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Language teachers, methodologies and teacher training in historical perspective

This international conference will be held under the auspices of a network linking the following partner associations in the field of History of Language Teaching …

• APHELLE (Portuguese Association for the History of Teaching Foreign Languages and Literatures)
• CIRSIL (Italian Inter-university Research Network for the History of Language Education)
• The Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistics Ideas
• SEHL (Spanish Society for Linguistic Historiography)
• SIHFLES (International Society for the History of French as a Foreign or Second Language)

… with the support of:

• APEF (Portuguese Association of French Studies)
• APROLINGUAS (Portuguese Association of Teachers of Foreign Languages in Higher Education)
• net (AILA Research Network on History of Language Learning and Teaching).

This network held its first joint conference in 2008 at the University of Granada and this conference will be the second to be held at the University of the Algarve, following on from the one in 2016.

Today, at a time when, in some countries (including in Portugal), schools and universities are dealing with the issue of an ageing teaching force approaching retirement, questions of recruitment, status and profile of language teachers have become urgent. This conference aims to highlight the legacy of the past in this area and to shed new light, from historical, historicising and comparative perspectives, on the practices of those who have been responsible for teaching second/foreign languages and doing teacher training in this area. The conference will extend knowledge of pedagogical practices associated with actors (language tutors, teachers etc.) who have received different kinds of training and who have had different kinds of achievement in the course of their careers. Investigating the status and profile of these educational actors will also involve taking into account different forms of teacher training and other kinds of pedagogical support, as well as mechanisms/processes for disseminating educational innovations, reforms and policies (including via specialist journals, official regulatory texts and institutional guidelines). In this connection, it might be of value to shed light on intercultural aspects whereby teachers cross borders and adapt pedagogical methods and tools from ‘elsewhere’. Equally, it could be revealing to explore links between theories and pedagogies in re-examining the role of institutions and methodologies in the training of language teachers.