CLER Seminar: Emotional Turn in Second Language Teacher Education: Prospects and Possibilities

Join us for a seminar led by speaker Peter De Costa.

Peter De Costa (PhD) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Languages and the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. His primary areas of research are identity and ideology in SLA. He is the author of The Power of Identity and Ideology in Language Learning (Springer, 2016). He also recently edited Ethics in Applied Linguistics Research (Routledge, 2016). His work has appeared in AILA Review, Applied Linguistics Review, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, Language Policy, Language Teaching, Linguistics and Education, Research in the Teaching of English, System, TESOL Quarterly, and The Modern Language Journal. He has guest edited special issues for several journals and he is the co-editor of TESOL Quarterly.

Seminar details

Following the sociocultural turn in teacher emotion research and the broader and deepening interest in affect within adjacent fields of psychology, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, I explore second language (L2) teacher emotions from a positive psychology and critical perspective. The former perspective draws on recent developments in positive teacher psychology research, while the latter takes into account the sociopolitical dimensions of language teacher education. Importantly, both lines of research consider the ecologies in which teachers are embedded.

To illustrate the vibrant and burgeoning language teacher emotion research agenda, I elaborate on three recently published studies: De Costa, Rawal & Li (2018), Pereira (2018), and Wolff & De Costa (2017). I also provide an overview of the special issue of the Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics on L2 teacher emotions and argue how the L2 teacher education research landscape can be enriched by a systematic investigation of teacher emotion labor. The presentation closes with a discussion of implications for pedagogy, policy and research.

The seminar will be followed by a drinks reception.