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Although the Japanese government decided to make English a formal subject for fifth and sixth graders from 2020, there has been little discussion about how to prepare English teachers. In fact, Curtain and Dahlberg (2004) pointed out that lack of skillful teachers has been a serious issue in teaching foreign languages to elementary school students all over the world. Moreover, there is little documentation about how preservice teachers continue to learn to teach as novice teachers in their workplaces (Farrell, 2012). This longitudinal study keeps track of five novice elementary school teachers who received a two-year preservice teacher preparation program based on TBLT and reveal how they try to “apply the teaching methods they were trained to use” (Farrell, 2012, p. 447) or not in their school contexts.
By analyzing interview and classroom observation data for three years, this longitudinal research attempts to document how school contexts influence EFL novice teacher development in their workplaces. This study highlights the three main shaping forces of professional development including “prior influences, initial teacher training, and school contexts” (Clandinin et al., 2013, p. 255).
Such a study is expected to shed light on the dynamics of teacher development by bridging the gap between preservice and inservice teacher development. In fact, Farrell (2012) affirms that “It is important to ask how second language teacher (SLT) education programs could bridge this gap more effectively and thus better prepare novice teachers for the challenges they may face in the first years teaching” (p. 438).