This book provides a multifaceted, multilayered examination of the processes and challenges language teachers face in constructing their professional identities in multilingual contexts such as Hong Kong. It focuses on how professional and personal identities are enacted as individuals cross geographic, educational, and socio-cultural boundaries to become English language teachers in Hong Kong. It explores the construction of language teachers’ professional identities from multiple perspectives in multiple settings, including pre-service and in-service teachers from Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Western countries. Understanding the difficulties and challenges these language teachers face in their identity and professional development is of relevance to teachers and teacher educators, as well as those interested in becoming language teachers in multilingual contexts.

Student and novice researchers may have a general idea for a topic they would like to research, but have a difficult time settling on a more specific topic and its associated research questions. Addressing this problem, this book features contributions from over thirty diverse and experienced research supervisors, mentors, and principal investigators in the field of language teacher education. The chapters are autobiographic in nature, with each contributing author reflecting on relevant, current and innovative research topics through the lens of their own professional life and research work. Offering explicit research topics and strategies for each area of expertise, this book will serve as a useful reference for the seasoned qualitative or narrative researcher, and a helpful guide for new researchers and teacher researchers narrowing down their own research topics.

Several factors have resulted in increased intra- and inter-state migration. This has led to an increase in the enrollment of students with diverse linguistics backgrounds, placing more academic demands on educators. Linguistic diversity presents both opportunities and challenges for educators across the educational spectrum. Language ideologies profoundly shape and constrain the use of language as a resource for learning in multilingual or linguistically diverse classrooms. While English has become the world language, most communities remain, and are becoming more and more multicultural, multilingual, and diverse. The Handbook of Research on Teaching in Multicultural and Multilingual Contexts moves beyond the constraints of current language ideologies and enables the use of a wide range of resources from local semiotic repertoires. It examines the phenomenon of language use, language teaching, multiculturalism, and multilingualism in different learning areas, giving practitioners a voice to spotlight their efforts in order to keep their teaching afloat in culturally and linguistically diverse situations. Covering topics such as Indigenous languages, multilingual deaf communities, and intercultural competence, this major reference work is an essential resource for educators of both K-12 and higher education, pre-service teachers, educational psychologists, linguists, education administrators and policymakers, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

This innovative collection explores transnational approaches to bilingual teacher education from different angles, unpacking the challenges and opportunities in contemporary global bilingual programs. The book offers a thorough account of transnational pedagogical research and best practice in bilingual and second language education to advance bilingual and content and language integrated learning (CLIL) teacher education programs across international contexts, including Australia, Mexico, the United States, the United Kingdom, and around Europe. The book offers a window into better understanding issues around research outcomes on bilingual education professional development models adaptable for diverse settings, translanguaging pedagogy, creative and multimodal tools, and methodological strategies. The book also examines the challenges involved in plurilingual classrooms and formal and informal bilingual education in urban and rural areas. Influenced by the demands raised by the pandemic, some chapters discuss integrated frameworks for hybrid language learning in distance education. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars in bilingual teacher education, bilingual and second language education, and CLIL.

Language teacher education is widely identified as one of the most important areas that needs addressing in order to improve early language instruction, yet research into teacher education for early language teachers remains relatively sparse. This volume responds to this gap by compiling studies with diverse methodological tenets from a wide range of geographical and educational contexts around the world. The volume aims to enhance understanding of early language teacher education as well as to address the need to prepare early language teachers and assist them in their professional development. The chapters focus on the complexity of teacher learning, innovations in mentoring and teacher supervision, strategies in programme development and perceptions, and knowledge and assessment in early language learning teacher education. The volume offers comprehensive coverage of the field by addressing various aspects of teacher education in different languages. The contributions highlight examples of research into current practice in the professional enhancement of early language learning teachers, but with an emphasis on the implications for practitioners.

This volume looks at the preparation of future critical language teachers in the face of an increasingly multilingual and transcultural contemporary world. This is seen through the lens of the collapse of Nation-State borders that crumble in the face of migration and the intense flow of languages that comes with it. It brings together international research that problematizes, theorizes, re-positions and re-conceptualizes myriad structural, systemic, ideological, political and pedagogical issues that intersect with the possibilities and impossibilities of the development of language teachers' agency. The volume examines the needs of linguistically diverse student populations and considers the socio-cultural and socio-political barriers that interfere with the exercise of teacher agency for social justice in language classrooms. It offers a theoretical and empirical overview of how language teacher education has addressed multilingualism and transculturalism in critical approaches in many complex countries in their diversity and/or postcolonial history, including Brazil, Qazaqstan, Scotland, and Thailand.

