Research Needs in Foreign Language Teacher Education: Insights from Researchers in Poland, Portugal, and Turkey

Abstract

Language teacher education (LTE) is a dynamic field which needs to keep abreast of the changes in other fields and the teacher-oriented developments. In the 21st century, teacher education is required to meet the expectations of the pre-/in-service teachers, the learners, the technology, and the changing qualifications. In this sense, it is fundamental to investigate how the research trends in LTE should be shaped with a bottom-up perspective. To this end, the current study aims to investigate the needs of academics and researchers in the field of LTE in a variety of contexts (i.e., Turkey, Portugal, and Poland). The study was conducted as a part of an Erasmus+ Project called ILTERG (International Language Teacher Education Research Group) co-funded by the Turkish National Agency and Erasmus+ Program. A total number of 139 participants from three countries participated in the study. The data were collected through a needs analysis survey and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data revealed that all items in the survey might be guiding for the academics to conduct research on. The list of the research topics could guide novice and/or expert researchers to conduct further studies in LTE. practical implementation of at secondary longitudinal studies