This volume highlights unique features of L2 teachers' motivation, autonomy and career development in Far East counties (including Japan, South Korea and China), using diverse methodological research approaches incorporating both quantitative and qualitative paradigms. While much of current research focuses on students' psychology, this volume looks into EFL teachers' motivation and autonomy. Both discussions of theoretical issues of teacher motivation and autonomy and practical, classroom-based investigations are included and written to appeal to researchers, as well as applied teacher audiences. The theoretical chapters give readers a solid grounding in the issues of interest to the field. The practical chapters offer cutting edge insights and can also serve as templates on which postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers can base future studies. This helps the book to offer a dual service to the research community, addressing both issues of theorization of research and the practice of conducting research investigations.

Never in the recent history of foreign language education have we seen so much earnest concern for the philosophies which underlie research methods. The primary force behind this concern has been the rise of a socio-cultural paradigm in foreign language education from which new ways of integrating teaching theory and practice are emerging. All but one of the papers collected in this volume were presented and discussed at the international seminar Understanding the Language Classroom and New Directions for Language Teaching Research held in Kobe, Japan, from 14 to 17 March 2007. The volume has reframed research accounts of classroom and learner issues by clarifying the powerful connections between philosophically different families of both recently developed and conventional research practices: Exploratory Practice, Action Research, Narrative Inquiry, Learner Autonomy, and Strategy-based Language Learning.

This volume highlights unique features of L2 teachers’ motivation, autonomy and career development in Far East counties (including Japan, South Korea and China), using diverse methodological research approaches incorporating both quantitative and qualitative paradigms. While much of current research focuses on students’ psychology, this volume looks into EFL teachers’ motivation and autonomy. Both discussions of theoretical issues of teacher motivation and autonomy and practical, classroom-based investigations are included and written to appeal to researchers, as well as applied teacher audiences. The theoretical chapters give readers a solid grounding in the issues of interest to the field. The practical chapters offer cutting edge insights and can also serve as templates on which postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers can base future studies. This helps the book to offer a dual service to the research community, addressing both issues of theorization of research and the practice of conducting research investigations.