Teacher Inquiry in ESOL Teacher Education: Examining How Teachers Develop L2 Writing Instruction Expertise

In this chapter, we present findings from ongoing self-study of our own teacher education practices to delineate and demonstrate key aspects of what we describe as “L2 writing teacher reflective expertise.” Specifically, we draw upon the notion of adaptive expertise to examine how in-service teachers in an online ESOL assessment course engaged in their own exploration of focal students’ writing process through use of a longitudinal interactional histories approach to teacher inquiry. We share the expertise and misconceptions in-service teachers brought to this work and their responses to evolving resources provided by the instructor. Based upon this data, we propose a definition of L2 writing teacher reflective expertise that includes multiple teacher competencies: (1) observing multilingual students closely enough to recognize their assets as writers and the social dynamics of the spaces where they learn, (2) building upon those assets through instruction to support writing development, (3) asking themselves challenging questions, and (4) considering multiple explanations of what they observe.