Thinking about teacher education

For three decades, EFL TE programmes have been facing myriads of challenges to produce a competent ELT workforce for global markets. For example, novice teachers have found it difficult to apply what they have learned to real-world teaching (e.g., Johnson, 1992). To further this point, Casanave (2009, p. 261) observed that EFL TE programmes in both English- and non-English-speaking countries could not necessarily ‘guarantee that students can apply what they learn to the realities of their own teaching’. Hence, a great deal of research has been conducted to identify difficulties in bridging the gap between TE and classroom realities. One of the often-cited challenges is the irrelevance of EFL teacher training courses to real-world teaching (e.g., Johnson, 2013; Tarone & Allwright, 2005). Another challenge is that the content of teacher training courses was found too ‘abstract’ or ‘ideal’ to apply to real-world teaching (e.g., Yuan, 2017, p. 1). Regardless of the reason, the ‘theory-application’ approach has often been criticised based on the assumption that theories are incorporated into TE for teachers to translate into their teaching but not to think about their teaching. By this, Ur (2019, p. 3) condemned ‘the major function of published theories for practitioners is not that they should be put into practice, but that they should trigger reflection and critical thinking which are likely to result in useful learning and professional development’. However, despite the dissatisfaction with the ‘learn-the-theory-and-then-apply-it’ approach (Ur, 1992, p. 57), EFL TE is still increasing. This further calls for a move of EFL TE beyond the scope of a theory-application approach and instead prompts EFL teacher educators and/or EFL teachers to rethink the theory-application approach.

Teachers have been traditionally regarded as ‘consumers’ of ‘findings that are retailed by research’ (Widdowson, 1990, p. 10) or responsible for putting theories produced by academics into practice (e.g., Hüttner et al., 2012). So far, EFL teacher educators and researchers have established new agendas to extend or supplement the theory-application approach. A sociocultural perspective, for instance, has provided a wider scope from which teachers’ professional development could be understood in the educational, social or political contexts where the said development takes place. For instance, analysing 20 Taiwanese pre-service teachers’ written observations and teaching-practice reports concerning year-four teaching practicums, Liou (2001) found that pre-service teachers learned to teach by observing how in-service teachers bridged the theory-practice gap inside classrooms as well as by reflecting on their own teaching practices. Thus, Liou (2001) suggested that either critical reflection practice courses should be integrated into TE programmes or similar training should begin as early as possible in the TE programmes. He and Yan (2011) investigated fourth-year student teachers’ reflections on their teaching practicums. The results indicated that teaching practicums enabled pre-service teachers to apply newly acquired and context-relevant knowledge from one lesson to the next while they were still in their internships. Many proposals or implications for TE innovations arising from a similar line of research are necessary, representing a part of the TE enterprise that is more likely to produce a competent EFL teacher work force.

The literature reviewed above demonstrated diverse approaches to TE. They were effective but not limitation-free. For example, the effectiveness of a theory for TE is not determined by only the approach itself but also by the ways it can be applied, by whom it can be applied, and under which circumstance it can be applied (e.g., Liou, 2001). TE has also considered what theory means to local teachers and students, in which teaching contexts theory can be applied, what teachers usually do with theories, and what learning/teaching results particular theories may bring about (He & Yan, 2011). As Freeman and Johnson (1998, p. 400) argued, the working context was recognised as ‘central in shaping teachers’ conceptions of their professions’. In fact, ‘how teachers actually use their knowledge in classrooms is highly interpretative, socially negotiated, and continually restructured within the classrooms and schools where teachers work’ (Freeman & Johnson, 1998, p. 400).

