Researching applied linguistics in language teacher education

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter was to explore the range of research methodologies which can be used to investigate questions about language teachers’ acquisition and use of KAL and which can serve as models for further research. However, as can be seen from the tables in this chapter, there are a number of data collection tools which have not be fully utilized for looking at teachers’ knowledge in our field such as Q methodology, critical incidents, think aloud protocols, stimulus tasks, sorting tasks, concept maps, and memory tasks. It is important that applied linguists begin to explore and evaluate how such data collection methods can be used to pursue our questions in the area of L2 teacher learning and knowledge use.