ABSTRACT
Long before deciding to become second language (L2) teachers, novice teachers subconsciously develop conceptions of teaching cultivated by their experiences as learners in classrooms. Their beliefs develop from what they experience as participants in the “public” side of education, but they never experience the “private conversations” in the minds of teachers that are the conceptualizations grounding why teachers do what they do. The challenge for L2 teacher professional development programs is to move students beyond their learning histories and tacit notions of teaching and mediate the development of a pedagogically sound, explicit conceptualization of L2 teaching, which may become the “psychological tool” through which they think about and carry out their teaching.