A departure point for the current study

Due to the global status of the English language, ‘the fluid, multi-faced nature of English use is redefining what language learners of all ages need, and therefore what they are expecting of formal classroom instruction’ (Freeman, 2018, p. 6). Accordingly, EFL teaching knowledge is (re)defined and ‘pedagogical demands’ on the EFL ‘teaching force’ are changing (Freeman, 2018, p. 6). In this case, some EFL teaching, learning and TE concepts may still be useful while others may not be. The call for updating the approach to ELT has posed a challenge for EFL TE programmes because efficiency of TE training is complex and cannot be understood simply in terms of how theories can be applied to practice or theorised from teaching practice. Two lines of research in the field of TE have exemplified this point.

Table 1 provides an overview of the suggestions provided in previous EFL TE research. Even with such research, however, there exists a mismatch between the provisions provided by such interventions and the reality of teaching experienced by the pre-service teachers involved in such studies. Specifically, the first line of research tended to examine the learning of pre-service teachers within the EFL TE programmes. Analysing the changes in 19 first-year pre-service teachers’ teaching beliefs from before to after completion of an Introductory English Language Teaching course, Lee (2015, p. 33) found that TE shaped pre-service teachers’ pedagogical beliefs, challenging pre-service teachers’ ‘deep-seated beliefs about teaching’. Another example was Liou’s (2001) analysis of 20 fourth-year Taiwanese pre-service teachers’ observation reports and teaching practicum reflections. This first line of research has suggested small-scale interventions to maximise pre-service teachers’ readiness for real-world teaching. The second line of research examined pre-service teachers’ teaching practicums or the first-year teachers’ teaching in Asia. Witnessing the gap between EFL TE and real-world teaching, this second line of research suggested new programmes to smooth the transition from a novice to an experienced teacher (Farrell, 2015) and the establishment of mentorship supervision to support the first-year teachers’ teaching (e.g., Mann & Tang, 2012).

The potential of the proposed interventions to effectively achieve their intended outcomes is not as simple as incorporating certain training activities into existing TE courses. Follow-up research is required to analyse the effects of such interventions on TE. In addition, most of the studies reviewed above emphasised pre-service/novice teachers’ learning gains after teaching practicums or during their first year of real-world in-service teaching and did not focus on the needs of pre-service teachers enrolled in EFL TE programmes. Such studies have examined what was introduced to enhance the quality of existing ELT TE programmes (e.g., Farrell, 2016; Lee, 2015) or what pre-service teachers did not learn from the programmes (e.g., Liou, 2001; Yuan, 2017). Their focus has been on the inefficiency of the programmes and not on the benefits such programmes can provide. As Kumaravadivelu (2001, p. 551) observed, these studies seemed to assume that TE programmes were designed and implemented to get pre-service teachers ready to ‘transmit a set of pre-selected and pre-sequenced bod[ies] of knowledge from the teacher educator’. In other words, the research has regarded pre-service teachers as passive receivers of input that has been selected, determined, and (re)delivered by teacher educators. The literature has taken a deficient perspective to explore TE, highlighting inadequate TE preparation, at the expense of not considering what TE programmes have provided to pre-service EFL teachers.

Recently, reflective practice has received much attention in TE for benefits such as helping pre-service teachers make decisions, understand and manage their knowledge, and adjust their practices (e.g., Zeichner & Liston, 1987). However, the inherent limitation of using reflective practice to reflect on the effectiveness of TE has not been fully considered. As Gan and Lee (2016, p. 263) identified, reflective reports have enabled researchers to understand pre-service/novice teachers’ learning ‘backwards’. In other words, it is likely that ‘forward practice’ remains ‘uninformed’. Inspired by Gan and Lee’s (2016) point, the present research explored the earlier stages of TE educational provisions in order to draw the attention of TE professionals away from a deficit perspective on the existing EFL TE programmes and instead move towards professional development for pre-service teachers in these existing programmes. This merits research into what pre-service teachers have learned from a TE course and are competent to teach. The implications of such findings could help address how pre-service teachers’ learning can be further enhanced in TE programmes.

