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Part of
TBLT as a Researched Pedagogy
Edited by Virginia Samuda, Kris Van den Branden and Martin Bygate
[Task-Based Language Teaching 12] 2018
► pp. 265–286

Chapter 10
Becoming a task-based teacher educator

A case study

| Florida International University

In this chapter, I adopt a case study approach to my own transformation from academic researcher to university-level teacher educator responsible for training future language teachers and providing training and professional development workshops to language teachers in my community. I describe how I set out as a newly-minted Ph.D. with a background in second language acquisition (SLA) research and a specialization in task-based language teaching (TBLT), and why and how I had to move beyond my own SLA-based training in order to be able to support teachers in the real world of classroom, particularly those encountering TBLT for the first time. Fundamental to my transition was what I learned from classroom observation, teachers’ feedback, action research, and conscious reflection on my own practices. In what follows, I explore this process through the prism of TBLT, that is, in relation to a suite of courses and workshops on language teaching methodology and TBLT, and chart the evolution of a task-based orientation to the delivery of those courses and its impact on my development as a teacher educator. In this I highlight how the construct of ‘task’ played a useful and facilitative role in framing reflection and development within a teacher education context. With this personal narrative, my goal is to draw on my own experience to highlight the real-world needs of classroom teachers, particularly those new or transitioning to TBLT, and how those needs might best be served by teacher educators.

Article outline
  • Background
  • My beginnings as a teacher educator: The first year
    • The problem
    • Lack of experience
    • Not seeing results and feeling ashamed at my self-perceived inefficacy
  • The transition
  • The Foreign Language Teaching Methodology course
  • The Task-Based Language Teaching course
  • The Teaching Practicum
  • Teacher-training workshops in the community
  • Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 1 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tblt.12.11bar
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