This book explores the use of online and face-to-face interactions in
language teacher education (LTE) by assessing the formation and
practices of a community of practice (CoP), and evaluating the roles
discussions between student teachers and a peer tutor can play in terms
of identity formation, articulating narratives, reflective practices,
and maintaining affective relationships. The specific context within
which this is embedded is a Teaching English to Speakers of Other
Languages (TESOL) programme, often known as English Language Teaching
(ELT), at a third-level Irish institution. The data drawn on come from
student teachers on a master’s (MA) programme who interacted with a peer
tutor (the researcher) via a number of modes (face-to-face and online).
The approach to data analysis is a corpus-based discourse analytical
one, which examines the linguistic features of student teacher and peer
tutor talk; the features of CoP practices in the discourse; and how
different modes of communication shape the nature of this discourse.
Perceptive data from the student teachers is used to outline their
reactions to the modes of communication and the activities they
participated in.