
187–8
189t
197
200
205
disciplinary knowledge
9–10
55–71
115–16
139–43
163–5
190–2
ELT knowledge-base
185–205
horizon content knowledge
176–8
knowledge-as-pedagogy
165–70
knowledge-for-teaching
176–82
knowledge-geographies
185–205
and reflecting
207–13
situated knowledge
73–5
78–9
84–5
170–5
184n
social facts
16–17
35–6
56
57
60
63–4
125–6
158
230
231–3
234
236
238–40
244–52
253
257–9
transmission and construction of
61–2
93
101–5
107–8
132
163–83
194–204
253–9
Korea, educational policy
51–2
Krakowski, M.
120
121
Krashen, S.
122
166–7
168
Kumaravadivelu, B.
136–8
157
170
174
L
Lado, R.
56
63
Lampert, M.
82
176
language, definition
20
language as content
xi–xii
7
20–9
78–9
82–3
180–2
form vs. use
28–9
purpose-as-use
20–4
27
reflexivity
27–9
55–9
reification
33
111–12
situated content
76–81
171–5
theoretical models
172–5
176–82
language classrooms
7
21–7
174–5
94–5
108–9
language ideology
49
language pedagogy
25
119–23
124
125–6
164–5
24
25–7
128
130–6
148
122–4
166
eclectic teaching
127
128–30
166–70
25
27
macro-strategies
137–8
pedagogical simplification
86–9
Silent Way
104
107
122–3
124
125–6
166
and teaching knowledge
165–70
language policy
22
49–52
59
77–8
79–81
language proficiency, measurement of
50–2
121–2
190
232–3
language socialization
35
60
142–3
language teachers see second language teachers
language uses, theoretical models
179–82
language-learning biographies
253–4
languages of practice
125–6
148–9
167–70
languaging
77–8
220
Larsen-Freeman, D.
32–3
133
179
Lave, J.
76
80
95
97
234
243
Lazarton, A.
149
learner autonomy
124
166
learner errors
123t–4t
125–6
learners
10
11f
learning activities
86–9
245–7
253–9
261–3
authenticity
87
88–9
134–5
patterned practice
120–1
122
sense making
93
94–103
107–8
tools
105–12
learning outcomes
52
62
81
121–2
learning-in-place
41
42
73–92
170–5
184n
234–5
243–4
learning-in-practice
41
42
93–112
227
230–43
learn-then-apply design
189–90
192–3
Lee, W.
194
Leont’ev, A. N.
95–6
lesson planning
17
18
139
142t
155
156
Lillge, D.
245
linguistics
57
132
164–5
Lipson, A.
121
literature
57
59
Little, J. W.
236
local languages
233–4
Lockhart, C.
208
216
Lortie, D.
35
46
60
89
192
Lozanov, G.
122
M
macro-strategies
137–8
mainstreaming
22
Malderez, A.
10–11
17
Marton, F.
15–16
mathematics
176–7
179
Mauger, G.
60
McLaughlin, B.
166
meaningfulness
23–4
26
mentoring
10
11f
metalanguage
27–9
55–9
131–3
148–9
167–70
232–3
method
132–6
micro-worlds
86–7
modules, design of
263–7
Molinsky, S.
121
monolingualism
77
motivation
58–9
Murphey, T.
239
N
narratives
xi
5–6
22–3
34
47–8
59–60
78–9
82–3
94–5
103–4
107–9
110–12
238
251
nativeness
48–52
121–2
188
Natural Approach
122–3
Newbury House Publishers
145n
184n
nominal view, teacher education
12–17
North, B.
79
80
Nunan, D.
32
141
142–3
O
outer vs. inner worlds
220–1
outside-in view, teacher education see nominal view, teacher education
P
part/whole relationships
175
patterned practice
120–1
122
pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)
172–5
183
184n
pedagogical simplification
86–9
peer teaching
99–101
102–3
104
105
219
220
Pennycook, A.
174
personal practical knowledge (PPK)
171–2
173–4
175
Peterson, P.
147
149
152–4
157
158–9
160–1
Phelps, G.
176
phenomenography
15–16
Philips, S. U.
267
Piaget, J.
62
Pinker, S.
165
pluralization
194
197–201
202–4
plurilingualism
77–8
243
249
Polanyi, M.
171
Polkinghorne, D.
164
‘post-method’ condition
136–8
Poulter, M.
190
PPK see personal practical knowledge
PPP framework see Presentation-Practice-Production framework
Prabhu, N. S.
129–30
157
practice teaching
15
73
85–90
269–71
practice-based teacher education
81–2
prescriptive vs. descriptive approaches
6–7
Presentation-Practice-Production framework (PPP)
17
231
pre-service teacher education
7
10
185–205
269
270–1
see also qualifications
primary contradictions
109
111t
problem setting
210–11
218f
219
professional associations
194–204
234–6
professional development
7
8
9
35–6
45–6
60–1
139–41
192–204
conferences
64–71
179
professional languages
56–9
63
233–4
239
240f
250
261
269
270
pronominal view, teacher education
11–12
14–17
pronouns
27
28f
184n
psychology
57
59
164–5
Pulverness, A.
186
pupils
10
11f
purpose-as-use
20–4
27
Q
qualifications
5–7
48–52
121–2
186–9
international recognition of
187–8
short-term certificates
73–4
90–2
168–70
186–8
269–70
quaternary contradictions
109
110
111t
Rampton, B.
234
242
Raudenbush, S.
12–13
recruitment
5–6
43
122
Reddy, M. J.
104
reflecting
117
130
207–21
reflexivity
27–9
55–9
reification
33
111–12
reporting
254t
255–6
research-practice relationship
141–4
147–62
residency teacher preparation programs
269
270
Richards, J.
66
68
83–6
133–4
135
149
208
