Innovation through teacher education programs

The emergence of what has been coined the ‘sociocultural turn’ in the disciplines of Second Language Acquisition (Block, 2003), Second Language Teacher Education (SLTE) (Johnson, 2006; 2009), and more generally in Applied Linguistics (MLJ Focus Issue, 2007) has led to an understanding of human cognition and cognitive development (learning) as originating in and fundamentally shaped by engagement in social activities (Vygotsky, 1978; 1986). From this epistemological perspective, cognitive development cannot be removed from activity since it originates in and is framed by the very nature of that activity. Thus, it follows that what is learned will be fundamentally shaped by how it is learned. Taken up within the context of SLTE, it can be assumed that what teachers learn about L2 learning and teaching will be shaped by how they learn it. In other words, while novice teachers will most certainly learn about language, language learning and language teaching in their SLTE programs, what they learn will be fundamentally shaped by the quality and character of the activities they engage in within their SLTE programs.