The STARTALK program provides summer language learning and professional development opportunities to US K-16 students and teachers. This symposium examines STARTALK's emerging research initiative on professional development for instructors of less commonly taught languages and explores future approaches to such research with LTE participants.

What kinds of information did six Chinese EFL teachers focus on in peer-mediated reflections? Was the focus different when the teachers reflected upon their teaching individually? The findings demonstrated that the two types of reflections yielded different teacher knowledge and information and can serve different purposes in professional development.

This paper presents a framework for collaborative EFL program design that uses Ellis's (2005) principles for successful instructed second language acquisition as a foundation. The framework is based on research embedded in an off-shore in-service professional development course for South Korean EFL teachers, and also draws on follow-up case studies.

Much has been written about the oral reticence of some Chinese students in the classroom, but little is known about how learners themselves perceive the phenomenon. This paper examines student teachers' perceptions of oral participation in the English language teacher education course room in Hong Kong.

Given the valuable role of culture teaching/learning in 21st century language classrooms, this paper will outline findings from a nationally funded Canadian study examining the relationships between teacher education practices, teacher candidate beliefs, and visions of culture teaching and intercultural learning in international language education.

How do EFL teachers from around the world experience intercultural learning in an online course? What intercultural competencies do they display? This presentation discusses: 1) findings from a qualitative study investigating these questions, and 2) ideas and strategies for designing online professional development for language educators about intercultural topics.

This presentation covers the steps taken to benchmark the Common European Framework Reference (CEFR) to the local Egyptian context. The assessment system will be discussed as well as the long and challenging process for orienting and training teachers to take on a new curriculum. (44 words)

This presentation takes into consideration the findings of a research project that examined the creation and evolution of study groups. These study groups consisted of public school teachers of English who engaged in action-research and innovation projects during an in-service program carried out in Bogota-Colombia. I will concentrate on the characteristics of the curriculum of the teacher development program, the gains, and challenges ahead.

This session will share results of collaboration among CFLP and NADSFL to pilot a professional development model designed to systemically strengthen classroom practices for teachers of Arabic, Japanese, and Mandarin languages. Detailed information will be shared about Project IMPACTFL, Model Sharing Institutes, lessons learned, and future project work.

Five panelists from indigenous language immersion programs in Canada, New Zealand, and the United States will provide unique perspectives on how indigenous teachers must negotiate the dichotomous distinctions between traditional and contemporary landscapes of education, and how teacher education must strive to bring authenticity to the language revitalization endeavor.

In this presentation we discuss a reconceptualization of our approach to English language teacher education in the US in light of a model we have been developing for use in the global context of teaching English as an international language.

Based on the results of our empirical research into collaborative EFL teaching by native English-speaking and non-native non-specialized English teachers, we reveal potential benefits for both teachers and students and recommend the promotion of that teaching method as a means of teacher development, particularly in the elementary school EFL setting.

This study scrutinizes the challenges L2 teachers encounter in teaching settings, the strategies they utilize, and the support they receive to handle these challenges. Exploiting a sociocultural perspective, it opens a venue to investigate the issues of L2 teacher learning and teacher knowledge base in relation to their in-class experiences.

This study aims to understand the dual roles that pre-service Chinese Mandarin foreign language teachers play in the China-U.S. telecollaboration, i.e., the collaboration between pre-service Chinese language teachers in China and college level Chinese language learners in the U.S.. I examine this in two complementary and interacting communities, each potentially incorporating a community of practice.

This presentation describes a study about how in-service K-12 foreign language teachers have created their own professional development opportunities via Web 2.0 platforms like social networking, microblogging, and resource-sharing sites. The presenter will describe the culture of their communities of practice and the attitudes and experiences of individual participant teachers.

This paper presents the initial findings of an online ethnography study being conducted through participant observation procedures in an online teacher community of practice of ESL/EFL teachers. These teachers engage in collaboratively exploring and exchanging the uses of computer-mediated communication tools in language teaching.

Presenters in this symposium will report on the design and implementation of a recyclable teacher training program. It focuses on a systematic approach from the perspectives of sociolinguistics, including key areas related to language views, generic and specific topics, cost-effectiveness, and the pros and cons of a bottom up approach.

Clinical experiences provide pre-service teachers with valuable opportunities to further their pedagogical knowledge. This paper presents the findings of a self-study of the most beneficial aspects of field experiences, as well as the challenges of designing clinical experiences that promote the use of best practices in language instruction.

Posts made during a TESL practicum were analyzed to determine to what degree pre-service teachers were actually interacting with each other (social presence) and engaging in knowledge construction (cognitive presence). Implications from both a pedagogical and research perspective are discussed. 

Teacher cognition has focused on beliefs, assumptions and knowledge, and teacher perceptions. In this paper we describe the perceptions that students of a teacher training course in Argentina, together with their methodology professors and their assistants, have regarding the practicum and their preparation as future language teachers.

This paper describes the Moodle Fishbowl professional development activity. This is an opportunity for experienced EFL faculty to observe online instructional conversation strategies in action. Participants in our study report the activity to be conceptually powerful as they migrate their EFL courses to blended and eventually fully online venues.

This study introduces an initial effort of developing individual and group e-portfolios in promoting self-directed professional development and a community of sharing among teachers in a Japanese language in-service training program. The initiative was taken in response to a preliminary study revealing the lack of sharing of practices and continuous portfolio development among the participating teachers.

In this paper, we describe the effects of the integration of video technologies and online teaching portfolios on teacher learning in our language teacher education course. Our learning activities include peer observation, self-observation, individual and social reflection, action research and experimentation, and collaboration.