This section provides a variety of perspectives on key areas of pedagogical knowledge in second language teacher education (SLTE). They include discussion of the creation of components of an SLTE curriculum as well as some of the more specific areas of knowledge needed by language teachers that should be included in teacher education programs. Central components of any teacher-education program are knowledge about language, knowledge about language acquisition, and knowledge of professional discourse conventions; these areas are highlighted in this section.

The section begins with a discussion by Graves in Chapter 11 of what makes up the knowledge base of an educational program for language teachers. She offers a model for curriculum planning that takes its starting point from understanding the needs of teacher–learners and the kinds of contexts in which they will work. The questions of the who, what, and how of language teaching are critical elements of the framework as they form the foundations from which curriculum decisions can be made. She then looks at how conceptualizations of the knowledge base of teaching have changed so that the demarcation lines between content and pedagogy – in the case of language teaching, between language and teaching – have recently become blurred. She argues that an interconnected system of knowledge bases is now needed to create a comprehensive and effective teacher development curriculum.

Bartels (Chapter 12) offers a broad definition of one of the most important areas of knowledge used by language teachers – knowledge about language (KAL). He offers valuable insights from the perspective of human cognition research into the cognitive challenges involved in processing and using knowledge in professional practice situations. He then considers how professionals reduce cognitive load by using knowledge that is implicit, specific to activity, cognizant of factors affecting the immediate situation, and organized into dynamic networks. From this basis, he suggests ways in which second language teacher educators could assist teachers to develop “domain-specific, dynamically organized, implicit knowledge that is easily used for teaching.” He concludes by appealing to teacher educators to focus more on contextually linked learning tasks rather than, as is more common, on abstract theoretical approaches.