Taking a Vygotskian sociocultural stance, this book demonstrates the meaningful role that L2 teacher educators and L2 teacher education play in the professional development of L2 teachers through systematic, intentional, goal-directed, theorized L2 teacher education pedagogy. The message is resoundingly clear: Teacher education matters! It empirically documents the ways in which engagement in the practices of L2 teacher education shape how teachers come to think about and enact their teaching within the sociocultural contexts of their learning-to-teach experiences. Providing an insider's look at L2 teacher education pedagogy, it offers a close up look at teacher educators who are skilled at moving L2 teachers toward more theoretically and pedagogically sound instructional practices and greater levels of professional expertise. First, the theoretical foundation and educational rationale for exploring what happens inside the practices of L2 teacher education are established. These theoretical concepts are then used to conduct microgenetic analyses of the moment-to-moment, asynchronous, and at-a-distance dialogic interactions that take place in five distinct but sometimes overlapping practices that the authors have designed, repeatedly implemented, and subsequently collected data on in their own L2 teacher education programs. Responsive mediation is positioned as the nexus of mindful L2 teacher education and proposed as a psychological tool for teacher educators to both examine and inform the ways in which they design, enact, and assess the consequences of their own L2 teacher education pedagogy.

Embracing a sociocultural perspective on human cognition and employing an array of methodological tools for data collection and analysis, this volume documents the complexities of second language teachers? professional development in diverse L2 teacher education programs around the world, including Asia, South America, Europe, and North America, and traces that development both over time and within the broader cultural, historical and institutional settings and circumstances of teachers? work.

This systematic examination of teacher professional development illuminates in multiple ways the discursive practices that shape teachers? knowing, thinking, and doing and provides a window into how alternative mediational means can create opportunities for teachers to move toward more theoretically and pedagogically sound instructional practices within the settings and circumstances of their work. The chapters represent both native and nonnative English speaking pre-service and in-service L2 teachers at all levels from K-12 through higher education, and examine significant challenges that are present in L2 teacher education programs.

Embracing a sociocultural perspective on human cognition and employing an array of methodological tools for data collection and analysis, this volume documents the complexities of second language teachers? professional development in diverse L2 teacher education programs around the world, including Asia, South America, Europe, and North America, and traces that development both over time and within the broader cultural, historical and institutional settings and circumstances of teachers? work.

This systematic examination of teacher professional development illuminates in multiple ways the discursive practices that shape teachers? knowing, thinking, and doing and provides a window into how alternative mediational means can create opportunities for teachers to move toward more theoretically and pedagogically sound instructional practices within the settings and circumstances of their work. The chapters represent both native and nonnative English speaking pre-service and in-service L2 teachers at all levels from K-12 through higher education, and examine significant challenges that are present in L2 teacher education programs.

Taking a Vygotskian sociocultural stance, this book demonstrates the meaningful role that L2 teacher educators and L2 teacher education play in the professional development of L2 teachers through systematic, intentional, goal-directed, theorized L2 teacher education pedagogy. The message is resoundingly clear: Teacher education matters! It empirically documents the ways in which engagement in the practices of L2 teacher education shape how teachers come to think about and enact their teaching within the sociocultural contexts of their learning-to-teach experiences. Providing an insider's look at L2 teacher education pedagogy, it offers a close up look at teacher educators who are skilled at moving L2 teachers toward more theoretically and pedagogically sound instructional practices and greater levels of professional expertise. First, the theoretical foundation and educational rationale for exploring what happens inside the practices of L2 teacher education are established. These theoretical concepts are then used to conduct microgenetic analyses of the moment-to-moment, asynchronous, and at-a-distance dialogic interactions that take place in five distinct but sometimes overlapping practices that the authors have designed, repeatedly implemented, and subsequently collected data on in their own L2 teacher education programs. Responsive mediation is positioned as the nexus of mindful L2 teacher education and proposed as a psychological tool for teacher educators to both examine and inform the ways in which they design, enact, and assess the consequences of their own L2 teacher education pedagogy.

This innovative volume is a collection of highly personal, contextualized stories of teachers inquiring into their own experiences as learners of language teaching. As such, their stories of inquiry represent the journey of how they know as well as what they know. The intent of this collection is to bring teachers "ways of knowing" into our professional conversations so as to transform our understandings of language teachers and language teaching. By making teachers’ ways of knowing public, open to review by others, and accessible to others in this profession, the editors hope to validate language teachers’ ways of knowing and the activity of language teaching in ways afforded to other forms of scholarly work. The editors encourage readers to look for multiple interpretations and multiple layers of meaning in these stories, and in doing so, hope to change our collective perceptions of what counts as knowledge, who is considered knowledgeable, and what counts as professional development in language teacher education.Preservice and inservice teachers will benefit from the insights provided in this book, as will Language Teacher Educators and education researchers.