Tracing language teacher professional development through Perezhivanie: an argument for praxis

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we build an argument for studying and promoting teacher development in dialectical teacher-researcher partnership, praxis, which is informed by perezhivanie, a dialectical unity of emotion and intellect. We will study the developmental trajectory of an in-service L2 teacher striving to give her learners agency in the teaching-learning process while navigating institutional structures. We guide the reader through this teacher’s development in a year-and-a-half praxis with two researchers, illustrating the joint process of sense-making to resolve tensions stemming from institutional constraints, learner expectations, and own practices. The data come from (a) teacher-researcher discussions, (b) a teacher interview, and (c) data sessions. Perezhivanie informed the design, researchers’ mediation, and data analysis. We illustrate how the teacher moved towards and realised her commitment to enabling learner agency in language teaching. We discuss the implications of making perezhivanie a central concept in teacher education with in-service L2 teachers, realised through praxis.

KEYWORDS:

• Praxis
• perezhivanie
• L2 teacher development
• learner agency
• academic writing

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Clegg-Sasaki

Rebecca Clegg-Sasaki is a Lecturer in the English for Academic Purposes department at Akita International University, Japan. She has published on such topics as teacher training in public schools in Japan and women`s leadership in local populations.

Dmitri Leontjev

Dmitri Leontjev is a senior researcher at the Centre for Applied Language Studies of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He has published on such topics as teaching, learning, and assessment from the perspective of Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory, as well as on praxis with language teachers and language assessment literacy.

Mark de Boer

Mark de Boer is an assistant professor at Akita International University, Japan. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the Universidad de Jaén, Spain. He has published on such topics as CLIL, assessment, and teaching, learning, and assessment from the perspective of Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory, as well as on praxis with language teachers.