Abstract
Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a dual-focussed approach that promotes the learning of curricular content in tandem with an additional language, usually English. Since its inception in the 1990s in Europe, CLIL provision has increased considerably not only in Europe but also in other contexts, such as Latin America, given its purported benefits in terms of motivation, cognitive skills development, and language awareness. However, little is known about how future teachers, i.e. pre-service teachers, are trained to teach through CLIL. This article aims to address this gap by describing how we – two CLIL teacher educators based in Argentina and Spain – offer CLIL courses. Through duoethnography, we show how we plan and implement CLIL input and what lessons we have learnt drawing on reflective practice in interaction. Analysis of our interaction illustrates how CLIL is conceived and operationalized and what CLIL competences are prioritized in our practices. Pedagogical implications are included.
Introduction
The field of English language teacher education (ELTE) continues to grow as the number of learners rises across contexts and levels of education (Walsh and Mann, 2020). With this growth, educational systems around the world are under constant pressure to prepare future teachers who can offer context-responsive pedagogies informed by different language learning approaches. One approach which is finding traction across settings is content and language integrated learning (CLIL).
CLIL research has paid particular attention to parents’, learners’, and teachers’ perceptions of CLIL (e.g. McDougald, 2015; Pérez Cañado, 2016), professional development opportunities for CLIL with in-service teachers (Banegas, 2019), and the subjective wellbeing of CLIL teachers (Hofstadler et al., 2020). Nonetheless, few studies examine CLIL teacher education with future teachers. In other words, little is known about how pre-service ELTE programmes prepare future teachers to implement CLIL in different contexts (Guo et al., 2019).
The aim of this duoethnography-based study is to examine how two teacher-educators from two different settings (an ELTE programme in Argentina and an ELTE programme in Spain) plan and deliver grounding on CLIL to future teachers of English as a foreign language according to different context-responsive needs. While in the Argentinian programme, future teachers approach CLIL as a language teaching approach (Coyle et al., 2010), in the Spanish programme, CLIL is directed at the teaching of school subjects through English, that is to say, CLIL as an educational/content-driven approach (Cenoz, 2015).
In the sections below, we first review the recent literature on CLIL teacher education. We then describe the research methodology (duoethnography) and present the findings. Last, we discuss these findings in light of the literature and put forward conclusions and implications that may resonate with other contexts.
CLIL and CLIL Teacher Education
It may suffice to define CLIL as an approach having the dual purpose of teaching learners curriculum content and a second language (L2), usually English, in an integrated manner (Coyle et al., 2010; Coyle and Meyer, 2020; Díaz Pérez et al., 2018; Nikula et al., 2016). For example, in practice this may entail enabling learners to acquire content, such as geography, together with an L2 (English). As CLIL spreads around the world, experts report on CLIL benefits in terms of motivation, autonomy, linguistic development, intercultural awareness, and thinking skills (Banegas and Lauze, in press; Martínez Agudo, 2019). Such benefits, alongside challenges, have been investigated with young learners (e.g. Fazzi and Lasagabaster, 2020; Pérez Cañado, 2018) and higher education students (e.g. Aguilar and Muňoz, 2014; Vega and Moscoso, 2019).
As rightly discussed in Pérez Cañado (2018), successful CLIL provision depends on teacher preparation not only in relation to pedagogy but also to professional identity (Morton, 2019). Even when teachers find CLIL motivating and rewarding (e.g. Fernández and Halbach, 2010; Infante et al., 2009), experienced and novice teachers assert that careful training is needed in order that they can respond to CLIL challenges with context-sensitive pedagogical decisions. Marsh et al., (2012) suggest that CLIL teachers may be expected to develop the following competences to succeed in CLIL implementation: personal reflection, CLIL fundamentals, content and language awareness, methodology and assessment, research and evaluation, learning resources and environment, classroom management and CLIL management. In this section we review recent publications on CLIL teacher education with in-service as well as as pre-service teachers.
Different authors have described how in-service teachers are supported in CLIL implementation. For example, in a mixed-method study carried out with teachers, teacher educators, and school coordinators across several European countries, Pérez Cañado (2014) concluded that content teachers experienced more challenges than language teachers as regards linguistic and intercultural competences alongside creating materials and managing resources. In the Catalan context, Pladevall-Ballester (2014) found that teachers consider the CLIL experience to be positive, since they have observed how the motivation of students has raised and how students learn in a meaningful way almost without realizing it. However, they acknowledged that they needed support with lesson planning.