With cultural and linguistic diversity, migration, and constant change as defining features of contemporary societies, it is increasingly necessary to enhance our capabilities within multilingual environments. Reconceptualizing Language Norms in Multilingual Contexts offers a groundbreaking exploration of language practices and norms in the diverse and dynamic world we inhabit today. It challenges the traditional understanding of language norms as stable and stationary. Instead, it embraces multiculturalism and multilingualism as the norm rather than the exception. Drawing upon a wide range of methodological approaches, this book brings together a collection of position papers, critical reflections, and explorations by emerging and established voices in the field. It delves into how language norms emerge, evolve, and shape communication in both collective and individual contexts of diversity. By reconceptualizing language norms, this book sheds light on real and relevant language practices in multilingual and multicultural spaces, offering insights from the people who inhabit and navigate these contexts. While the content of this book revolves around everyday communication, its academic approaches and comprehensive exploration make it a valuable resource for graduate students, educators, and researchers in the fields of multilingualism and applied linguistics. By bridging the gap between language norms and multilingualism, this book seeks to advance our understanding of language practices in the increasingly interconnected and diverse world.

It is clearly illogical to search for one good, universal solution for multilingual education when educational contexts differ so widely due to demographic and social factors. The situation is further complicated by the motivations of learners and teachers, and by attitudes towards multilingualism and ‘otherness’. The studies in this volume seek to investigate not only whether certain solutions and practices are ‘good’, but also when and for whom they make sense. The book covers a wide range of Western multilingual contexts, and uncovers common themes and practices, shared aims and preoccupations, and often similar solutions, within seemingly diverse contexts. In addition to chapters based on empirical data, this book offers theoretical contributions in the shape of a discussion of the appropriateness of L1-Ln terminology when discussing complex multilingual realities, and looks at how the age factor works in classroom settings.

This collection examines a diverse range of approaches to multilingualism in teacher education programmes across Europe and North America. The authors investigate how pre-service teachers are being prepared to work in multilingual contexts and discuss the key features of current pre-service teacher education initiatives that address the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity evident in classrooms in their respective countries. The focus is not only on migrant-background learners but includes students from Indigenous, autochthonous and heritage language backgrounds, and speakers of minoritised regional varieties. The chapters contextualise, both historically and ideologically, the specific initiatives and measures taken in the participating countries. They also reveal the complexity of each educational context and the role that history, language policies and institutional and programmatic priorities play in the development and implementation of a multilingual focus in teacher education. In exploring how pre-service teachers are being prepared to work in multilingual contexts, the authors take a critical view of how multilingualism itself is conceptualised within and across contexts. The book highlights the valuable impact that explicit instruction on theories of multilingualism, pedagogies in multilingual classrooms and lived realities of multilingual children can have on the beliefs and practices of pre-service teachers.

Content Knowledge in English Language Teacher Education provides original professional experiences and research accounts of teaching language in the specific context of English language teacher education programmes in diverse international settings, with contributions from Argentina, Australia, Chile, China, Ecuador, Japan, Mexico, the USA and Turkey. The volume focuses on how teacher educators plan and deliver modules which help future teachers understand English as a system and develop English language proficiency. The contributors describe and analyse their professional practices in designing, delivering and evaluating modules or courses on understanding the English language as a system, i.e. content knowledge, exploring the teaching of elements such as phonetics, phonology, grammar, pragmatics, philology, and discourse analysis. In addition, they draw on their vast professional experience to explore how to successfully develop competence and language skills in English so that teachers can become models and proficient users of the language for their students. The contributions range from more historical and functionally linguistic focused chapters to more sociocultural explorations of teaching English to future teachers including interculturality, multilingualism, World Englishes, critical thinking skills, academic writing, and literacy through literature. The accounts shed light on the diverse practices of educators from many different countries, contexts, and cultural and linguistic backgrounds, drawing links between policy and practice, to locate much of English language teacher education and curriculum development outside the so-called 'inner circle' of native English-language speaking contexts, practitioners, and researchers.