Selected Papers from the International Language Teacher Education Conference

This volume contains selected papers from the tenth and eleventh International Language Teacher Education (LTE) conferences held in 2017 at the University of California, Los Angeles, and in 2019 at the University of Minnesota, respectively. In keeping with the mission of the biennial LTE conference, both events addressed the education of teachers of all languages, at all instructional and institutional levels, and in all the many national and international contexts in which this takes place, including: English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instruction; foreign/modern/world language teaching; bilingual education; immersion education; indigenous language education; heritage language education; and the teaching of less commonly taught languages.

A common theme across the two LTE conferences was diversity. Whereas the first conference targeted the diverse nature of student populations in an increasingly multilingual world and the importance of language teacher educators in addressing the challenges and potentials of this diversity, the second conference highlighted the desire to explore teachers and teacher educators as individuals functioning within diverse sociocultural contexts. The five papers included in this volume provide a view into this diversity as they address the various perspectives, contexts, languages, and frameworks in which language teacher education takes place.

This edited volume on language teacher education includes fourteen refereed papers based on presentations at either the 6th International Conference on Language Teacher Education (held in Washington DC in May 2009) or 7th International Conference on Language Teacher Education (held in Minneapolis, MN in May 2011). The papers showcase research and practice related to the education of language teachers from many different national and international contexts including foreign language education, English as a Second/Foreign Language, and heritage language instruction. This sharing of ideas and insights into language teacher education in such diverse international, national, and disciplinary contexts is truly intended to help all language teacher educators to expand their horizons and improve their practice.

Eight papers originally presented at the Fifth International Conference on Language Teacher Education were selected for inclusion in this volume dedicated to the diversity of voices in the field. While each paper speaks to a different teaching context, they all highlight ‘best practices’ in language teacher education. Some of the papers address practices in different contexts and others challenge readers to rethink the knowledge base of language teacher education, to think critically about what this knowledge consists of and why, and to describe classroom and professional tools that will best equip language teachers to help their students achieve their language learning goals.

This volume of fourteen selected papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on Language Teacher Education showcases work from eight different national contexts in settings as diverse as English as a Foreign Language (EFL), English as a Second Language (ESL), French immersion education, and Spanish and Japanese language instruction. Echoing the theme of the conference, these papers highlight a diverse range of teacher educator voices as they interact with the vision of conceptual frameworks teacher educators have come to share. The ideas and insights presented in these papers help to push forward our understandings and our practice of language teacher education.

The papers in this volume were selected from presentations originally presented at the Third International Conference on Language Teacher Education held in Minneapolis in May 2003. Rooted in different instructional settings, the selected papers offer a window into many of the issues touched upon at the conference and suggest directions for future discussions in the field of language teacher education. This volume is organized according to three themes of the conference: a) The Knowledge Base of Language Teacher Education; b) Social, Cultural, and Political Contexts of Language Teacher Education; and c) Process of Language Teacher Education.

These fifteen selected papers from the First International Language Teacher Education Conference in 1999 focus on three particularly important areas in the field of language teacher education: the knowledge base of language teaching; processes of language teacher education; and sociocultural and political contexts of language teacher education.