1 Exploring Second Language Writing Teacher Education: The Role of Adaptive Expertise Alan Hirvela Introduction In writing research, we are understandably drawn to the writing itself and those who produce it, i.e. students. Not surprisingly, then, in both native language (L1) and second/foreign language (L2) writing scholarship, we see a dominant focus on students. But what about those who teach the students? In the approximately four decades since L2 writing scholarship began to emerge as a domain in its own right (as opposed to a subset within L1 scholarship), a relatively small body of research has focused on teachers of writing. Hence, we have no meaningful knowledge base regarding the epistemologies that guide teachers’ instructional practices, or the practices themselves. In the understandable zeal to decode students’ experiences with writing, we have tended to keep teachers on the sidelines, despite the crucial roles they play in students’ acquisition of L2 writing skills. It was the recognition of this imbalance that motivated Hirvela and Belcher (2007) to issue a call for an increased focus on L2 writing teacher research in a special issue of the Journal of Second Language Writing focusing on L2 writing teacher education. This call aligned with what Freeman (1996) called the ‘unstudied problem’ of L2 teachers and their teaching, that is, the insufficient attention paid to teachers as classroom practitioners. However, the modest focus on writing teachers in L2 writing research is only one dimension of what could be called the ‘unstudied problem’ of L2 writing teachers and writing instruction. Another important dimension of this ‘unstudied problem’ is an inadequately conceptualized notion of what to look for in such scholarship. This aspect of the ‘unstudied problem’ was acknowledged at a recent (2016) Symposium on Second 13 Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM 14 Second Language Writing Instruction in Global Contexts Language Writing (SSLW), which was organized around the theme of ‘Expertise in Second Language Writing.’ As Paul Matsuda (2016) observed in the Symposium’s program: Expertise in second language writing is sometimes conceptualized as a binary – either you are an expert or you are not. In reality, there are different types and degrees of expertise that are needed depending on the context and roles – writing center tutors, teachers, teacher educators, program administrators, researchers, research mentors, editors, reviewers. Different instructional contexts also require different sets of expertise. Thus, the SSLW sought to problematize and address what I believe constitutes an ‘expertise gap,’ and in doing so helped draw attention to the need to bring expertise to a more prominent place in studies concerning L2 writing teachers. As Matsuda’s introductory words indicate, expertise is a complex, multifaceted construct operating within a range of contexts, a fact that makes it all the more worthy of investigation. We need to untangle this complexity, and making expertise a significant focus of L2 writing research would facilitate such an endeavor. This chapter likewise speaks to the ‘expertise gap,’ first by addressing the nature of expertise itself and then by suggesting a narrowing of the focus on expertise that could be especially beneficial to scholarship regarding L2 writing teachers. In the latter regard, the chapter introduces the notion of ‘adaptive expertise,’ a teacher education framework that has rarely been discussed in the context of L2 writing instruction. The primary goal of the chapter is to show how the notion of adaptive expertise can add shape and meaning to L2 writing teacher education (hereafter, L2WTE) scholarship and offer a new direction for L2WTE research by illustrating a possible path towards defining and understanding L2 writing teacher expertise. For contextual purposes, the chapter begins with a brief overview of L2WTE research. The purpose is not to show what has been learned about L2 writing teachers, but rather what patterns appear in that body of scholarship. Thus, this review sheds light on where the field stands with respect to investigations of writing teacher expertise. The next section then examines the broader notion of teacher expertise. The chapter concludes with sections that (a) introduce the adaptive expertise framework, and (b) discuss how it can be applied to L2WTE research. L2 Writing Teacher Education Research Noteworthy L2WTE scholarship began in the mid-1980s as pioneering L2 writing scholars began to carve out a place for L2 writing scholarship as a discipline of its own. For this chapter I identified 34 research-oriented publications that have appeared since that time where there was a focus on writing teachers. This does not mean other such scholarship does not exist. For the purposes of this chapter, though, these publications stood out, and at the very least provide a representative Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM Second Language Writing Teacher Education: The Role of Adaptive Expertise 15 sampling