This article refocuses language teacher education on teaching itself by proposing two schemata:

(a) a descriptive model that defines teaching as a decision-making process based on the skills,
attitude, and awareness and (b) a educating strategies—training and teaching.
Without a common terminology to describe language teaching itself, beyond the metalanguage
described by linguistics, and without a coherent model of how language teaching is taught and
learned, those who educate language teachers are confined to so many parallel discussions that
argue unfounded comparisons; this advances the activities of the field and the profession
sporadically, if at all.
one must have a clear definition of language teaching as the subject matter of language teacher
education in order to develop a coherent view of the overall process of language teacher education.
how we define language teaching will influence, to a large extent, how we educate people as
language teachers. Thus, language teacher education is concerned with the learning and teaching
of language teaching.
how language is learned remains elusive and hypothetical at best (J. Schumann, 1983). Thus, the
outcome is clear, but the process is not.
there is only a hazy grasp of the actual language-teaching
difficult to define the language-teaching competence on which actual teaching performance should
be based
What is needed, then, is an understanding on two levels: a view of what language teaching is and
a view of how to educate individuals in such teaching. We need to define the content of language
teacher education—that is, the processes of effective language teaching— and we need to
understand the processes of language teacher education itself—that is, how to teach language
teaching.
Although applied linguistics, research in second language acquisition, and methodology contribute
to… must not be confused with, language teaching itself
Language teacher education deals with the processes of language teaching;
It is inaccurate and misleading to imply, as we do in most preservice language teacher education,
particularly at the graduate level, that knowledge of these areas alone will necessarily enable or
equip people to teach.
Blurring the distinction between language teaching itself and the areas of inquiry on which it is
based (e.g., applied linguistics, second language acquisition research, or methodology) leads to
two major misconceptions that have often jeopardized the success of language teacher education.
The first misconception is that language teacher education is generally concerned with the
transmission of knowledge,
The second misconception, which follows closely from the first, is that transmission of knowledge
will lead to effective practice.
If a confluence of these two streams of research and practice can be achieved, it will no doubt
strengthen both. However, that confluence will come about not through greater attention to
teaching or research per se, but through a closer examination of how people learn to teach.
Although research expands the knowledge base of medicine and delivery works to implement that
knowledge systematically
to encourage the confluence of knowledge, gained in research, and insight, gained in systematic
implementation, through attention to the evolution of individual teachers’ craft.
These strategies, training and development, are forms of collaboration that can occur between the
teacher-in-preparation and the educator
Language teaching can be seen as a decision-making process based on four constituents:
knowledge, skills, attitude, and awareness.
Skills define what the teacher has to be able to do: present material, give clear instructions, correct
errors in various ways, manage classroom interaction and discipline, and so on.
these constituents—knowledge and know-how, or skills—make up what is often referred to as the
knowledge base of teaching.
this knowledge base is not fixed but tends to evolve and be redefined throughout the teacher’s
professional life.
Thus, attitude is introduced in this proposal as the principal constituent of language teaching that
accounts for individual performance within the generic model. Attitude is here defined as the
stance one adopts toward oneself, the activity of teaching, and the learners one engages in the
teaching/learning process. Attitude is an interplay of externally oriented behavior, actions, and
perceptions, on the one hand, and internal intrapersonal dynamics, feelings, and reactions, on the
other. It becomes a sort of bridge that influences the effective functioning of the individual teacher
in particular circumstances.
the teacher’s attitudes towards his pupils-e. g., his expectations of them—will influence their
achievement. (Pygmalion effect)
three constituents in this model of language teaching knowledge, skills, and attitude. The fourth
constituent— awareness—that functions as the unifying superordinate within the model.
Awareness is the capacity to recognize and monitor the attention one is giving or has given to
something. Thus, one acts on or responds to the aspects of a situation of which one is aware.
Awareness provides the dynamics that scan the field to be known and is, therefore, both a condition
and a means of knowing. One is aware, yet one is only vaguely attending to that awareness
focal and subsidiary awareness: Subsidiary awareness and focal awareness are mutually exclusive.