Theoretical framework

Research context

The study was conducted in Macau where either Cantonese or Mandarin is a first language and English is a foreign language. The research setting was the Bachelor of English Education programme in the Faculty of Education at a comprehensive public university. With the aim of cultivating language teachers with sound content and professional knowledge and skills, the programme's curriculum includes both classroom-based learning and on-site teaching practice. The student teachers in their first three years primarily attend courses to gain content knowledge and practise teaching skills in their classrooms via various microteaching and peer teaching activities. In the fourth year, they complete a practicum arranged at a local secondary school, undertaking at least eight weeks of teaching under school mentors’ and teacher educators’ co-supervision. Other than the teaching practicum, student teachers are provided limited teaching experience during their TE training. During their first three years of study student teachers are normally given the opportunity to teach two or three lessons ranging from 20 to 40 minutes in length. As this experience is usually gained during their third year, the participants in the current study likely had little to no peer teaching experience. The teaching activities from the Teaching Reading and Writing course were selected for scrutiny in the current study because they afforded the student teachers an opportunity to teach an entire 40–50-minute reading lesson. Teaching reading was our main concern as reading skills development plays a central role in school curriculum in Asian EFL contexts (e.g., Waring, 2014). Furthermore, the research literature has noted that the teaching of reading skills is an educational priority in secondary English language curriculums in Macau (Wong, 2019). Thus, the findings of the current research may have implications for producing competent pre-service teachers capable of teaching reading, meeting ELT job requirements in Asian contexts such as Macau.

Participants

Purposive sampling was adopted to select the study year of student teachers. The existing studies have tended towards the exploration of pre-service teachers in their first-year (e.g. Lee, 2015), third-year (e.g. He & Yan, 2011), and fourth-year (e.g. Gan & Lee, 2016) as well as novice (e.g. Farrell, 2012) and experienced (e.g. Wong, 2019) teachers learning to teach, teaching or engaging in professional development. As second- and third-year students are positioned in-between the theoretical and practical phases of the TE programme and might need more assistance in transitioning from students in the classroom to teachers in the schools, sampling the second-year and third-year pre-service teachers could provide a new look at pre-service teachers’ professional development training. The findings may have implications for their forward practice and training received in other courses. After the purposive sampling of the study year of pre-service teachers, we employed convenience sampling and recruited eight pre-service teachers to participate in this study. Six female and two male pre-service teachers agreed to take part in four research activities (i.e., writing a reading lesson plan, teaching a reading lesson, taking on the role of ‘student’ for their peers’ teaching, and providing oral feedback regarding their peers’ teaching). Their demographic information is presented in Table 2. All the student teachers that graduated from secondary schools in the Macau SAR had plans to become secondary English teachers in the future while the student teachers that graduated with secondary education from Mainland China planned to pursue postgraduate degrees prior to deciding on their future plans. Most of the students were outgoing and could be described as extroverts; only Ava and Autumn were quiet and introverted.

A teacher educator was recruited to take part in two research activities, including video recording pre-service teachers’ teaching and giving feedback on this teaching. Videoing the pre-service teachers’ teaching to assess their learning was originally a part of the course's assessment, so this observational data collection was considered less intrusive. The teacher educator was purposively sampled because he was an experienced EFL teacher, having taught a number of English language courses in EFL and ESL contexts for more than 16 years, including courses for secondary school students. Unlike teacher educators with rather limited EFL classroom experience, his feedback comments on the pre-service teachers’ teaching represented the mixed perspective of an experienced EFL practitioner and EFL teacher educator.

Data sources and collection

Data collected from the pre-service teachers included their lesson plans and teaching videos. Data collected from the teacher educator included his written feedback on the lesson plans and his written feedback on the student teachers’ teaching. The importance of these data sources is described in detail below.

Data analysis

What perceptions regarding the teaching of reading in secondary school did pre-service teachers hold?

