Introduction
The study of language teachers is a relatively recent area of research that focuses on how teachers learn to teach, how they teach, and who they are as individuals and professionals. Over a decade ago, Richards ( 1990, p. 3) observed that there had been “little systematic study of second language teaching processes that could provide a theoretical basis for deriving practices in second language teacher education.” The field has developed since then and has become an important area of study in language and education. It has included methods used to study language teachers by outsiders and those used by language teachers themselves to study their own classrooms. In addition, topics have ranged from those predominantly confined to the classroom, such as action research, to studies of teachers across different settings, such as those describing teachers’ professional trajectories.
Early Developments
Early forays into analyzing second‐language classrooms focused on attempts to...
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Varghese, M.M. (2008). Language Teacher Research Methods. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_261
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