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|b In language teacher education and training contexts, whilst assuming that education is a social science based discipline, an educator or teacher trainer principally deals with at least two epistemologies, or sources of knowledge. First, a ‘received knowledge’, pertaining to instruction in theories of language learning and language education; second, an experiential knowledge’, which encompasses the practical knowledge component comprising, on the one hand, trainers’ own practical teaching experience, and, on the other, trainees’ previous experiential knowledge, or conceptual schemata. Presumably, trainee teachers, through their long periods of previous learning, must have acquired and accumulated their own experiences on the epistemology of practice in teaching, much of which can be drawn on in the training process. In this paper, I use a somewhat philosophical approach to reflect on the epistemology of this knowledge. I also attempt to consider the wider epistemological concerns embedded in the teaching and learning of practical knowledge involved in language teaching and ultimately in language teacher education and development contexts as a whole. In doing so, I critically reflect on what constitutes teacher knowledge and the ‘teach ability’ of this knowledge in the context of English Language Teacher Education.
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