A Case Study On Chinese And British Second Language Teacher Educators’ Beliefs On The Knowledge Base Of Language Teaching

This study is about the beliefs of second language teacher educators in the U.K. andChina in terms of the knowledge base of language teaching and how their beliefs areframed in their sociocultural contexts. It is a case study to find out the similar anddifferent beliefs held by the participated teacher educators from the countries inquestion, the possible reasons behind the similarities and differences in their beliefs,and the possible impacts of their beliefs on the second language teacher educationcontexts for the21st century. The data generated from the interviews with threeBritish teacher educators and three Chinese teacher educators suggest that all theparticipants believed that the knowledge base for English language teaching includedknowledge about language, learning, teaching, culture and assessment as well asgeneral pedagogical knowledge, personal practical knowledge and contextualknowledge. However, there were also differences between the beliefs of teachereducators in the U.K. and China, especially in terms of the extent to which they wereaware of the current trends of globalisation, the call for social justice education andthe sociocultural turn in SLTE, which might be large due to their differentsociocultural contexts. This not only indicates changes needed in the teachereducators’ beliefs and the SLTE programmes in order to better prepare their studentteachers to meet the diverse needs of the language learners in the21stcentury, butalso provides insights into the current reality of the SLTE contexts that serves as thebasis for further development in SLTE globally.