Reflecting professional identity: An internationaly jointly-run blended course to train future language teachers

Dagmar Abendroth-Timmer , Jose Ignacio Aguilar Río (1)

1 DILTEC - DILTEC - Didactique des langues, des textes et des cultures - EA 2288

Teaching a foreign or second language today is not only a matter of having certain linguistic or pedagogical competences. Language teachers nowadays are seen as language educators aware of the globalized world in which we live and able to transmit values that correspond to such globalization (Dupuis, Heyworth, Leban, Szesztay & Tinsley, 2003). Moreover, language teachers are also expected to be knowledgeable in certain technologies that have become everyday use, namely in education-related contexts. In sum, if language teachers are to continue their task efficiently in complex, contemporary societies, they must develop specific multiliteracies (Compton, 2009) that go beyond the mere linguistic and pedagogical know-how, as well as possess an intercultural vision of the world that guarantees an openness to the otherness (Matthey & Simon, 2009). University language teacher training programmes must thus take into account these changes, as well as implement contents and practices that allow future teachers to construct a flexible professional identity (Varghese, Morgan, Johnston & Johnson, 2005; Cachet, 2009) and auto-reflexivity (Schön, 1983: 49-69). This article presents an international, experimental, online, Master's course (the Siegen-Paris project) that attempted to account for these social and teacher training-related challenges.

Mots clés: foreign language learning; foreign language teachers' training; ICT

Domaines: Education; Linguistique

Dagmar Abendroth-Timmer, Jose Ignacio Aguilar Río. Reflecting professional identity: An internationaly jointly-run blended course to train future language teachers. The European journal of appllied linguistics and TEFL, 2013, 3, pp.119-134. ⟨halshs-01010048⟩