More recently, Lo (2020) conducted a study in Hong Kong with the aim of implementing different CLIL teacher education models based on cross-curricular collaboration among secondary school teachers. The study revealed that implementing practice-oriented, but theory-informed workshops contributed to teachers’ growth in language awareness. The workshops also benefitted teachers developing an identity as language educators regardless of their subject matter specialization. The author concludes that CLIL teachers, due to CLIL’s dual aim, need to develop pedagogical strategies that attend to both content and language teaching through an L2. On the issue of collaboration, Pavón et al., (2020) stress that collaboration is essential to ensure that CLIL teaching competences are deployed within and across institutions as a concerted policy for sustainable CLIL provision.
Studies contextualized in pre-service teacher education programmes have yielded similar results. In the Spanish context, authors such as Pena et al. (2005) and Pena and Porto (2008) observed that student-teachers were motivated to adopt CLIL in their future practices. Notwithstanding, they suggested that continuous support was necessary at the intersection of theoretical knowledge and implementation.
Similar to Lo’s (2020) study, student-teachers may also identify L2 proficiency and language awareness as a barrier. For example, in a case study, Escobar Urmeneta (2013) analysed a student-teacher’s placement for an academic year and discovered a progressive and positive evolution thanks to different strategies such as the use of learner-convergent language, conversational strategies, and allowing the students to express themselves in their native language (L1) of Spanish although the student-teacher in her role as a teacher maintained the use of L2 English throughout the lesson.
In alignment with in-service teachers’ concerns with lesson planning, studies with pre-service teachers have also highlighted the pivotal role that lesson planning and materials development play in shaping future CLIL teachers’ situated practices. For example, in Argentina, Banegas (2015) analysed the language-driven CLIL lesson plans developed by a cohort of student-teachers. Although the student-teachers exhibited declarative knowledge of CLIL’s rationale and features, they struggled with including activities that attended to both content and language. Even though these student-teachers were being trained to become English teachers, their lesson plans focussed on content, whereas language teaching was reduced to vocabulary teaching or recycling prior knowledge. The student-teachers also encountered problems at the level of imbuing the lesson plans with opportunities for higher-order thinking skills development. However, the lesson plans were strong in displaying student-teacher-made materials.
More recently, Kao (2020) examined the effect of a CLIL module in a Taiwanese teacher education programme. Supported by lectures and seminars drawn on recent CLIL research, the student-teachers developed L2 confidence, and succeeded in designing their own teaching materials alongside authentic materials to boost learner motivation and integration of curricular content and L2 learning.
Through different models and initiatives, the studies reviewed above aim at highlighting CLIL teacher competences. Nonetheless, CLIL teachers may display declarative knowledge of such competences but fail to enact them in their situated practices particularly when they have concerns about their own content knowledge and L2 proficiency (Banegas, 2012). Such need for reassurance means that teacher educators calibrate CLIL courses in initial teacher education in ways that are pedagogically robust and context-sensitive. With the need to understand how CLIL teacher educators address the challenge of preparing future teachers for CLIL provision in pre-service ELTE programmes, we set out the following research question: How do CLIL teacher educators understand and live the experience of designing and delivering CLIL in pre-service ELTE?
Methodology
In this study we adopted a duoethnographic approach to understand in interaction our individual experiences as English language teacher educators preparing future English language teachers to teach under a CLIL approach. In this section we describe the research methodology and ourselves as both participants and co-authors.
Duoethnography refers to the combination of two autoethnographic accounts where the voices of the researchers are foregrounded (Sawer and Norris, 2013). In a recent volume, Lawrence and Lowe define duoethnography as ‘a qualitative research methodology in which two researchers utilize dialogue to juxtapose their individual life histories in order to come to new understandings of the world’ (2020: 1). According to Starfield (2020), in autoethnography the primary data is the researcher’s personal experience. When two autoethnographies are combined in a dialogic script, the lived experiences are deconstructed and reflected on as they unfold. Thus, this form of enquiry is dialogic in nature and it positions the researchers as active Others for the verbalization and understanding of personal experiences as told in conversation. In this sense, in the field of language education, duoethnography can be viewed as joint reflective practice (Rose and Montakantiwong, 2018).