The pre-service teachers’ foci of teaching are provided in Table 3. Scanning and/or skimming were the two main reading skills that the pre-service teachers planned to teach. However, some pre-service teachers also planned to teach grammar and vocabulary in addition to reading skills. The results indicated that while the pre-service teachers had some reading skills as the foci of teaching reading, they also decided to integrate the teaching of other knowledge and skills. Given that skimming and scanning were the two most significant skills that all pre-service teachers planned to teach, data analysis focused on the pre-service teachers’ understanding of skimming and/or scanning skills.

Seven out of eight of the pre-service teachers indicated that they planned to teach secondary students with (pre-)intermediate levels of English at Chinese-medium-instructed secondary schools while only one planned to teach at an English-medium-instructed (EMI) secondary school. Half of the pre-service teachers mentioned that their students spoke Cantonese or Mandarin as a first language and English as a foreign language. The pre-service teachers were aware of the backgrounds of the students they would teach in local secondary schools. However, they provided little information about the language abilities of these students. For instance, some of the pre-service teachers described their target students’ English language level as ‘(low/pre)-intermediate’ without fully explaining what ‘intermediate’ meant and how this might affect their English language lesson planning, activity design, targeted reading skills, and reading material selection. In fact, the teacher educator pointed out to Mark and Autumn that their lesson plan only indicated that their students should be given ‘an appropriate level passage’ but did not specify ‘appropriate for what’. Moreover, they did not justify why they had selected the target text Why Shouldn't I Eat Junk Food? other than stating that the students’ English ‘is quite fair and at [a] low-intermediate level’. Other pre-service teachers’ lesson plans also provided similar vague information about the targeted students. The word ‘intermediate’ was used as an umbrella term to describe the target students’ English language abilities. Most pre-service teachers’ reading lesson plans were written with unclear ideas about the target students’ reading abilities.

Emma's understanding of the target students’ reading abilities allowed her to make immediate changes in the length of time used to run a skimming activity aimed at helping her students enhance their predicting skills. Her lesson plan indicated that students would ‘receive 20 seconds to skim a text and make a prediction’; however, with adequate understanding of the target students, the excerpt below exemplifies how she was able to appraise what had been planned, decide whether the planned activity was suitable for the target students, and make pedagogical adjustments to meet the needs of the students. This finding also resonated with Pang's (2016, p. 247) point about planning lessons that reflect ‘a teacher's competence in integrating theory and practice’.

Which English reading skills did pre-service teachers perceive as useful for teaching secondary school students?

Some pre-service teachers did not elucidate what learning activities could be used to teach skimming and scanning skills (see Example 1 in Table 4). Moreover, some of the pre-service teachers did not explain how they would measure the students’ ability to use the skills (see Example 2 in Table 4), mixed up the two skills (see Example 3 in Table 4), or did not articulate any pedagogical rationale for teaching students skimming and scanning skills (see Example 5, Table 3). Example 6 in Table 4 shows that Olivia expressed her interest in teaching scanning, but in reality, she failed to present a coherent structure in the lesson plan to carry out this goal. Only Emma gave a clear account of what activity could be used to teach skimming and scanning skills and how assessment of her goals to teach skimming and scanning could be carried out (see Example 7 in Table 4). Based on the teacher educator's feedback on the pre-service teachers’ lesson plans, most of the pre-service teachers’ (N = 7) understanding of teaching skimming and/or scanning was not flawless. Most pre-service teachers’ lesson plans presented an incomplete understanding of how to teach skimming and scanning skills.

Although all pre-service teachers planned to teach skimming and/or scanning skills, most pre-service teachers had not developed a sophisticated understanding of how to teach these reading skills. The feedback content above suggested that most pre-service teachers began planning in a state of professional unreadiness. They planned lessons with theoretical and/or practical confusion about teaching and learning skimming and/or scanning skills. Nevertheless, the pre-service teachers’ inadequate understanding of teaching these reading skills did not necessarily equate to incompetence at teaching the mentioned skills. The pre-service teachers’ lesson plans only represented their competence about using existing knowledge to plan for the lessons instead of the competence to actually teach these skills.