of the work that has been conducted. These 34 articles and book chapters constitute an average of about one publication per year, a figure that pales in comparison to scholarship in other areas of L2 writing and thus signifies the lukewarm interest shown by L2 writing scholars with respect to teachers. Also worth noting, although it is not research oriented, is the book ESL Composition Tales: Refl ections on Teaching (Blanton & Kroll, 2002); this consists of nine narrative accounts of their writing teaching experiences by well-known L2 writing scholars, and in doing so adds to our understanding of the instructional work of L2 writing teachers. To gain a clearer picture of this collection of 34 publications and what they reveal relative to the goals of this chapter, I created a few categories into which I placed this body of work. Each category is examined briefly in this section of the chapter. Chronology One of the topics that interested me was how the publications broke down in terms of when they appeared and how many appeared during different time periods, with the number of publications in parentheses: 1980s: (1) 1990s: (9) 2000s: (24) Here we can see that teachers were of virtually no research interest in the early years of L2 writing as a discipline. We then see some emerging interest in the 1990s, with a significant increase in L2WTE research-based publications in the current century. Thus, there is an indication that writing teachers are beginning to attract meaningful attention. Also worth noting here is that 12 of the studies published in the current century have appeared since 2010, suggesting some growing momentum for L2WTE research. This is an encouraging trend. Teacher populations studied The focus in this category is on two populations of L2 writing teachers: (a) those enrolled in pre-service teacher education programs; and (b) experienced teachers already in the field. The numbers in this category tell a very interesting story, with eight studies of pre-service teachers and 26 focusing on practicing teachers. Clearly, there is primary interest in current teachers as opposed to those entering the field. Whether this is an appropriate distribution of research attention is perhaps a topic worthy of debate in future discussions of L2WTE scholarship. However, to develop a more informative picture of expertise in writing instruction, increased research on novice teachers would seem to be beneficial. Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM 16 Second Language Writing Instruction in Global Contexts Topics of L2 writing teacher education research The category of greatest interest for this chapter is what is actually being studied among the L2 writing teachers. Here the teachers are broken down into two categories: pre-service and experienced. Pre-service teachers Among the eight publications examining pre-service teachers, three (Athanases et al., 2013; Winer, 1992; Worden, 2015) focused on teacher attitudes or knowledge, while five (Casanave, 2009; Gebhard et al., 2013; Seloni, 2013; Shin, 2003; Yi, 2013) looked at these developing teachers relative to various dimensions of their instructional behavior in the writing classroom. This breakdown, and the fact that so few pre-service teachers are explored in classroom contexts, suggests that there is a particular need to increase expertise-related research within the pre-service domain, as suggested earlier. It would be helpful to know how these newcomers to the field conceptualize writing teacher expertise as well as what their early attempts at acquiring expertise reveal about their developmental processes and experiences, especially in comparison to experienced teachers. Experienced teachers The results for this category, covering 26 studies, are presented in table form (Table 1.1) to generate a clearer picture of the research trends relative to practicing teachers and the teaching of L2 writing, especially since this is where most teacher-related research has occurred, as noted earlier. Table 1.1 Foci of research on experienced L2 writing teachers Focus of research Studies (by author names and year of publication) Teacher goals Barkaoui and Fei (2006) Cummings et al. (2006) Teacher conceptions/attitudes Cumming (2001, 2003) Shi and Cumming (1995) Teacher development/identity Henderson Lee (2016) Larsen (2013, 2016) Lee (2010, 2013) Teacher feedback on student writing Cohen and Cavalcanti (1990) Lee (2003, 2004, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2011) Montgomery and Baker (2007) Zamel (1985) Teachers’ classroom instruction Cumming (1992, 1993, 1995) Riazzi et al. (1996) Tsui (1996, 2003) Tsui and Ng (2010) Weissberg (1994) Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM Second Language Writing Teacher Education: The Role of Adaptive Expertise 17 Table 1.1 shows some clustering around two topics that are more directly related to expertise in teaching (‘feedback’ and ‘teachers’ classroom instruction’), with the fi nal two topics featuring 16 of the 26 studies represented. That feedback on student writing (eight