Locally- and globally-oriented L2 teacher education research: A synchronic analysis of topics and research methodologies

Research in second language teacher education (SLTE) is critical for making short- and long-term policies and decisions about SLTE programs, materials, methods, etc. Therefore, it is essential to know the “what,” “how,” and “where” of SLTE research. Hence, the purpose of this synchronic study was to investigate research topics (what) and the research methodologies (how) of SLTE papers published in international and Iranian journals (where) between 2014 and 2020. To that end, we investigated a corpus, including 100 articles, consisting of 50 SLTE papers published in seven international journals and 50 SLTE papers published in seven Iranian journals. Results indicated that while there were significant differences in using qualitative and quantitative research methodologies by SLTE papers published in international and Iranian journals, there were no significant differences in using mixed methods in those journals. Moreover, results showed that the most frequent SLTE topics addressed in the papers published in international and Iranian journals were teacher professional development, teacher psychology, teacher identity, teacher cognition, teacher belief, teacher knowledge, practitioner research, teacher education design, sociocultural theory, teacher practice, and teacher and culture. However, there were no significant differences in SLTE topics addressed in the SLTE papers published in international and Iranian journals.