Becoming Language Teacher Educators: Critical Friendships and Communities

An exploration of how criticality can be developed among language teachers. This book is designed for teacher educators who are preparing teachers to work in a variety of global language education settings including pre-kindergarten through 12 bilingual classrooms and Sheltered English Immersion (SEI), as well as adult and community TESOL courses.

Through vignettes that highlight their own journey as critical teacher educators, Christine Montecillo Leider and Johanna M. Tigert provide insight into how they address various challenges of language teacher education, including a banking model approach to language education and the need to de-center both the English language and American approach to language education.

Each chapter offers a variety of reflective activities that both early career and veteran teacher educators can use to enhance their own development as critical teacher educators. Further, the authors provide a roadmap for how these reflective activities can be adopted to foster criticality among language teachers. Grounded in critical pedagogy and critical friendship, this book translates critical theory to praxis, providing a guide for teacher educators who seek to transform their approach to teacher education practice.

Christine Montecillo Leider is Assistant Professor of Multilingual Learner Education, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA.

Johanna M. Tigert is Senior Lecturer of Teacher Education, University of Turku, Finland.