Understanding Lack of Development in Early Career ESOL Teachers’ Practical Knowledge

Teacher learning is vital for academic institutions engaged in raising the educational quality of their programme (Borg, 2018). Despite this, however, longitudinal research exploring when and how language teacher learning actually takes place is relatively limited (Richards, 2017) with research mostly limited to the effectiveness of formal teacher education programmes (Borg, 2015). This study investigates the practical knowledge development of four early career language teachers outside formal, structured professional development programmes as they teach speaking skills to adult migrants. The extensive data, generated over a full academic year, indicate that practical knowledge development was very limited during this period. Furthermore, the findings suggest a strong relationship between this absence of growth and the atheoretical nature of the teachers’ practical knowledge. Such findings strongly suggest the need for educational institutions to purposefully create effective learning environments which engage teachers with public theory in order to facilitate the development of teaching expertise.

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.