‘It's like English is given more emphasis than the topic’: Designing materials in English language teacher education

Abstract Despite decades of curricular change and the introduction of language pedagogies emphasising meaning and communication, teachers of English in Chilean schools still tend to favour traditional methods and focus largely on discrete language. Using data from stimulated recalls, interviews and observations with preservice teachers, interviews with teacher educators and schoolteachers and analysis of official documents and materials, the article explores the design of materials by a group of Chilean preservice teachers and identifies why one of the main rationales mediating their materials design is subordinating topics, the content‐related themes guiding lessons, such as culture, historical characters and lifestyles, to discrete language. The preservice teachers' beliefs, their mentoring teachers and contradictions within the national curriculum emerged as pivotal factors reinforcing this phenomenon. Data also suggests that the ways in which teacher education standards are adopted by their teacher education programme could reinforce this subordination of topics, notwithstanding the standards' communicative orientation. The article stresses the need to provide more materials development instruction in teacher education, it highlights the need to re‐evaluate how the standardisation of teacher education is adopted by teacher education institutions and shows that researching materials design can illuminate persisting issues in language education.