Document Type : Book Review

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran

Abstract

Second language (L2) teacher education has witnessed a substantial shift of attention and orientation with regard to the way it looks at teaching, teachers, and various teacher-related factors. This consequential drift began to occur in the 1970s, a decade branded by Freeman (2002) as the decade of change where teacher education was in the van of the quest for a cognitive paradigm, in lieu of the behaviorist tradition, in which the mental lives of teachers were also taken into account. The shift has continued in an evolutionary fashion, and teachers, couched within the new tradition, are deemed to be both cognitive actors and reflective practitioners. As a reflective being, a teacher is also viewed as “an agentic social ‘subject’: individuals with identities, knowledges, and experiences who are themselves engaged in an evolving trajectory of professional development” (Cross, 2020, p. 38). As a corollary of this teacher repositioning, the notions of agency and, by implication, language teacher agency (LTA) have become a regular fixture of inquiry in both mainstream and L2 teacher education. To be sure, in terms of theorization, the construct is still in need of clarification as there is no univocal consensus on what exactly constitutes agency (Mansouri, et al., 2021). Moreover, it is sensible to consider whether agency is merely another fashionable concept in the language teaching enterprise with no positive and useful contribution to the realities of the teaching practice, or whether teachers’ involvement with agency will lead to the betterment of their professional development practices. Language Teacher Agency is a well-timed publication making a crucial contribution to these concerns. 

Keywords

Article Title [Persian]

معرفی کتاب:«عاملیَت در مدرسان زبان»

Author [Persian]

  • دکتر فؤاد بهزادپور

استادییار گروه زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی، دانشکده ادبیات و علوم انسانی، دانشگاه شهید مدنی آذربایجان، تبریز، ایران

Keywords [Persian]

  • آموزش معلمان
  • تدریس فکورانه
  • ترانگرش؛ عاملیَت مدرس زبان
Akbari, R., Behzadpoor, F., & Dadvand, B. (2010). Development of English language teaching reflection inventory. System, 38(2), 211-227. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2010.03.003
Cross, R. (2020). The ‘subject’ of Freeman & Johnson’s reconceived knowledge base of second language teacher education. Language Teaching Research, 24(1), 37-48. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1362168818777521
Douglas Fir Group. (2016). A transdisciplinary framework for SLA in a multilingual world. The Modern Language Journal, 100(S1), 19-47. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12301
Freeman, D. (2002). The hidden side of the work: Teacher knowledge and learning to teach. Language Teaching, 35(1), 1-13. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444801001720
Mansouri, B., Molana, K., & Nazari, M. (2021). The interconnection between second language teachers’ language assessment literacy and professional agency: The mediating role of institutional policies. System, 103, 1-11. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2021.102674
Tao, J., & Gao, X. (2017). Teacher agency and identity commitment in curricular reform. Teaching and Teacher Education, 63, 346-55. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.01.010