Second language teacher education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Second language teacher education - Essay Example Teacher training, on the other hand, is used when it is a non-educator. As a whole, however, individuals who study to teach another language are called teacher-learners. What second language teacher education should be has evolved from content, to the person of the teacher and finally to the process of learning or teacher education. Several researches have been made to connect the two concepts under teacher education - teacher training and teacher learning. Previously, second language teacher education was focused on the content – second language – and not how this should be taught. Although there are many reasons for the gap between teacher education and teacher learning, it was generally acknowledged that teacher education was based on principles on teaching imparted to the teacher in the classroom which are then practiced by the educator in his own class. Background research has shown that this idea of transmitting principles eventually evolved into the teachers’ developing their own knowledge through their experience as a teacher. This change was due to the fact that adoption of the transmission idea failed to recognize the learning teachers would get from their classes. According to the reading, there are four influences that have an effect on the understanding of second language teacher education. These are input, prior knowledge, institutional context and time. Input is recognized as something made, how it is given to the student and the outcome it produces. In second language teacher education, strategies for input come from teacher training and teacher development, which are the combination of content and process. Where teacher training encompasses all the various processes learned by the teacher like academic programs, teacher development deals with the educator’s experiences and knowledge and how they can apply this to their teaching methods. Since in second language teacher education the teachers