ABSTRACT
As veteran L2 teacher educators/researchers whose practice and research are grounded in Vygotskian sociocultural theory (SCT), we unequivocally state that L2 teacher education matters. In this chapter, we argue that L2 teacher education can establish its relevance by grounding itself in the epistemological principles of SCT, thereby functioning as a means of intentionally promoting L2 teacher/teaching expertise. We offer an extended review of research that details how a Vygotskian SCT perspective has been used to both inform and transform the enterprise of L2 teacher education. We document where L2 teacher education currently stands and point the way for its development by detailing an agenda for how SCT research and pedagogy can inform the ecologies of teachers’ inner lives, the teacher development-student learning dialectic, and the teacher cognition-teacher education pedagogy dialectic. It is not only our contention that L2 teacher education matters in theory but that its potentiality in practice can be realized through the interaction of Vygotskian-inspired pedagogy and research by teachers, teacher educators, and researchers.