How did the pre-service teachers actually teach reading?

All the pre-service teachers designed different learning activities to teach either skimming or scanning skills, but only three pre-service teachers (i.e., Mark, Autumn and Olivia) actually taught both skimming and scanning (see Table 5). The results showed pre-service teachers were able to design and use different learning activities to teach skimming and/or scanning based on what they understood about these two skills. Although Charlotte and Liam claimed that they were going to teach students scanning, the teaching data showed that they did not, which echoes the inconsistency between what was planned and taught (e.g., Richards, 1998). The pre-service teachers tended to use the following instruction skills, materials and teaching activities to put their plans into practice: lecturing, PowerPoint presentation, teacher-student Q&A interaction, learning activities/tasks and multiple reading materials. The results illustrated the similarities of pre-service teachers’ pedagogical choices about what to use to help them teach skimming and/or scanning skills.

The pre-service teachers used a variety of activities and reading materials to teach reading skills. For example, Mark and Autumn used one-minute and two-minute activities to teach skimming for the main idea of paragraphs from a scientific report. Liam provided students with a magazine article about junk food and obesity.

Most of the pre-service teachers used lecturing to teach skimming. However, some pre-service teachers provided more detailed instruction during their lectures while others just told students to get on with the work, apparently assuming the students had the wherewithal to teach themselves the skills. For example, Mark told the students during a lecture ‘…one minute to read the passage and write the main idea…’ while Charlotte told the students ‘I will give you two minutes to skim; you can skim the text by looking at the pictures, the words in bold, the beginning sentence of this paragraph…’. Although both lectured about skimming, Charlotte's instruction was more detailed than Mark's, and Charlotte provided scaffolds to students to help them gather information to formulate the main idea of the article. Thus, despite the pre-service teachers’ similarities in instructional materials and strategies used to teach, the effectiveness of their teaching may have been different depending on how the pre-service teachers used the said materials and strategies. In other words, the use of similar teaching techniques and materials did not necessarily lead to similar teaching effectiveness.

As Pang (2016, p. 247) observed, lesson planning was found to ‘best reflect a teacher's competence in integrating theory and practice’. The pre-service teachers’ planning and teaching supported Pang's point. All the pre-service teachers were able to draw on their understanding of skimming and scanning to (1) design activities, (2) select instructional strategies, (3) select reading materials, and (4) execute activities to teach skimming and/or scanning. These pre-service teachers made an effort to integrate what they had been taught about training learners in skimming, scanning and related reading skills. The fact that they incorporated this into their planning is evidence that they intended to put it into practice. Nevertheless, this intent did not completely correspond to what actually happened during their teaching. Furthermore, contrasts such as the example of Mark and Charlotte's teaching above, showed different levels of competence to achieve the objectives of their lesson plans.

How did the teacher educator perceive each pre-service teacher's teaching?

In order to broaden the scope of local knowledge development within the theoretical framework of post-transmission and postmodernism, the present study focused on a local EFL teacher educator's perception of local EFL pre-service teachers’ teaching. First, the teacher educator's use of three criteria to evaluate how well the pre-service teachers learned to teach and actually taught is reported. In Table 6, the tick (✓) refers to the teacher educator's general agreement that the pre-service teacher's teaching has satisfied the assessment criteria and the cross (✗) represents an unsatisfactory assessment. These assessment marks are supported by the teacher educator's comments on the pre-service teachers’ teaching.

The teacher educator agreed that all pre-service teachers made efforts to use the knowledge and skills that they acquired from the course to plan and teach reading skills. The teacher educator also confirmed that all the pre-service teachers were prepared for questions posed by the teacher educator and their peers. However, not all the pre-service teachers satisfied all three of the evaluation criteria. For instance, the teaching plan and practice failed to represent competence to adequately connect what they knew about teaching reading and how they had planned to teach reading skills to meet the goals of their actual practice. The teacher educator also provided comments on how the pre-service teachers’ practice did not correspond to the goals and/or learning objectives written in the lesson plans. Table 4 offers evidence of the lack of teaching scanning skills as planned and confusion about teaching skimming and scanning skills. So, from the teacher educator's perspective, only five of the pre-service teachers had acquired sufficient competence to teach skimming and/or scanning skills after taking this course.