studies) was one of the topics is perhaps not surprising, as this has long been an especially popular topic at conferences and in L2 writing scholarship. This is also important from an expertise perspective, in that the ability to provide meaningful, effective feedback in oral and written form is clearly an important skill area for teachers of writing. It is a type of expertise. That an equal number (eight) of studies have looked at teachers’ instructional behavior is also worth noting, as it signifies that there is some interest in what teachers actually do in the writing classroom. However, very little of this work overtly identified ‘expertise’ as a means of capturing and understanding the work of these teachers. The same is true with respect to the earlier cited scholarship regarding preservice teachers and their instructional activity in the classroom. By ‘expertise’ I mean, in broad terms, the instructional beliefs, knowledge and skills that may be considered as essential at a certain level of proficiency in order for teachers to guide students towards the acquisition of beneficial L2 writing ability. While these are valuable studies, they reveal relatively little about the epistemologies writing teachers hold and the instructional decisions they make in connection with their epistemologies. In this body of work, expertise is an implied notion rather than a clearly marked construct. Perhaps a major reason for this phenomenon is that a workable conceptualization of writing teacher expertise was missing when the studies were designed and implemented. It could also be the case that, as suggested earlier, expertise is being examined, but not overtly. My contention in this chapter is that this situation is a shortcoming we need to overcome in order to construct a more informed and useful picture of individuals teaching L2 writing. The Broader Realm: Expertise and Teaching While it is important to understand expertise, this is a challenging quest. As Geisler (1994: xi) says very succinctly: ‘The concept of expertise is a difficult one.’ Long and Richards (2003: ix) observe, ‘While it is relatively easy to arrive at a common understanding of what we mean by expertise, it has proved a somewhat elusive concept for researchers to pin down and investigate.’ Tsui (2003) elaborates on this point: When we say people are experts in their profession, we expect them to possess certain qualities, such as being very knowledgeable in their field; being able to engage in skillful practice; and being able to make accurate diagnoses, insightful analyses and the right decisions, often within a very short period of time. However, what exactly constitutes their expertise is something that is not yet fully understood. (Tsui, 2003: 1) Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM 18 Second Language Writing Instruction in Global Contexts Tsui (2003: 6) adds that: ‘So far, there have been no commonly accepted criteria or methods for identifying expert teachers. In fact … it is highly doubtful whether it is possible to formulate commonly accepted criteria, however meaningful it is to do so.’ Long and Richards (2003: ix) note how, in the case of L2 education, this has been a problem: ‘While the nature of expertise has long attracted the attention of researchers in the field of cognitive psychology, until recently it has been relatively less explored in relation to classroom teaching and even less so in the field of second and foreign language teaching.’ That situation is magnified with respect to L2WTE. From a historical perspective, the work of Berliner (1986, 1992) is particularly important in terms of foregrounding expertise and teacher education, especially relative to drawing distinctions between novice and expert teachers. As Berliner (1986: 5) explained: ‘My colleagues and I … think we need to find and study expert and experienced teachers and compare those teachers with ordinary or novice teachers in order to search for more information about the tasks and teacher behaviors that our research community has revealed as important.’ In his seminal 1986 article, he identified several benefits to teacher education programs and research that would accrue from the study of expertise in teaching. In particular, he explained that ‘the performance of experts, although not necessarily perfect, provides a place to start from when we instruct novices’ (Berliner, 1986: 6), especially when novices can explore cases of expert teaching that are ‘richly detailed descriptions of instructional events’ (Berliner, 1986: 6). He argued that ‘beginning teachers need such cases of practice to develop their full understanding of pedagogy’ (Berliner, 1986: 6). In slightly later work, Berliner (1992) proposed a series of propositions about teacher expertise based on what studies up to that point in time had revealed, as shown in Table 1.2. Table 1.2 Propositions concerning expertise in teaching Proposition number Proposition #1 Experts excel mainly in their own domains and in particular contexts. #2 Experts often develop automaticity for their repetitive operations that are needed to accomplish their goals. #3 Experts are more sensitive than novices to task demands and the social situation when solving problems. #4 Experts are opportunistic in their problem solving. #5 Experts’ representations of problems and situations are qualitatively different from the representations of novices. #6 Experts have fast and accurate pattern-recognition capabilities; novices cannot always make sense of what they experience. #7 Experts perceive meaningful patterns in the domain in which they are experienced. Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM Second Language Writing Teacher Education: The Role of Adaptive Expertise 19 These propositions build on the novice–expert teacher dichotomy and establish a model for comparing the two groups, with a particular focus on the characteristics of expert teachers. In L2WTE research it could be useful to compare L2 writing teachers with the propositions put forward by Berliner for the purpose of creating a new set of propositions relevant to the L2 writing field. An alternative to the propositions-based approach of Berliner is a wellknown scheme offered by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986), although theirs is not rooted in the field of education. Their work is, however, also based on the novice–expert distinction, and they show how expertise grows as individuals pass through various stages of development. Table 1.3 shows their model, with descriptions of the five stages generated by Tsui (2003: 10–11). While the ‘novice–expert’ distinction at the heart of the work by Berliner and by Dreyfus and Dreyfus has attracted considerable attention and indeed become a key ingredient in studies of teacher expertise, concerns have been raised as well. For example, Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993: 34) argue that the distinction is too rigid: ‘The issue is that an adequate description of expertise ought to span all varieties, and Table 1.3 The progression from novices to experts Stage Description Novice ‘The novices’ actions are guided by rules and a set of objectives and features related to the skill. There is little consideration for the context of the actions. … Novices are usually not taught the circumstances under which the rules should be violated, and they often judge their own performance by how well they follow the rules.’ Advanced beginners ‘After novices have had experience applying the rules in real situations, they begin to recognize situational elements that they need to consider for their actions.’ Competent ‘With more experience, competent performers learn how to cope with an overwhelming amount of information, by using both contextfree rules and situational elements. They are now able to assess the situation and distinguish important from unimportant information. Their actions are goal-directed, and they make conscious planning decisions to achieve their goals.’ Proficient ‘This stage is marked by the emergence of intuition, or knowhow. Proficient performers are now able to act without conscious deliberation because, as a result of their experience, they can recall similar situations in the past and the course of actions taken that were effective. … At his stage, proficient performers still engage in analytical thinking and conscious decisions when they encounter information that they assess to be important on the basis of their experience.’ Expert ‘This stage is marked by effortless and fluid performance guided by intuition. Experts are now totally engaged in skilled performance so that their skills become part of themselves. There is no need for conscious decision-making or problem solving. They just do what normally works on the basis of their experience. It is only when the outcomes are critical, when the situation is novel, and when time allows that experts engage in conscious deliberation before acting.’ Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM 20 Second Language Writing Instruction in Global Contexts expert-novice studies seem to fail on this count.’ In their view, this framing places too much emphasis on the expert, and ‘the expert becomes a kind of oracle, able to draw forth from inner knowledge an answer to anything within his or her specialty’ (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993: 34). Hence, the emphasis is on what the all-knowing expert teacher can do and what the novice cannot, with no ground in between them. This limits the usefulness of the comparisons of the two types of teachers. Tsui (2003), in her book-length study of expertise in L2 teaching which is the most comprehensive study of L2 teacher expertise to date, adds that novice–expert teacher studies tend to focus on the cognitive processes ‘that take place in their minds and are independent of context’ (Tsui, 2003: 2). She sees a need, instead, for ‘studies of teachers’ work and teachers’ lives [which] show that the knowledge and skills teachers develop are closely bound up with the specific contexts in which they work and in their own personal histories’ (Tsui, 2003: 2). Under these conditions, the novice–expert dichotomy is not positioned to account for the nuances and the socially oriented factors that impact on teacher learning and performance. Hence, while the novice–expert distinction could be useful in studying expertise among L2 writing teachers, there is also wisdom in adopting an alternative approach, one described in the next section of this chapter. A Possible Analytic Lens for L2 Writing Teacher Education: Adaptive Expertise Within the broader realm of teacher expertise scholarship, an intriguing narrower focus is on what is called ‘adaptive teaching.’ Regarding adaptive teaching, Corno (2008: 161) says in a major review of literature on the topic that adaptive teaching scholarship examines ‘what practicing teachers do to address student differences related to learning. In teaching adaptively, teachers respond to learners as they work. Teachers read student signals to diagnose needs on the fly and tap previous experience with similar learners to respond productively.’ Interest in such teaching dates back to Glaser (1977) and Snow (1980), although applications of the adaptive teaching idea since then have been sporadic and have not spread widely across the teaching landscape. For example, as Parsons (2012: 149) explains, ‘Little research has examined how teachers adapt their instruction, teachers’ reflections on their adaptations, or the instructional conditions in which they adapt’ with respect to literacy instruction. As noted earlier, that is also the case with L2 writing instruction. Some work has looked at adaptive teaching with respect to English language arts instruction, such as Athanases (1993) and Athanases et al. (2015). A core belief underlying this work is that ‘adapting instruction thoughtfully is a feature of successful teaching’ (Athanases et al., 2015: 84). As Athanases et al. (2015: 84) add, ‘Adaptations in teaching include diversified scaffolding, tweaking lessons, tailoring to learners’ needs, Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM Second Language Writing Teacher Education: The Role of Adaptive Expertise 21 testing new strategies, and redesigning curriculum.’ As such, they say, ‘Adaptive teaching highlights response actions teachers take through planning, data-response instruction, and in-the-moment redirecting, with high-quality rationales for adaptations’ (Athanases et al., 2015: 86). Such activity is the work of what is called the ‘adaptive expert’ in teaching, as examined more recently in the context of the teaching of argumentative writing by Newell et al. (2017). As for adaptive expertise and the notion of the ‘adaptive expert,’ Hayden et al. (2013) offer the following explanation: Expertise in teaching demands skillful balancing of deep and varied content knowledge with extensive pedagogy: synthesis and application of proven methods for successful teaching, and management of the unpredictability of people and teaching environments that can cause each day to be fraught with surprises. Teachers who achieve this are enacting reflective practice by combining thought and analysis with action in practice. They become ‘adaptive experts’ who can identify instructional roadblocks, then generate and enact successful responses. (Hayden et al., 2013: 395) An especially interesting application of the notion of adaptive expertise is outlined in the work of Hatano and Inagaki (1986). They suggest that ‘there are two courses of expertise, adaptive and routine’ and believe that it is important to identify ‘the factors that differentiate them’ (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986: 268). It was this differentiation between the ‘routine expert’ and the ‘adaptive expert,’ rather than the novice and the expert, that drew attention to their work among a number of education scholars and is of particular interest for the remainder of this chapter. Instead of classifying, and then studying, L2 writing teachers as novices and experts, there might be more flexibility, and thus more value, in working with the routine– expert distinction, which stresses the nature of teaching activity. In so doing, it avoids the kind of deficit orientation that might be associated with novice teachers and an overemphasis on the assumed superiority of the veteran teacher by virtue of having more experience. In fleshing out the routine–adaptive expert categorization, Hatano and Inagaki maintain that procedures ‘become automatized’ over time (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986: 266), and they assert that an important difference between individuals is the extent to which they stay rooted to those automatized procedures or advance beyond them. Those they categorize as routine experts ‘learn merely to perform a skill faster and more accurately, without constructing or enriching their conceptual knowledge’ (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986: 266). In other words, they have command of the everyday procedures of teaching, but fail to develop or utilize the ‘conceptual knowledge’ that leads to more flexibility