This classroom-based action research (CBAR) corroborated our belief in the valuable role rubrics play in a tertiary L2 writing context where English is the medium of instruction. The three-stage CBAR involved ongoing discussions between us, two writing teacher-researchers, as we adapted our teaching and assessment strategies to explore the…

Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) have been an integral part of the English language curriculum in the Israeli school system since 2013, when questions that needed HOTS were added to the matriculation exams in all modules. Teachers subsequently have been responsible for integrating such questions into their teaching. The study aims to…

Despite empirical evidence in support of the effectiveness of using tasks in young learners' classrooms, task implementation has been repeatedly reported as a thorny problem. An essential but under-researched issue is how in-service teacher education programme can be conducted to facilitate teachers' implementing tasks in their classrooms. This…

This study examined how secondary teachers (junior and senior high school teachers) of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Japan participated in collaborative action research and engaged in their professional development over four years. In particular, little is known as to how EFL teachers challenge their beliefs and implement innovative…

Given emerging trends in where, why, how, and to what end English language teachers are being prepared, we argue that greater attention to the design, enactment, and consequences of language teacher education (LTE) pedagogy is critical in order to meet the needs of current and future English language teachers in an increasingly diverse, mobile,…

Inspired by the recognition of teachers and teacher learning in the knowledge base and the calls for greater attention to the pedagogies and development of teacher educators, in this brief essay we posit that a deeper understanding of the teacher educator as scholar, as practitioner, as researcher, is critical to the LTE knowledge base.

Situated in the Vietnamese context, this article argues that rather than sideline knowledge of learners in favour of subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge as the basis of the knowledge base of LTE, prominence should be given to knowledge of learners if teachers' competence to teach responsively is desired.

This article examines how the concept of a knowledge-base in language teacher education has changed since the 1998 proposal. Arguing that a knowledge-base evolves in two ways: through changes in the field of knowledge, and through changes driven by the work that knowledge supports, I describe two problems: 'translating' theory into practice and…

The study reported in this article was aimed at investigating whether making the findings of second language fluency research accessible to language teachers has an impact on their self-reported understanding of the concept of oral fluency, confidence in promoting it, and classroom practice in short and medium term. The data come from 106 initial…

New audiences, new theoretical understandings of cognitive development and teaching, and the moral imperative to reach all learners and teachers require reframing how we assess our effectiveness in ELT. In this article, I present four areas of LTE that require reframing: (1) Who we prepare (2) with what content (3) to competently participate in…

Foreign language teaching in distance education is administratively and pedagogically challenging; research on the perspectives of novice practitioners' online teaching is also relatively scarce. This study explores how a novice Japanese teacher navigated and negotiated her professional development in a two-way virtual practitionership during her…

A teacher's assessment literacy refers to her or his demonstrated understanding of the principles behind selecting and designing tasks, judging student work, and interpreting and using assessment data to support student learning. This study examines the development of the task design aspect of assessment literacy in 12 Chinese language teachers as…

To date, research on feedback in second language (L2) writing has primarily focused on feedback per se, with little attention paid to the teachers' professional development with regard to feedback in writing. This study aims to explore the ways in which two secondary teachers in Hong Kong attempted to implement feedback innovation in their writing…

Ellis (2003) identifies four key criteria that distinguish a "task" from the types of situational grammar exercises that are typically found in the more traditional language classroom. This study investigates how well teachers were able to design tasks that fulfilled these four criteria (Ellis, 2003) at the end of a year-long…

This article examines how four second language (L2) teachers' discursive practices changed as they attempted to implement dynamic assessment (DA) in their classrooms. Classroom artifacts, lesson recordings, and reflections from two pre-service teachers and two in-service teachers, both before and after a professional development series on DA, were…