Second language teacher education Introduction

Second language teacher education Introduction: second language (l2) teacher education describes the field of professional activity through which individual learn to teach l2s. In terms commonly used in the field , these formal activities are generally referred to as teacher training. The field of teacher education is a relatively underexplored one in both second and foreign language teaching. The literature on teacher education in language teaching is slight compared with the literature on issues such as methods and techniques for classroom teaching.( Richard and Nunan 1990) The gap between teacher Education and teacher learning ironic that L2 teacher education has concerned itself very little with how people actually learn to teach . Rather , the focus has conventionally been on the subject matter -what teacher should know - and to a lesser degree on pedagogy - how they should teach it. The notion that there is a learning process that undergirds , if not directs , teacher education is a very recent one. 1 what is the nature of teaching and of teachers knowledge?? 2 How is it most adequately documented and understood ?? 3. How is it created , influenced or changed through the interventions of teacher education.? Thus there have been two ongoing debates in teacher education over the past two decades. there was also a political problem that , whithin this research tradition, definitions of teaching and teachers' professional knowledge were determined not by practitioners but by people outside the classroom. for researchers, the aim was to abstract teaching from contextual variables of place and time, and thus to improve its respectability through the use of positivist science . To this end , research focused on teaching as discrete behaviours which could be distanced from the contexts within which they occurred. the teacher education matters ; the question. is how and how to improve it. thanks.