Teacher educators' prior experiences as an affordance for pedagogical orientations toward TBLT

As Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) has become central in EFL/ESL pedagogical reforms worldwide, many TESOL programs focus on developing preservice teachers’ capacity to use TBLT in their future practice. However, while TESOL teacher educators play a pivotal role in developing and delivering these teacher education programs, their pedagogical orientations for the use of TBLT remain a gap in the research literature. In order to conceptualise what could be considered contextually appropriate pedagogies for TBLT, it is important to have greater understanding of teacher educators’ pedagogical orientations and their origins. This qualitative study, drawing on a larger research project on TESOL teacher educators’ engagement with TBLT, explored three Vietnamese TESOL teacher educators’ pedagogical orientations for the use of TBLT in relation to their prior experiences as language teachers and language learners. Theoretically framed by the situative perspective and the ecological construct of affordance, the study employed an insider approach to understanding the teacher-educator-in-context. The data were sourced from three individual interviews and three classroom observations, followed by three focus-group discussions. Qualitative thematic analysis reveals the teacher educators’ different pedagogical orientations towards TBLT, coupled with a dynamic interplay between such orientations and prior experiences. The chapter illustrates, in particular, how the situative and the ecological perspectives can be employed to interpret teacher educators’ context-sensitive practice. As thus, the chapter generates implications for context responsive pedagogies in both TESOL teacher education and English language teaching.