In this study dialogue itself became the primary source of data. However, our conversations were supported by personal journals and teaching artefacts collected between 2013 and 2020. In total, we had eight two-hour meetings over the course of two months. The meetings were held on a UK university campus as Author B visited Author A as part of a visiting academic scheme. The meetings were audiorecorded and orthographically transcribed for analysis and coding by topic. As Lowe and Kiczkowaik (2016) explain, we finally constructed the dialogues to illustrate three topics: (1) designing CLIL input, (2) teaching CLIL courses, and (3) reflecting on CLIL preparation.
What follows is a brief description of us as researchers and participants. Darío Luis Banegas is an English language teacher educator based in the UK, but the CLIL teacher education experiences presented in this study come from delivering CLIL courses in South America. In his case, he approached CLIL both as an educational approach (content-driven CLIL) and as a language learning approach (language-driven CLIL). At the time of engaging in this duoethnographic study, he had prepared pre-service and in-service teachers for CLIL for 11 years. In the dialogues which follow, he concentrates on CLIL preparation in pre-service English language teacher education programmes.
Marta del Pozo Beamud is based in Spain at University of Castilla-La Mancha. The CLIL issue has always been part of her academic interests. Her doctorate and research articles explore the relationship between CLIL and the affective variables. Likewise, she has taught a CLIL module to student-teachers dealing with both theoretical underpinnings and practical tasks.
Findings
Supported in dialogic introspection (Bukart, 2018), in the sections below we engage in heuristic reflection of our professional experience as CLIL teacher educators in Argentina and Spain, respectively. It should be mentioned that while Banegas prepared future teachers for a language-driven CLIL approach, del Pozo Beamud mostly concentrated on CLIL from a content-driven perspective. In the (re)constructed interactions below we explore three topics: (1) designing CLIL input, (2) delivering CLIL courses, and (3) reflecting on teacher education for CLIL.
Designing CLIL Input
Since our aim was to describe the cartography of CLIL teacher education at pre-service level, we engaged in lengthy conversations of how we (re)designed the course over the years as we gained experience and CLIL knowledge drawn from publications, courses, and conferences. The first theme, designing CLIL input, reveals our attitudes towards collecting, curating, and designing how CLIL was presented to future teachers. Mirroring Lowe and Kiczkowiak’s (2016) dialogic format for data presentation, we seek to display interaction alongside initial discussion:
What have you taken into account for designing the CLIL module you lead?
The aims of the module lead me in the design and curation of input. The module hopes to prepare teachers for content-driven CLIL. Thus, the aim is to provide them with CLIL rationale and pedagogical support for lesson planning, assessment, and good practices in CLIL. I’ve organized the module into seven units: CLIL in Europe; CLIL in Castilla-La Mancha; CLIL main concepts like the 4Cs, the language triptych, or the balance between linguistic and cognitive demands (Coyle et al., 2010); thinking skills in CLIL; activities and scaffolding; lesson planning; and last assessment in CLIL.
In my case, CLIL is part of a larger module on how to teach English to teenagers. So, the aim is to help future teachers implement CLIL as a language-driven approach in the EFL lesson. The module has eight units, and the last two are about CLIL. Because of time constraints, I focus on CLIL definitions, models, lesson planning, and materials.
As for sources of input, since I started teaching this module I’ve used the same bibliography like the Coyle et al. (2010) book or the Mehisto et al. (2008) volume. I’ve looked for updated material but the truth is that these titles offer the basic principles for CLIL understanding and practice. Because my subject is one term, I can afford to include these books together with books about CLIL in Spain, and Castilla-La Mancha in particular such as Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe (2010).
In my case, I’ve given them the first units in the Coyle et al. (2010) book and then we do more reading and practice following the Bentley (2010) book as it has a combination of input and activities. Every year, I try to include a paper about CLIL in practice in Argentina, for example Banegas (2020), or Banegas (2017) about teacher-made materials development. In addition, I provide multimedia input like interviews with CLIL teachers or experts or samples of CLIL lessons from different contexts. The fact that I teach the module online allows me to include more multimedia resources they can access at their own pace and time.
In the dialogue above we summarized our approaches to CLIL teaching by highlighting the aims behind the course/units of work. Whereas del Pozo Beamud is in a context where CLIL is placed on the content-driven side of the continuum, Banegas approaches CLIL as a language-driven model. Despite these different aims and models, we coincided in offering student-teachers CLIL rationale on what we may call classic CLIL books such as Coyle et al. (2010), Mehisto et al. (2008) or Bentley (2010). In addition, we both included CLIL literature from our contexts in order to promote local knowledge flow and context-appropriate CLIL pedagogies. In this regard, we agreed that including CLIL practices drawn from our contexts allowed student-teachers to view CLIL as a possible approach in our educational landscape.
