Lecture by Birgit Henriksen

Teacher cognition research and teaching practices – with a focus on English Medium instruction in tertiary education.

Research on teacher cognition in language teaching investigates the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs that underlie the planning and practice of language teaching. Instead of focusing on what goes on in the classroom or the learning effects of particular methods and approaches, teacher cognition research tries to tap into the mental lives of the teachers in order to explore the interplay between teaching experience, theoretical knowledge and actual classroom activities. The focus on the mental processing that guides language teaching calls for a range of different research approaches, both qualitative and quantitative, that can uncover the often implicit knowledge behind the complex process of language teaching. The presentation will give an overview of some of the issues explored and the different methods used in teacher cognition research with some examples from the Danish research context.