Teacher Education and Foreign Language Teacher Professionalism in the 21st Century

Abstract

The quality of foreign language teaching improves so long as foreign language teachereducation quality is increased. However, it is not easy to measure the quality of ForeignLanguage Teacher Education (FLTE) programmes due to the factors related not to theprogramme but to the learner variables. It has been proved by the research (Sutton Trust2011) that improving teacher effectiveness has a great impact on learner outcomes. In the21st century, Professional development of the teacher has gained importance due to theprecedence given to the learners. For this reason frameworks and models have been proposedto enhance the quality of teacher education (i.e. NIE, VSK Model, 2009).This paper focuseson Teacher Education programme models and the criteria put forward by these models. Acomparison of Turkish and other FLTE programmes is given in order to bring clarity to theconcept of professionalism. The small-scale research results conducted in Turkish context(n81) to check upon foreign language teacher knowledge and beliefs on efficacy andprofessionalism are also displayed.