In our co-constructed description, we both seem to highlight that navigating CLIL starts with basic concepts before rapidly moving into practice with a focus on lesson planning and materials development. Del Pozo Beamud extended CLIL understanding to incorporate assessment, a topic which usually raises concerns among teachers (Aiello et al., 2017).
Teaching CLIL Courses
The second theme delves into moving from designing to actual implementation of how we conceived and selected the input with the aim of preparing future teachers for CLIL. In the dialogue below we describe how we engage in planning and delivering CLIL at the level of sessions.
Of course, one thing is the thinking about the macro aspects of teaching CLIL but then it’s important to think about the micro, how we do the actual teaching, enabling future teachers to CLIL as a verb.
Absolutely. The first unit on CLIL starts with a definition that’s flexible enough to include content-driven and language-driven models: ‘CLIL refers to an approach which merges subject and (foreign) language development in educational contexts.’ (Nikula and Moore, 2019: 237). With that definition in mind I give them some vignettes of CLIL classrooms and they need to identify what kind of CLIL model it might be. Then, they watch a video about different CLIL contexts and they complete a table identifying the context, learners’ profile, lesson aims and teaching strategies. Finally, I ask them to read the Bentley (2010) book and start completing the activities at the end of each unit. The unit assignment is to write a reflective account of how they did and what lessons on CLIL they have learnt. I also use a forum to share personal experiences of learning which integrated L2 and content. For the following lessons and unit, I give them different language-driven CLIL lesson plans and ask them to analyse them in terms of aims, tasks, outcomes, and then I ask them to improve one of them and write a rationale in light of the material provided. I then focus on materials for CLIL. They read Banegas (2015) and (2017) and they need to create their own examples of CLIL activities based on the tips provided. Finally, in groups they write a lesson plan for a given scenario.
Because I teach face-to-face, I read the literature I mentioned before. I then use the PowerPoint slides to summarize the main concepts and ideas from key authors. After that input, the student-teachers work in groups. We tackle the issues presented in the slides with the objective of making theory something tangible for them. They are often asked to agree or disagree with statements related to CLIL as a theoretical framework and its implementation in the classroom. When potential problems arise, they are expected to provide a factible solution taking into account classroom complex realities. One of the activities carried out was planning a lesson about a topic in particular (e.g. women in history). They also work on a project to produce a CLIL didactic unit (a series of lesson plans). They brainstorm ideas using a mind map, and they develop the lesson plans, assessment, and rationale.
At this point in our interaction, the mode of teaching (Banegas, doing distance teaching and del Pozo Beamud, doing face-to-face teaching) may lead to some differences in our teacher education practices. For example, Banegas seems to include multimedia support, discussion forums, and assigning a complete book (Bentley, 2010) for the student-teachers to read and engage in testing for learning. On the other hand, del Pozo Beamud relies on visual support (PowerPoint) to provide input. However, we both seem to start with key definitions and input before moving to learning activities usually carried out in groups such as guided lesson planning or discussion. We both noted that even when input precedes practice, we do not follow the traditional lecture plus seminar sequence; we integrate both input, activities, and co-construction of learning in a holistic fashion regardless of whether this is achieved synchronously (del Pozo Beamud) or asynchronously (Banegas).
Reflecting on Teacher Education for CLIL
As in Rose and Montakantiwong (2018), a final theme in our co-constructed dialogues gravitated around our reflections on teaching CLIL in pre-service teacher education. We particularly looked back on the lessons learnt, challenges, and how we sought to overcome them.
Over these years I have learnt to make my lessons more practical since it is what they demand and what society demands as well. That is to say, instead of them learning about figures of CLIL schools in our region (which I did at the beginning), I rather spend time discussing the actual European programmes implemented in the classroom. In that way, they could try to implement such programmes in their future practice. What I find truly challenging is maintaining their intrinsic motivation due to the fact that the vast majority is solely extrinsically motivated. At the beginning, they were willing to become English teachers because of external reasons (getting a good job/salary). Thus, I shared with them some academic papers in which they warn about the ‘dangers’ of extrinsic motivation. Once the goal/punishment/reward disappears, this kind of motivation tends to vanish. However, if teaching is their passion and they do it because they genuinely love to share their knowledge with their learners (intrinsic motivation), it may guarantee quality teaching since those teachers are mostly preoccupied about having a positive impact on children both academically and emotionally.