216
Rivers, W.
128
Rock, F.
234–5
Rodgers, T.
133–4
135
Rogoff, B.
82
243
Rosenholtz, S. J.
31
Ryle, G.
171
S
Saljo, R.
105–7
109
Saussure, F. de
243
Savignon, S.
29
31
scaffolding
75
86–90
115
181–2
249
254
269
270
Schachter, R.
213–16
Schon, D. A.
207
208
209–13
216
217
218–19
221
science, teaching of
99–101
94–5
108–9
second language acquisition
57
61
second language teacher education
alternative route training
73–4
90–2
168–70
185–205
269–70
assessment
10
269–71
41–2
43–54
design theory
xii
225
227–36
237–52
historical perspectives
xi
115–16
119–45
145t
163–83
inquiry-oriented teacher education
217
isomorphic relationships
11–16
242–3
learning-in-place
41
42
73–92
170–5
184n
234–5
243–4
learning-in-practice
41
42
93–112
227
230–43
peer teaching
99–101
102–3
104
105
220
practice teaching
15
73
85–90
practice-based teacher education
81–2
program design
x
53–4
189–93
225
227–36
237–52
reflecting
117
130
216–21
research-practice relationship
141–4
147–62
teacher thinking
115
119–45
145t
147–62
173
terminology
8–11t
55–9
125–6
131–3
148–9
167–70
232–3
second language teachers
identity
33–6
60
170–5
179
251
native-speaker teachers
48–52
121–2
188
recruitment
5–6
43
47–52
122
role diversification and pluralization
194–204
technical cultures
29–33
35
179
secondary contradictions
109
111t
sense making
93
94–103
107–8
257–9
Sfard, A.
104
Shavelson, R.
147
149
150–2
153–4
155
160–1
short-term certificates
73–4
90–2
168–70
186–8
269–70
Shulman, L.
55
57
121
171
172–3
175
176
184n
Silent Way
104
107
122–3
124
125–6
166
Sinclair, J.
25
situated learning theory
41
42
73–6
80–1
86
90
91–2
170–5
184n
234–5
243–4
situations of practice
209–11
212
217–21
Snow, C.
61
social environments
82–3
104–5
229
see also context
social facts
16–17
35–6
56
57
60
63–4
125–6
158
230
231–3
234
236
238–40
244–52
253
257–9
social practice theory
41
42
77
95–112
227
230–1
235–6
240f
socialization
xi
35–6
60–1
139–41
142–3
socio-cultural theory
93–4
sociology
57
59
Stenhouse, L.
144
Stern, H.
65
Strevens, P.
65
Stevick, E.
20
21
28
107
124
150
184n
239
Stoller, F.
191
structural linguistics
120
132
164–5
students, motivation
58–9
subject-languages, definition
32–3
Swan, M.
26
27
28
teacher education
xi–xii
11–17
62
41–2
43–8
see also second language teacher education; teacher training
teacher talk
22–3
29–33
139–41
155
179
180–2
feedback
88–9
123t–4t
125–6
219–20
teacher thinking
115
147–62
173
decision-making
149–52
154–8
and pedagogical methods
119–45
145t
reflecting
117
130
207–21
teacher training
8
9
185–205
269–71
teacher-learning activities
18
99–101
139–41
219–21
245–7
253–9
261–3
teacher-led research
143–4
teachers
identity
33–6
60
170–5
179
251
native-speaker teachers
48–52
121–2
188
recruitment
5–6
43
47–52
122
role diversification and pluralization
194–204
technical cultures
29–33
179
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
64–5
194–204
teaching methods
25
119–23
124
125–6
164–5
24
25–7
128
130–6
148
122–4
166
eclectic teaching
127
128–30
166–70
25
27
macro-strategies
137–8
scaffolding
75
86–90
115
181–2
249
254
269
270
Silent Way
104
107
122–3
124
125–6
166
and teaching knowledge
165–70
team work
90–2
235
267
technical cultures
29–33
35
179
technical rationality
209–13
terminology
8–11t
55–9
125–6
131–3
148–9
167–70
232–3
tertiary contradictions
109–10
111t
textbooks
59–60
135
139
180
Thames, M.
176
theories
147–62
261–7
BAK model
147–8
154–8
161–2
behaviorism
120–1
164–5
generative grammar
120
132
165
input hypothesis
166–7
language teacher cognition(s)
158–60
161–2
situated learning theory
41
42
73–6
80–1
86
90
91–2
184n
234–5
243–4
social practice theory
41
42
77
95–112
227
230–1
235–6
240f
teacher thinking
147–62
theory-practice relationship
xi
53–4
TOTE model
150–2
153
161
Thornbury, S.
90–2
thought collectives
17
18
thought processes see teacher thinking
time
101–5
107–8
132
153
156–7
160
232–3
256–7
tools
75
105–12
231–3
243–4
254t
255
256
calculators
105–6
107
Cuisenaire rods
103–4
107–9
110–12
255
256
micro-worlds
86–7
textbooks
59–60
135
139
180
worksheets
105
254t
255
256–7
262t
TOTE model
150–2
153
161
ToTing
10
11f
transfer (knowledge transmission)
61–2
93
101–5
trans-linguistic language use
77–81
Trim, J.
190–1
Tsui, A.
99
US Peace Corps
121
Vygotsky, L. S.
241
Wallace, M.
189
208
216–17
Walters, S.
168
169f
Watkins, P.
90–2
Wedell, M.
10–11
17
Weingart, P.
61
63
Wenger, E.
33
76
80
86
87
95
97
112
234
235
237
238–9
240–1
243
257
Wertsch, J.
96–7
112
241
244
Wheeler, G.
166–7
Widdowson, H. G.
26–7
28
36
Wilkins, D.
26
within-course designs
263
264–6
Wong-Filmore, L.
61
Woods, D.
147
153t
154–8
160–2
Woodward, T.
139
140f
worksheets
105
254t
255
256–7
262t

