The involvement of student teachers in the development of language learning tasks. Lessons from the ETALAGE project

In this paper I report a small experiment about the involvement of student teachers as well as experienced professionals in the development of language learning tasks. I argue that involving student teachers as well as experienced professionals may yield better results than involving experienced professionals only. I also argue that the close cooperation of student teachers, novice teachers and experienced language teachers in intergenerational learning groups as well as the close cooperation between teacher education institutes (universities) and placement schools may benefit all the parties concerned. I suggest that in such cooperation professional development is not a one-way top-down process in which the schools and the student and novice teachers are the recipients but a two-way interaction from which teacher education institutes and experienced and even expert teachers may derive considerable profit.