TESOL Teacher Education in 2034: Some Predictions

Abstract

This article compares the answers to four questions about teacher education ten years hence - who, what, where and how - from, on the one hand, twenty experienced teacher educators and, on the other, three Large Language Models (LLMs). The trainers expected comparatively little change in who their trainees will be over the decade, anticipated greater use of technology (mostly in the development of existing practice, however), emphasised the importance of soft skills training, and made it clear (implicitly) that for them TESOL is a vocation. The LLM answers differed significantly one from another but in general foresaw more innovative uses of technology than the trainers did and predicted an even greater emphasis on soft skills. The article ends with the author’s own view, which is that more will have changed by 2034 than either colleagues or LLMs have predicted – with the latter perhaps intentionally hobbled by their creators.

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