Expanding the Socio-Cultural Knowledge Base of TESOL Teacher Education

This paper argues for the expansion of the knowledge base of TESOL teacher education to integrate greater awareness of the sociocultural and political context of teaching English to speakers of other languages. It is argued that the changing roles of teachers, insights gained from classroom research and recent developments in critical applied linguistics, coupled with the inherent complexity of language teaching, necessitate this curricular modification. The paper outlines three areas of inquiry to be integrated into existing TESOL teacher education curricula: (1) discussion of crosscultural variation in language teaching and learning and tools for investigating this variation; (2) overview of management of pedagogical innovation; and (3) examination of the sociopolitical factors surrounding the teaching of English as an international language. Appropriate junctions in current TESOL teacher education curricula that will allow for the integration of these three areas are suggested throughout the paper, along with resources that can aid teacher educators and curriculum developers in educating more socioculturally and politically aware teachers.