If a pianist shifts his attention from the piece he is playing to the observation of what he is doing
with his fingers while playing it, he gets confused and may have to stop. This happens generally if
we switch our focal attention to particulars of which we had previously been aware only in their
subsidiary role
Both awareness and attention are critical in learning. the teacher either is or is not aware of a
particular aspect of his or her practice; that awareness is binary.
teacher who says, for example, “I suddenly realized that I’m talking too fast for my class” is
articulating three things: an awareness (“I . . . realized X”), the content of that awareness (“. . . that
I’m talking too fast”), and something about the degree of that awareness, in this case the time (“I
suddenly realized . . .“). Attitude of inquiry
Awareness as a constituent integrates and unifies the previous three constituents—knowledge,
skills, and attitude. It therefore can account for why teachers grow and change. Awareness may be
immediate, or it may be delayed
Knowledge would have preceded awareness. This, however, is the weaker link; people are often
told things that have little impact because these things do not take root in their awareness. The
stronger link comes when one recognizes the need to learn something on one’s own
Thus, awareness, as the superordinate constituent, plays a fundamental role in how the teacher
makes use of the other three constituents; it is also the critical link in the language teacher
education process,
AWARENESS triggers and monitors attention to: attitude skill knowledge graph knowledge
transmission interlinked
Final element: decision making--informed choices types decisions into reflective, immediate, and
routine. teaching as the “management of dilemmas”
linking the process of decision making with the four constituents elaborated here. Micro/marco
decisions in teaching
a valid operational distinction can be made between two functions, which I will call training a nd
development. Thus, the term education is preserved as the superordinate,
language teacher education is presented here as an interactive process involving two individuals:
the teacher (or teacher-in-preparation) and another person—the teacher educator
Four points will help qualify this idea of change. First, change does not necessarily mean doing
something differently; it can mean a change in awareness. Change can be an affirmation of current
practice: The teacher is unaware of doing something that is effective; the collaborator is able to
focus attention on that aspect of teaching practice and thus to trigger a change in the teacher’s
awareness so that it is recognized and thus affirmed.
Second, this change is not necessarily immediate or complete.
Third, some changes are directly accessible by the collaborator and therefore quantifiable, whereas
others are not.
Finally, some types of change can come to closure and others are open-ended;
Training is a strategy for direct intervention by the collaborator, to work on specific aspects of the
teacher’s teaching.
The collaborator can take the lead in this process by isolating and presenting a specific issue for
the teacher to address and by proposing ways to address it. Furthermore, the collaborator can assess
the teacher’s success in working on the issue by setting out observable criteria for change and a
time period within which that change can or should be achieved.
It is based on an assumption that through mastery of discrete aspects of skills and knowledge,
teachers will improve their effectiveness in the classroom. Furthermore, training assumes that this
mastery of discrete aspects can and does aggregate into a whole form of teaching competence.
by breaking down the whole and emphasizing particular aspects of it, as one does in training, the
overall output should rise. The problem, according to Short, is that such an assumption casts
matters “of value and judgment in language befitting the fixed elements and predictable processes
of the inanimate world” (p. 3). However, if teaching is more than the exercise of generic knowledge
and skills, a second strategy, one that adopts a holistic and integrated approach, is needed. Such a
strategy will not generate the same types of discrete change; however, it will address the complex
aspects of teaching that cannot be dealt with in a fragmented way. This strategy is development.
Development Development is a strategy of influence and indirect intervention that works on
complex, integrated aspects of teaching; these aspects are idiosyncratic and individual. The
purpose of development is for the teacher to generate change through increasing or shifting
awareness.
making observations in a detached way, by sharing personal teaching experience, the collaborator
endeavors to start the teacher on a process of reflection, critique, and refinement of the teacher’s
classroom practice. (IMPLICIT) development is a far less predictable or directed strategy than
training. It is highly dependent on the individual teacher, the collaborator, and their interaction.
Because the collaborator’s role is to trigger change through the teacher’s awareness, rather than to
intervene directly as in training,
the collaborator works through a development strategy to clarify and expand the teacher’s
awareness of what that teacher is doing and why. Solutions are generated by the teacher, with or
without the collaborator’s help, but they are ultimately based on the teacher’s awareness and
understanding of the situation. This is perhaps a critical difference between training and
development. In development, although the issues raised must fall within the collaborator’s
understanding of teaching, the solutions do not necessarily need to be ones that the collaborator
knows or can implement. The collaborator encourages and supports the teacher in addressing the
complex and individual nature of many teaching issues and in sorting out a personal course of
action. Development is a strategy that works with the more indivisible, idiosyncratic aspects of a
teacher’s teaching. In training, however, it is the collaborator’s role to be responsible both for the
issue and its solution. ¨¨“a theory of practice,”
We also need a theoretical and practical understanding of how people are taught and learn to teach,
how they learn to implement that description of teaching in practice.
The need to understand the relationship between what we define as language teaching and how it
is taught and learned is pressing on both the theoretical and practical levels.