ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests language teacher education (LTE) researchers choose topics that connect foremost with their personal histories. LTE scholars interested in Study abroad (SA) are very likely former SA participants or SA facilitators, instructors, or directors. Research on language teachers in SA mainly concerns teachers from English-speaking countries in France, Germany, or Spanish-speaking countries. Teachers in SA require comprehensive treatment as language teachers, language learners, and teaching learners with complex life worlds and personal/professional histories. Language teachers’ second languages SA social networks are always potentially and oftentimes explicitly professional and may positively conflate host, cooperating teacher, friend, and mentor, since teachers uniquely operate on intersecting learner and expert planes. The greatest social consequence of LTE SA is the transfer of new linguistic, cultural, intercultural, and pedagogical knowledge to the domestic classroom. It is thus exceptionally important to understand the optimal articulation of teachers’ lived experiences of LTE SA with their ongoing work in domestic curricula and their students’ learning.
