Language teacher professional education:: The role of peer-to-peer learning in online environments

This article provides a theoretical discussion regarding the implications of peer-to-peer learning in online environments for language teacher professional learning and second language academic literacy. It approaches the use of technology as means to enhance prospective teachers’ cognition and metacognition skills and to foster their language learning, as Language Teacher Education programs usually fulfil a twofold purpose: to learn the language itself and to learn how to teach it as a foreign language. In order to arrive at these implications, it presents a grounded discussion on sociocultural perspective within L2 teacher education, teachers’ beliefs, and mediation in the sociocultural perspective. The discussion reinforces the significance of peer-activities (peer-observation and peer-feedback) to foster a teacher development process. Moreover, it suggests that a guided peer-activity, such as employing the use of carefully elaborated rubrics, could enhance this process.