Based on a tripartite conceptual framework with an integrated focus on the coverage, coherence, and applicability of pre-service teacher education curriculums (e.g., Canrinus, et al., 2017; Goh & Wong, 2015), the study explores to what extent and how student teachers are prepared to become CT-oriented language teachers in Hong Kong. The findings show that the student teachers fostered their CT as both skills and dispositions through rich professional engagements (e.g., coursework, immersion, practicum, and final research projects) and continuous interactions with university-based teacher educators and school mentors. Additionally, the development of CT started from the content courses that addressed general topics, and moved to the language pedagogy courses and teaching practicum, where the participants applied CT to make sense of language teaching and learning through contextualized practices. Such a finding reveals a sense of coherence of the program that progressed with the gradual infusion of CT into the content and processes of language teacher education. The coherence and applicability of the program were also evident in the transferability of student teachers' CT learning to its teaching in language classrooms. Influenced by their own CT-related experiences, the participants learned to appreciate the constitutive relationship between CT and language education as another crucial attribute of a CT-oriented teacher. Moreover, they actively constructed their pedagogical beliefs about how to teach CT. For instance, the student teachers described a dialogic interactive approach to CT teaching derived from the modelling provided by their previous course teachers and teacher educators in the program.
On the other hand, the findings speak to the rhetoric-reality gap in learning to teach CT, which has been widely observed in many pre-service teacher education programs across the globe (Goh & Wong, 2015). While CT had been advocated in the program, there was generally an absence of practical resources and scaffolding on how to teach CT in language classrooms. Without sufficient and applicable training, the student teachers occasionally practiced CT at the surface level (e.g., during the teaching practicum) instead of approaching it as a systematic cognitive process based on relevant and meaningful content. This limitation of the program partially relates to the lack of coverage on the "action" dimension in CT instruction throughout program. As CT was mostly trained as a set of skills and dispositions that operated within individual student teachers' minds, the participants were not able to engage actively and critically with the complex institutional and socio-cultural reality for potential teaching innovation and transformation. It is therefore important for current pre-service teacher education programs to incorporate a direct focus on the teaching of CT in relation to the local school reality.
References
Canrinus, E. T., Bergem, O. K., Klette, K., & Hammerness, K. (2017). Coherent teacher education programmes: Taking a student perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49(3), 313-333.
Goh, P. S. C., & Wong, K. T. (2015). Exploring the challenges for teacher educators. Journal of Research, Policy & Practice of Teachers and Teacher Education, 5(1), 37-45.