Three issues arising from the pre-service teachers’ lesson plans were cited often. These issues were the design/use of learning activities or materials, the quality of instruction, and the understanding of the notions of teaching and learning reading skills (Table 7). Albeit the pre-service teachers tried to deal with the aforementioned issues by designing reading activities, their activity design or use of the activities was not satisfactory. A case in point was Mark and Autumn's use of a paragraph-rearranging learning activity to develop students’ reading skills. They thought the objective of this activity was to practise a particular reading skill, but the teacher educator pointed out that it is a task used to teach other reading skills and not the particular type of reading skill they were targeting. Table 7 provides examples of some of the most common types of comments given about the pre-service teachers’ weaknesses in planning and teaching a reading lesson.

Common criticisms and praise were given to the design/use of learning activities, instruction and reading skills (Tables 7 and 8). Appendix B provides additional examples of the teacher educator's positive and negative comments on each pre-service teacher's understanding and practice of teaching reading. From the teacher educator's perspective, negative comments indicated that each pre-service teacher still needed to make improvements in some aspect(s) of planning and teaching. The positive comments suggested that the pre-service teachers showed different levels and types of competence in planning and teaching skimming and/or scanning skills. In most cases, the pre-service teachers were competent in one aspect of teaching reading but somewhat less competent in another. Overall, among the eight pre-service teachers, Olivia was the most competent, and Liam and Ava were the least competent.

Understanding and using EFL knowledge

The results indicated several points regarding the pre-service teachers’ understanding and use of EFL knowledge about teaching and learning. First, the lesson plan analysis indicated what the eight pre-service teachers knew about teaching skimming and scanning skills. This was shown through their abilities to write lesson plans, design reading activities, and run the activities to teach skimming and/or scanning skills. The results showed differences in the pre-service teachers’ abilities to use their acquired knowledge about skimming and scanning skills to teach reading. For instance, according to the teacher educator, Olivia understood and used knowledge about teaching skimming and scanning quite well. By contrast, Ava misunderstood this knowledge and did not present herself as a competent teacher; she did not design learning activities that conveyed her ability to teach these skills effectively (see Appendix B). This finding reaffirms the diverse development of EFL pre-service teachers’ knowledge about teaching skimming and scanning skills despite these pre-service teachers having learned about the skills within the same course and within the same TE programme.

In this case, even though the teacher educator presented EFL knowledge on his own terms, it was likely that knowledge about teaching skimming and scanning skills was interpreted in different ways by different pre-service teachers. For instance, some pre-service teachers were clear about skimming and scanning in the written lesson plans and able to explain the two skills to students clearly by lecturing, but others were not. This finding indicated that how pre-service teachers used their knowledge to plan and teach reading appeared ‘highly interpretative’ (Freeman & Johnson, 1998, p. 400). Within the framework of postmodernism, the finding corresponded to Kumaravadivelu’s (2012, p. 5) argument for ‘alternative forms of expression and interpretation’ of knowledge about teaching English in the era of globalisation. Secondly, what the pre-service teachers knew about and how they actually taught reading illustrated that a training course created contexts in which pre-service teachers not only learned but also used EFL knowledge. This finding showed that the eight pre-service teachers were not passive receivers of EFL TE training or passive learners of EFL TE knowledge. Instead, this training course created opportunities for the pre-service teachers to become active learners and users of EFL knowledge about teaching and learning despite how the knowledge varied from one pre-service teacher to another. In this case, learning and using EFL knowledge to teach as two separate entities appeared too simple to explain the reality of TE training.

