Transmissive and transformative approaches to language teacher education

Jack C. Richards (Faculty of Education, University of Sydney (honorary), The University of Sydney, Australia)

Indonesian JELT
Vol 12, No 1 (2017): Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching vol 12 no.1 May 2017

In this paper I compare two contrasting educational philosophies that have had a significant impact on the way we approach and understand our practice as teacher educators. These have been labeled in several ways such as top-down versus bottom-up or product versus process based. I will characterize them a transmission-based approach and an ecological approach. My aim here is to describe and compare these two approaches and suggest how they offer complementary perspectives on the nature and practices of second language teacher education.