This book offers a comprehensive, up-to-date review of the recent professional developments of teachers of English in the western region of China in the context of English language teaching reform and teacher education reform. It discusses a wealth of theories, frameworks, qualitative case studies and quantitative investigations, while also covering a range of key practices that are indispensable. It equips readers with an in-depth understanding of the impact of the current curriculum reform on the promotion of teachers’ cognition, emotions, attitudes and awareness of their self-development, as well as teachers’ corresponding efforts to update their educational concepts, reassess their teacher roles, enhance their teaching skills, and implement new approaches to their professional development. It is a valuable resource for anyone pursuing research in this field as well as in-service teachers, teacher educators and education administrators. And as it offers practical help for the potential difficulties and challenges they might encounter, it is also a must-read for the student teachers of English.

Teachers, as life-long learners, engage in professional development to deepen their understanding of content and instructional methods. Teacher professional development is a form of adult education, and adults learn best if they are actively involved in their own learning and see it relative to their own needs. Grounding professional development in actual classroom practice is a highly powerful means of fostering effective teachers. Research has shown that, for professional development to be effective, several components of instruction should be considered: reflection on practice, problems arising in practice, subject matter content, and principles of adult learning. Practice-Based Professional Development in Education is a cutting-edge research publication that explores both effective and ineffective professional development practices and presents arguments for why adult learning theory should be considered when designing a professional development session. Highlighting a range of topics including social media, education reform, and teacher learning, this book is essential for teachers, academicians, education professionals, policymakers, curriculum designers, researchers, and students.

This book focuses on how current and prospective teachers worldwide are prepared for the significant task of teaching geography, given the important role of teachers. It eschews a traditional career-centric framework (pre-service, in-service teaching) in favor of a topical approach toward issues that all teachers face. The book updates thinking on geography education subfields such as GI education and fieldwork and traces important contemporary discourses such as digitalization and sustainability. The book further explains the broad variety of institutionalization of geography teacher education in various political systems. In short, this book collects strategies for geography teacher educators worldwide to provide insight into the challenges, conditions, and solutions present at the classroom and institutional level. As such, this book is a must-have for teacher educators and geography teachers worldwide.

This book fills a critical gap in a neglected area in current educational research: international teacher education. It focuses on the preparation of teachers of English as an additional language (EAL) in several world regions. The book consists of chapters by researchers in well-established teacher education programs in 11 countries: Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, Greece, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey and the United States of America. It takes a cross-national, comparative approach around four major focus areas: policy, research, curriculum and practice, offering critical implications that can help improve EAL teacher education programs in different parts of the world. Teacher education is an area that has great potential for international cross-pollination of ideas and actions, and this book represents an important first step along this road.

This book explores language teacher beliefs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading instruction in the context of Chinese university English instructors. Since the 1990s, there has been a renewed interest on teacher beliefs in the domain of language teacher cognition. However, most studies in this area aim at investigating the relationship between particular aspects of teacher beliefs and classroom practices, largely ignoring the complexity of teacher beliefs. This study explores the issue from an alternative perspective by conceptualizing teacher beliefs as a complex, dynamic and multi-faceted system. By adopting five rounds of interview and four classroom observations, the year-long study reveals seven key features of the belief system shared among six participants. It calls for the holistic, complex and insider view to examine teacher beliefs in relation to the sociocultural and historical contexts where the teachers work and live.

Providing an East-West flow of language teaching knowledge and know-how to balance prevailing Western-centric perspectives, this book is an in-depth investigation of the impact of Western-based language teacher education on the pedagogy and practice of Chinese English language teachers who received their training in Western institutions or those that emphasize Western-based teaching approaches. A significant and growing number of these teachers will influence millions of language learners in China over the next decades. The Pedagogy and Practice of Western-trained Chinese English Language Teachers: Forefronts Chinese teachers’ voices and experiences in the context of their workplaces and classrooms Connects and balances theory and practice using a sociocultural lens Discusses the Chinese government’s policies on the training of teachers and analyzes them in terms of their impact on both American and Chinese higher education institutions This is a must read book for anyone interested in learning theory adopted from a Western perspective and applied within an Asian setting.

This volume identifies, illustrates, compares, contrasts and provides informed reflective commentary on the diverse career trajectories of English language teachers, teacher educators and researchers. Increased migration and globalisation pressures have led to dramatic changes in English language teaching over the last few decades. The resulting increased demand for well-qualified English language teachers has also impacted positively on the status of this profession, as developing a career in this field is now increasingly linked to advanced academic study as well as work possibilities in a wide range of diverse contexts. This book provides insights into the career trajectories of English language teachers in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Greece, Iceland, India, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the USA, and the Middle East. This book is likely to be of interest not only to teachers in the field of English language teaching, but also to researchers with an interest in exploring teachers’ lives and careers in diverse contexts. The insights provided in this book will no doubt inspire those who wish to develop, or further develop, a career trajectory in this intriguing field, as well as provoke teacher educators to consider new ways to support those entering the field of English language teaching and those currently navigating its many complex challenges.