Educating Second Language Teachers

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Educating Second Language Teachers

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Educating Second Language Teachers

Published in this series

The Same Things Done Differently

Additional online resources are available at www.oup.com/elt/teacher/eslt

(Second language) teacher education

A word on the structure of the book

Ann Arbor Michigan

List of Figures and Tables

2 The central challenges in second language teacher education

PART TWO Learning to be a language teacher

4 Disciplinary transmission in second language teacher education

5 Learning-in-place: situating content and professional learning in

6 Socio-cultural views: understanding sense making and what

PART THREE Core processes of second language teacher education

8 Four representations of teacher thinking

9 Knowledge generations in language teaching

10 Knowledge-geographies: a socio-professional view of what is

11 Reflecting: thinking and knowing in teaching situations

13 A design theory—Part two: renaming experience to

Table 1.1 Status-quo framing of second language teacher education

Narrative 1.1: Starting out in language teaching

Prescriptive proposals and descriptive understandings

Re-examining the status quo

Locus Question Status quo response (It’s …)

Language teacher education needs to be functionally defined as the overall process. As I

Second language teacher education—domain and time frame

Teaching teaching to teachers—sorting out terms

Figure 1.2 Glossary of terms (Malderez & Wedell, 2007)

Teaching teaching: pronominal and nominal views

Hawkins and the inside–out, pronominal view

The outside–in, nominal view

Figure 1.3 Instruction as interaction (Cohen et al. 2003, p. 124)

The isomorphic relationship

Figure 1.4 Isomorphic relationships in teacher education

Inside the two triangles—a dynamic, pronominal view

First- and second-order perspectives 现象描述分析学

Social facts and thought collectives

Why three challenges?

The first challenge: language in the world and language in the

The language classroom—as microcosm or on ramp

Narrative 2.1—’Je ne porte pas de montre’

The dilemma of meaningfulness

Of the world, not in it

How classrooms make language content

Communicative purpose in the classroom

Metalanguage is one dimension of this reflexivity of language; reflecting on use is another.

The second challenge: how classrooms (re)define language teaching

Japanese class—recording quiz grades

Language classrooms and teachers’ technical cultures

Inquiry 1 Dan: Jill-san? [Jill?]

Talk-written-down: The example of ‘erm’

The third challenge: how people learn to teach languages

Narrative 2.2: The night before the first day of teaching

This night-before-the-first-day-of-teaching brought together three aspects of a fledgling

Language teaching identity

Figure 2.2 Language teaching identity

Socialization and social facts

Figure ii.1 How people become teachers: A rough continuum

Two views of background knowledge

The ‘born expertise’ position

‘Teachers are born’

The ‘made over time’ position

The shared premise of experience

Dewey and experience