Teacher Cognition and Language Teaching

Abstract

This entry provides a broad introduction to language teacher cognition, which is a field of study concerned with understanding all facets of the nonobservable dimension of teaching, such as teachers' beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, feelings, and decision‐making. This domain of research is also concerned with the origins and development of teacher cognition and about its relationship with how teachers develop and what they do in the classroom. After emerging in the mainstream educational literature in the 1980s, teacher cognition gained profile in language teaching in the mid‐1990s and since then has become an established area of study. It is now accepted that language teachers' cognitions have clear implications not only for their development but also for their classroom practices and for initiatives, such as curriculum reform efforts, that seek to bring about changes in educational practice. A significant volume of language teacher cognition research now exists and key broad conclusions from this work are summarized here. The practical implications of this research for language teacher education, development, and change more generally are also outlined. The entry also argues that continuing work is needed to ensure that such implications are more fully understood and acted on by teacher educators and curriculum reformers worldwide.