Language teacher professional development in Asia: historical trends, current practices and future directions

Professional development for language teachers in Asia has been marked by steps toward greater implementation of initiatives characterised by teacher collaboration, critical inquiry, and the development and exercise of teacher agency. These models rely heavily on Western professional development theory and practice. However, whilst the transferability of knowledge in teacher professional development has received the attention of researchers (Liyanage, Díaz, & Gurney, 2016), the question of how contextual realities mediate the development and execution of teacher professional development programs has largely escaped scrutiny (Hairon & Dimmock, 2012; Howe & Xu, 2013; Xu & Connelly, 2009, provide some notable recent exceptions). In this chapter, we explore how historical trends and current practices intersect with a view to discuss viable and contextually relevant future directions in language teacher professional development in Asia.