Investigative minds create investigative students: English language teacher education for the 21st century

Abstract

The present paper concerns itself with the recent policy changes in higher education across South- East Asia that advocate a shift toward competency-based learning. The change impacts also on English Language Teacher Education (ELTE) programs that seek to prepare pre-service teachers for a career that, increasingly, requires from teachers to be imaginative, innovative and intellectually engaged lead- ers. However, research shows that the new policies present numerous challenges to lecturers in lan- guage teacher education programs in South-East Asia: old habits persist and role models are missing. The present paper addresses the need for examples of quality practices in language teacher education and shares with readers the researcher's own experiences in addressing the new challenges in the Aus- tralian context. The principle that informed the researcher's own teaching model drew on the under- standing that the new career descriptors of school teachers emerged from the world that is becoming increasingly aware that schools belong to community, and that community is not a closed enclave but a conglomerate of "conversations", past and present, in which we participate as professionals. Hence, the key aim of the approach described in this paper was to design strategies that would enable pre-ser- vice people to expand their concepts of their professional community and expose them to ideas that they identify to be interesting, informative and inspiring their interest in future professional development.