Analysing the pre-service teachers’ lesson plans and practice revealed constant shifts of pre-service teachers’ roles as learners and users of EFL knowledge. Johnson (2006, p. 239) identified teachers as ‘users’ of so-called ‘legitimate forms of knowledge’ about EFL teaching and learning. In the present research, the pre-service teachers contextualised the notion of teaching skimming skills through various learning activities such as skimming to get a gist of travel information while in Europe or to predict the topic before reading a blog post or magazine article. The legitimacy of these activities for teaching this reading skill was more related to the pre-service teachers’ use of EFL knowledge about teaching and learning skimming and less about existing EFL knowledge about skimming and scanning skills. This finding can further expand Johnson's idea about the legitimacy of EFL knowledge, by highlighting a call for a shift from recognising the legitimacy of EFL knowledge for teaching and learning, to legitimising use of the said knowledge. Besides, these pre-service teachers were legitimate learners as well as users of EFL knowledge about teaching and learning skimming. In this case, the legitimacy of their EFL knowledge was not predefined but instead redefined according to how well they were able to use the knowledge when planning and teaching lessons.

The diverse nature of the pre-service teachers’ knowledge about EFL for planning and teaching reading lessons contradicted the notion that EFL knowledge is a set of predetermined knowledge or skills available to pre-service teachers for teaching. In the present study, thinking over their knowledge about teaching skimming and scanning, the pre-service teachers designed and used learning activities to teach skimming and/or scanning skills in their own ways. This finding resonated with Ur’s (2019) point about learning and using language knowledge to teach. Ur (2019, p. 3) indicated that the language teaching and learning knowledge presented in academic publications could be helpful only when it enabled teachers to think, ‘which [is] likely to result in useful learning and professional development’, and not just for teachers to ‘confine to’ or fall back on. The pre-service teachers developed different learning activities and prepared different learning materials for teaching EFL reading. The agency of these pre-service teachers was shown in the diversity of the types of activities they used to teach skimming and/or scanning skills.

Multiple roles of pre-service teachers

The results pointed out that EFL TE classrooms were not seen as professional training contexts in which pre-service teachers were passive receivers of TE training. Instead, the pre-service teachers had opportunities to actively use what they knew about EFL teaching and learning to plan and teach reading. By this, we mean that the examples illustrated in the current research showed that the pre-service teachers learned to teach skimming and scanning skills not only through instruction-based TE but also through experiencing the planning and teaching of reading themselves. This finding suggested that the teacher educator's perspective on the professional status of the pre-service teachers was not merely shaped by their role in the classroom but also through the authentic experience that the teaching provided the pre-service teachers.

In the existing EFL TE literature, terms such as pre-/in-service teachers, inexperienced/experienced teachers, novice/experienced teachers, or other equivalents have commonly been used to describe EFL professionals’ status throughout their careers. Defining teachers’ learning to teach according to their most recent professional status as EFL TE trainees or practitioners conveys a distorted impression that in-service teachers may have a better understanding and/or practice of EFL teaching than those enrolled in TE programmes. Professional descriptors of this type are too simple to describe teachers’ competence to teach. For instance, Wong (2019) found that experienced in-service teachers tended to use a bottom-up approach to teach reading at four secondary schools in Macau. The results of the present research confirmed that while Olivia was at an early stage in her career, she had already obtained a good understanding of how to teach reading. She had acquired different instructional skills (see Appendix B). This finding calls for a rethinking of the traditional framework to define teachers’ competence as pre-/in-service or (in)experienced teachers in the future research. To redefine the frameworks of different groups describing teachers’ competence, cross-case studies can be conducted to compare the similarities and differences among pre-service and in-service teachers first. Then by observing their field knowledge and practices, a refined framework can be concluded accordingly.

