14 Initial English Language Teacher Education

In Argentina, as the National Education Act passed in 2006 dictates the

extension of compulsory education to encompass secondary school (Ruiz and
Schoo 2014), educators meet new challenges to cater for diversity and achieve
inclusion. The case of IELTE requires a transition from English Language
Teaching (ELT) for a small elite to the provision of ELT for everyone. In
addition, national language policy (see Banegas 2014; Ibáñez and Lothringer
2013; Porto 2015; Porto, Montemayor-Borsinger and López-Barrios 2016)
advocates a plurilingual and intercultural perspective and a reflective and
research-engaged teaching pedagogy, thus widening the scope of change to be
introduced.
The process of IELTE curriculum reform in Santa Fe, our province, is still
ongoing at the time of writing this chapter. Whereas on the whole this has been
a participatory process involving policy makers, ad hoc specialist committees,
IELTE heads of department and teacher educators in current programmes, in
contrast the voices of students in TEP and those of recent graduates have been
acknowledged perfunctorily or not at all. Yet it falls on them to carry out the
implementation of the curricular change in primary and secondary education,
which has already been put into effect.
The aim of this study is twofold: to explore the beliefs of advanced teacher-
learners and novice English language teachers in Rosario (Santa Fe, Argentina)
regarding the knowledge base of SLTE and to analyse to what extent such beliefs
are congruent with current research on the topic. We believe that the conclusions
can prove a welcome, contextually bound contribution to the curriculum under
construction, as they allow us to glean the strengths and weaknesses of the current
TEP and the demands of classroom teaching. Furthermore, they can contribute
to the body of research on context-specific SLTE curriculum practices, which
Nguyen (2013: 37) characterizes as scarce, though the apparent dearth in this
respect could perhaps be attributed to limited accessibility to publications from
non-central contexts.

A multidimensional conceptualization
of the knowledge base of SLTE

The comprehensive conceptualization of the teaching knowledge base by Shulman

as ‘a codified and codifiable aggregation of knowledge, skill, understanding, and
technology, of ethics and disposition, of collective responsibility’ (1987: 4) sets the
 Pre-service and Novice Teachers’ Perceptions on Language Teaching 15

grounds for most of the subsequent research on teacher education. He submits

that the sources for such knowledge are to be found not only in discipline-specific
scholarship, in the materials and settings of the institutionalized educational
processes and in the practice itself, but also in ‘research on schooling, social
organizations, human learning, teaching and development, and the other
social and cultural phenomena that affect what teachers do’ (1987: 8). The
seven seminal categories he proposes (content knowledge, general pedagogical
knowledge, curriculum knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge
of learners, of contexts and of educational ends, purposes, and values) have been
widely examined with reference to IELTE programmes (e.g. in Latin America in
Álvarez Valencia 2009; Banegas 2009; Fandiño 2013).
The knowledge base of SLTE has been the subject of extensive research in its
own right, with Graves (2009) as a case in point. She sets apart the knowledge
base of SLTE, that is, what the education of language teachers involves, from
the knowledge base of language teaching (LT), which refers to the education
of language learners, though she suggests that both are inextricably linked. She
draws attention to the fact that different conceptualizations of language as well
as the teacher-learners’ identities as L1 or L2 speakers will determine differences
in the curriculum of SLTE and that the rationale for the inclusion of content
should be its relevance to language teaching. Yet she argues, from a sociocultural
perspective, that ‘the issue is not what is relevant in the curriculum but who
makes it relevant, how and why’ (2009: 120).
Also from a sociocultural standpoint, Freeman and Johnson (1998) highlight
the commonalities between the knowledge base for general teacher education
and for SLTE. They focus on the activity of teaching and put forward the
existence of three interrelated domains: the teacher as learner of teaching, the
social context and the pedagogical process. At the crossroads with cognitivism,
they posit that student-teachers’ prior experiences of learning (both in early
schooling and during SLTE) as well as their wants, needs and expectations have
a key role in shaping the knowledge base.
In more recent studies, the contextual dimension has gained prominence.
Johnson (2009: 114) advocates the need to ‘take into account the social, political,
economic and cultural histories that are “located” in the contexts where
L2 teachers learn and teach’ to prevent the imposition of external methods
and recipes, while at the same time challenging local constraints through
engagement with wider professional discourses and practices in processes of
reflective inquiry. In this line, the discussion of the knowledge base of SLTE is
16 Initial English Language Teacher Education

further enriched with the contributions of critical and postmethod pedagogy.

Franson and Holliday (2009: 40), for example, argue for a decentred approach to
‘recognize and explore the cultural complexity and diversity’ within the personal
experiences of teachers and learners, as opposed to an essentialist view of culture
abounding in stereotypes.
Richards (2010) further discusses the notion of context, which he
understands to encompass both structural influences (e.g. school culture,
management style and physical resources available) and personal influences
(including learners, other teachers, even parents). He also delves into two
dimensions of professionalism: one that is institutionally prescribed and refers
to qualifications as well as a commitment to attaining high standards, and
another that is independent and concerns the teachers’ reflection on their own
values, beliefs and practices. After IELTE, he posits, SLTE continues as a process
of socialization in a particular context as the teacher becomes a member of a
community of practice.
The role of socialization experiences, in fact, is another aspect that currently
features prominently in the literature. Farrell (2009) draws attention to the part
they play in the first years of teaching to consolidate teachers’ beliefs about
language teaching and learning. Conway, Murphy and Rath (2009) espouse
the view that learning to teach should occur within a continuum of teacher
education spanning initial, induction and in-service education and development,
and they document a number of countries that have set up quality induction
programmes. The purpose of such programmes is to assist novice teachers to
address the challenges of their early years without being drawn into dominant
practices of the professional context and to strengthen their commitment to
lifelong learning. In order to bridge the gap between SLTE and the realities of
the school classroom where novice teachers take their first steps, a number of
options have been described in Farrell (2015a), all of which revolve around the
need to integrate theory and practice through the development of principled
reflection by teacher-learners and novice teachers.
Yet other directions found in recent analyses refer to the consideration of
changing local circumstances instead of the pursuit of an all-encompassing
static model for the knowledge base of LT to be replicated worldwide. Álvarez
Valencia (2009), for example, postulates the existence of multiple, context-
bound knowledge bases in dialogic interaction, which he illustrates through the
metaphor of an orchestra with the teacher as conductor who, through reflection,
decides what to play and how to play appropriately for a given audience and