In terms of lessons learnt, like you, I’ve increased student-teachers’ experiential opportunities by reducing the reading load. I have instead increased the number of activities around selected reading so that they can profit more from them. I’ve also included more activities related to lesson planning and materials development so that they can see more links between practice and concepts. I’ve also ensured that they challenge the articles and think of their own context. Over the years the challenge has been in relation to student-teachers’ lesson planning. When they plan, they take CLIL only for language revision and they find it hard for them to introduce new language other than specific vocabulary. Thus, I give them more detailed instructions about the scenario they’ll be planning for. I include a specific function and structure (e.g. describing a cycle, present passive voice) they need to teach together with new content. I’ve also provided them with a checklist to make sure the plan has explicit and implicit opportunities for learning new specific language, language needed to solve the tasks, and spontaneous language. It’s funny because they will be language teachers, but when they plan for CLIL, they focus on content and somehow ignore language. In this respect, I make them follow the sequence of prior content, prior language, new content, and new language to ensure balance. Finally, to support them, I ask them to explain how each task or stage in the lesson responds to the lesson aims they’ve set out so that the plan is coherent.
Our reflections illustrate our response to a demand for further practice. However, this does not mean sacrificing input. Reading input became selective, guided, and closely associated with activities such as lesson planning and materials development. Over the years, we have both prioritized practice, yet this practice continues to be principled and informed by publications, both international and local. In her reflections, del Pozo Beamud foregrounded student-teachers’ motivation as a challenge, particularly concerning their intrinsic motivation emerging from the educational process itself and vocational goals (Dörnyei and Ushioda, 2011). We understood that by bringing up the issue of student-teacher motivation, del Pozo Beamud considers CLIL teacher wellbeing (Hofstadler et al., 2020) a vital dimension that needs to be embedded in CLIL teacher education. In contrast, Banegas seems more concerned with the pedagogical dimension of his practice by emphasizing student-teachers’ struggles with planning for a dual purpose, content and language learning, where the latter is incorporated for purposes other than recycling prior knowledge. In this respect, the challenge has been addressed by increasing guidance by means of scenarios, checklists, and frameworks for lesson organization (Banegas, 2015; Banegas, 2017).
Discussion
In this duoethnography we sought to examine how we, two CLIL teacher educators based in two different international contexts, Argentina and Spain live the experience of preparing future teachers of English for CLIL given their pivotal place in CLIL success (Pérez Cañado, 2018). Setting-specific considerations such as how CLIL is implemented differently in both countries shaped and legitimized our understanding, practice and views of CLIL teacher education. In this section we discuss our co-constructed dialogic narrative around three foci: (1) CLIL as a concept, (2) CLIL as praxis, and (3) CLIL teacher competences.
Positioned as reflective teacher educators (Mann and Walsh, 2017), our interaction reveals that driven by our different, context-specific experiences and background, we conceptualize CLIL as a flexible approach that can accommodate a variety of models as illustrated in our experiences above in line with the literature (e.g. Cenoz, 2015). This open perspective, which draws on international perceptions of CLIL (Pérez Cañado, 2016), can be materialized in the different definitions and literature we include in our practices. Despite setting-specific considerations and individual journeys, we share a firm belief that CLIL is an approach that can contribute to learning both curricular content and an additional language, and that through CLIL teachers can create a meaningful environment that promotes language as a meaning-making system, motivation, collaboration, and critical thinking (e.g. Banegas and Lauze, in press; Coyle et al., 2010; Díaz et al., 2018).
The dialogues above demonstrate that as we design and implement CLIL, our drive is CLIL praxis, that is, the complex and fluid mutualism of practice and input. As we gained experience and reflected on our practices, in both cases, we became more selective in terms of sources of input and provided student-teachers with opportunities to profit from the input through activities that maximized learning in context. The input was drawn from both international and local publications with the aim of enabling the student-teachers to co-create their own context-sensitive CLIL models. In so doing, CLIL praxis challenges applicationist models in teacher education. Our practices instead seek to empower future teachers to envisage CLIL as an approach they can shape to suit contextual demands and affordances. In particular, we both realized that we had an interest in supporting lesson planning and teacher-made materials as a way to enable student-teachers to exercise their identity agency as CLIL teachers (Morton, 2019).