After the pre-service teachers entered into this EFL TE programme, they were receivers or trainees of EFL TE training, and they became learners of EFL knowledge throughout this training course. When they began their practice teaching, they thought about what and how to teach as lesson planners. Then, the pre-service teachers practised teaching as practitioners. In fact, the role of pre-service teachers as testers of acquired EFL knowledge about teaching was highlighted when they were using this knowledge to plan lessons and engage in peer teaching. During these peer teaching lessons, the pre-service teachers gave feedback on their peers’ teaching as EFL professionals. The examples above demonstrated the multiple roles that pre-service teachers have played while in training. Evidently, the scope of pre-service teachers as receivers of EFL TE training has been too narrow to understand what pre-service teachers know and what they have learned from a TE course.

Rethinking the deficient perspective on TE

Based on the findings of previous EFL TE research, one common contribution of previous literature is proposing a new TE approach to reframe or supplement existing TE courses as a sort of intervention for traditional programmes. It is often claimed that such intervention can better prepare pre-service teachers for real-world teaching at the secondary school level than traditional TE (e.g., Liou, 2001; Farrell, 2015). Albeit these suggestions were made based on empirical evidence, the proposed intervention usually attends to ‘what teachers needed to know’ or ‘how they could be trained better than what they actually know’ (Freeman & Johnson, 1998, p. 398). The exemplified interventions have drawn the attention of TE researchers and trainers to the deficient perspective on TE programmes. Some examples presented in this research have supported the deficient perspective on EFL TE—not all of the pre-service teachers were able to understand how to teach skimming and scanning skills effectively. Still, their teaching competency was also shown through a good understanding of teaching skimming/scanning skills, apt design and use of learning activities, and apt use of instruction strategies. These examples call for a rethinking of the deficient perspective on TE. The deficient perspective has tended to dismiss the possibility of what pre-service teachers have learned to teach and are able to teach after completion of teaching practicums or receiving other types of teacher training. This deficient perspective has disregarded the possibility that pre-service teachers may have already had a good theoretical understanding of teaching but simply not been given the opportunities to practise using the acquired skills/knowledge. In addition, it is likely that pre-service teachers may have become competent in some skills but not all skills. Thus, as was done in the current investigation, it is important to give opportunities for pre-service teachers to put their teaching philosophies to practice through peer microteaching and reflective activities. The feedback given by teacher educators should be balanced, as was in the current study, giving suggestions on the targets but also acknowledging and praising certain aspects of teaching that were not targeted but also handled well. The examples above indicate the deficient perspective has created an academic distortion of understanding EFL TE. This inevitably results in arguably giving too much attention to what pre-service teachers have not learned from TE programmes, while not acknowledging what pre-service teachers have learned from these programmes.

Albeit numerous studies have suggested extending local EFL TE practice and research (e.g., Yuan, 2017; Lee, 2015) or bringing about an EFL TE intervention (e.g., Liou, 2001; Farrell, 2015), we should not assume that these suggested interventions would make EFL TE limitation-free. Interventions simply mean pitting a new approach or course for TE against another (Freeman & Johnson, 1998, p. 405). Instead, the findings of the present research encourage the TE researchers, programme developers, and educators to work along both lines. That is, they should extend the existing TE training and interventions so they can work together as a new point of departure for EFL TE training. By doing this, pre-service teachers’ learning can be understood and carried on from a broader perspective. They should also minimise TE programmes or training that encourages this deficient perspective. In this way, ‘ELT professional discourses in local communities [have the opportunity to] represent a fascinating mix of the center and periphery, the new and the old’ (Canagarajah, 2005, p. 9). For example, TE curriculum developers should take key stakeholders’ opinions into consideration (e.g., local in-service teachers, principals, parents, students) and this information should also be used by teacher educators when training pre-service teachers in what and how to teach. Without considering the types of knowledge needed by pre-service teachers, pre-service teachers may still be resistant to teach in a way that the teacher educators feel is proper. Thus, language teacher educators should not assume knowledge known or unknown prior to teaching but instead conduct a needs assessment focused on the local context. Without this understanding, it will be quite difficult to understand the pre-service teachers’ needs and make an impact on their future teaching.