INTRODUCTION

This chapter defines the scope of professional development for language teacher educators (LTEds) (or trainer development as I shall term it), identifies what becoming a teacher educator entails, provides an overview of current practice in trainer development, and identifies issues in future trainer development activity. The chapter argues that trainer development is a vital aspect of language teacher education (LTE) because of teacher educators’ central role in defining and disseminating ideas about pedagogy.

SCOPE AND DEFINITIONS

Forty years ago, becoming a language teacher educator (LTEd) commonly came about in recognition of classroom teaching expertise. Good teachers thus progressed to become teacher educators, as models of good practice. In many public education systems, this typically resulted in transfer to the tertiary sector – to a training institution – and a concomitant change in status and role for the person involved from teacher to “lecturer” (or similar). Becoming a teacher educator did not at this juncture require any specific formal preparation for the role.

More recently, however, the idea has grown that teacher educators’ work is sufficiently different from teachers’ to require some form of professional development – formal and / or informal – to enable them to perform their roles effectively, and also to continue learning. I use the term trainer development to refer to the formal process of language teacher educators’ professional development. The term also captures the developmental process of constantly “becoming” a language teacher educator, with or without the assistance of a trainer. Teacher educators can also, in less formal ways, undertake their own development (Russell and Korthagen 1995; see also Leung, Chapter 5).

Trainer development is a further level, or layer, of the professional-development process in LTE in addition to the professional development for teachers. Table 1 portrays three levels of activity in LTE. It maps the different roles and relationships in the different domains of language teaching, from trainer development (Level 3) through language teacher education (Level 2) to the classroom (Level 1), the ultimate target domain of the two preceding levels. In defining the scope of trainer development, we must focus on the work of the language teacher educator (LTEd).