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CMC in language teacher education: learning with and through instructional conversations

Abstract As the popularity of computer mediated communication (CMC) in language teaching continues to grow, questions regarding best practices arise. Whereas a number of recent studies have examined the online discourse of language learners, few have explored the potential of online instructional conversations for language teacher education. This paper discusses CMC as a venue where language teachers in development can explore instructional conversations while they are actively guided via models, practice, and analysis to understand and make good use of the affordances of CMC (Meskill and Anthony 2007a,b). Samples from online professional development for language educators illustrate the potential of CMC in serving teacher learning. The power and diversity of CMC to support development of language educators is presented via uses in (1) modeling online instructional conversations; (2) analyzing online instructional conversations; (3) experimenting with instructional conversations in blended environments; (4) as a practicum laboratory; and in (5) promoting ongoing professional engagement.