Last, we analysed our journey as CLIL teacher educators through the prism of CLIL teacher competences suggested in Marsh et al., (2012). Albeit being designed for Europe, the document covers a myriad of dimensions that can be cultivated across a multiplicity of settings. By comparing our reflective practice with such competences, we noted that we help develop CLIL fundamentals, i.e. CLIL definitions and rationale, but only to provide a working framework for CLIL practice. We also contribute to developing language awareness (Lo, 2020), as we emphasize language learning opportunities guided by, for example, the language triptych (Coyle et al., 2010). Concerning language awareness and the role that language has in CLIL, we increased our effort to ensure that CLIL lesson planning reflects the dual purpose of the approach regardless of the model used by the practitioner.
Drawing on needs detected in the literature (e.g. Kao, 2020; Pladevall-Ballester, 2014), we both have an interest in helping student-teachers develop competences for methodology (CLIL lesson planning), and assessment, particularly in del Pozo Beamud’s case. However, what is prioritized in both settings is learning resources as we strive for creating opportunities that connect aims, practice, CLIL fundamentals, and lesson planning through the development of learning materials that cater for learners’ needs and trajectories.
On scrutiny of the interactive narrative displayed above, over the years we have learnt to position our CLIL teacher education courses at the nexus of teaching-informed research and research-based practices (Rose, 2019). We have shifted towards lesson planning, materials development, and activities that allow student-teachers to create possible pedagogical responses for context-driven challenges based on actual scenarios (Morton, 2019). In so doing, we hope to make CLIL real and feasible rather than focussing on the ideal. While the ideal provides a horizon, milestones, and a sense of improvement, it needs to be constructed and de-constructed in such a way that it becomes doable rather than frustrating.
Conclusion
In this duoethnography we described how two CLIL teacher educators, based in two different countries, understand and implement CLIL courses to meet different contextual demands in initial English language teacher education. Duoethnography has helped us cultivate a reflective and retrospective attitude towards our different experiences as CLIL teacher educators, and in turn, to respond to the gap detected in language teacher education literature (Guo et al., 2019). We believe that the relevance of our duoethnography lies in the fact that we are set in two different countries where pre-service ELTE programmes embrace CLIL as content-driven (Spain) or language-driven (Argentina); therefore, we provide accounts which describe the ends of the CLIL continuum.
We acknowledge that the research approach utilized in this article is not free from limitations. By definition, the article needs to be small-scale as duoethnography, quite logically, entails only two voices and contexts. We attempted to mitigate this caveat by reflecting on the totality of our CLIL teacher education experience. A second issue may be associated with the construction of our dialogues. These were based on our journals, teaching artefacts, and recorded conversations. However, it may be inevitable to alter the original voices and meanings as we summarized the narrative through dialogues that somehow fictionalized what happened in practice. Last, given our dual identity – researchers and teacher educators – we have examined our own practices and this may have biased or limited our interpretations in retrospect.
In terms of implications, our study may encourage CLIL teacher educators to investigate their practices across settings through (auto)ethnography to put forward detailed and honest descriptions of challenges, successes, and failures in CLIL research and CLIL preparation. Together with CLIL, other approaches or modules in language teacher education can also be investigated through ethnographic methods. In the case of duoethnography, a teacher educator may seek a colleague based in a different setting to share professional experiences, materials, and reflections of a common denominator such as a teaching approach, a specific content, a barrier, or an example of good practice. The difference in setting could be geographical, socio-political, educational, or epistemological, among other alternatives. These two teacher educators can keep a record of audiovisual interactions (e.g. recorded face-to-face or online conversations, audio message exchanges through an online application such as WhatsApp) or share an online document in which they construct a written dialogue in response to emergent topics they identify.
We believe that for teacher educators who do not often engage in doing research or writing for publication, duoethnography may become a reasonable and practical conduit for exploring their own professional practices. By engaging in dialogic interaction and concomitant collaboration, the flow of ideas and lessons learnt in teacher educators’ journeys can be bidirectional and lead to sharing such trajectories with a wider professional community of practice. Linked to this suggestion, future studies may examine how ethnography, in its various forms, can support teacher educators’ research engagement and professional development.