and creativity in teaching, especially in response to changing circumstances and emerging challenges. Conceptual knowledge can entail awareness of theories or models related to teaching more broadly or within a teacher’s own Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM 22 Second Language Writing Instruction in Global Contexts disciplinary focus. It can also include deeper understanding of the context in which one teaches. Adaptive experts possess the same core skills as routine experts but, in contrast with routine experts, this ‘relevant prior knowledge’ is ‘gradually enriched and integrated’ due to their acquisition and use of the ‘conceptual knowledge’ noted earlier. As such, they adjust and adapt their teaching over time, thereby allowing for the growth of enhanced epistemologies and instructional activity. Unlike the routine expert, the adaptive expert is open to change and embraces opportunities to adapt instruction as is deemed necessary. This routine–adaptive expert distinction is particularly appealing relative to a challenge in studying expertise in teaching that Berliner (1986: 9) calls the ‘confounding of experience and expertise,’ especially in comparisons of novice and expert teachers. On the one hand, he says, ‘Expertise, it should be remembered, is a characteristic that is ordinarily developed only after lengthy experience’ (Berliner, 1992: 227), and so experience is prioritized in measuring expertise. On the other hand, he points out, an experienced teacher is not necessarily an expert. The routine–adaptive expert distinction, as an alternative model, diminishes the importance attached to experience and instead leaves room for other factors that may account for differences in the performance of routine and adaptive experts. I maintain that this would be a productive way of exploring the combination of beliefs and practices among L2 writing teachers. Applying the Notions of Routine Expertise and Adaptive Expertise to L2 Writing Teacher Education Scholarship If the routine–adaptive expertise framework is to be applied in L2WTE, how should this occur? The overarching development that must fi rst take place is the foregrounding of expertise as a tool for studying writing teachers, rather than operating as an underlying assumption of such research. In other words, prioritizing a quest to delineate the features of expertise as it applies to L2 writing is a necessary prerequisite to making use of a tool like the routine–adaptive expertise model. Once the L2 writing field has fully acknowledged the ‘expertise gap’ and has made a commitment to eliminating that gap, as suggested by the 2016 SSLW, a useful concrete step is to identify the core features of routine and adaptive writing teacher experts. Such an approach would entail carefully examining SLW teachers in their classrooms and compiling detailed data lists of the features of their instruction that mark them as routine or adaptive experts. This can be done deductively by fi rst gathering input from L2 writing specialists so as to create a priori categories of both routine and adaptive expertise. This step can be followed by studies of teachers that compare them to those categories in an effort to revise them as necessary. Conversely, teacher beliefs and practices can fi rst be studied, Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM Second Language Writing Teacher Education: The Role of Adaptive Expertise 23 with the aim of inductively arriving at detailed depictions of routine and adaptive expertise after analysis of the research fi ndings. Whichever of these approaches is adopted, the core principle is the same: generate detailed descriptions of the primary characteristics of routine and adaptive writing teacher experts. Another approach, and one that can be tied to the first, is to conceptualize routine and adaptive expertise along a continuum, with routine expertise at one end and adaptive expertise at the other. Drawing from studies of writing teachers in action, various stages of expertise could be depicted between these two poles of the continuum, just as the poles themselves could be described in detail. Such an approach would make use of a developmental notion of teaching which acknowledges that teachers change over time, as seen earlier in the stages of expertise reflected in the work of Dreyfus and Dreyfus. Research could be conducted that seeks to portray each of these stages of expertise as related to L2 writing instruction. Discussions of these stages could then take place in teaching methods courses for pre- and in-service teachers. Also worth considering, from the perspective of application in teacher education courses or professional development workshops, is work by Hedgcock and Lee (2017) that builds upon ‘teacher knowledge believed to be necessary for effective classroom performance’ to occur (Hedgcock & Lee, 2017: 18). They envision three types of such knowledge. One is subject matter knowledge, which they describe as ‘explicit familiarity with instructional methods, learning theories, and language structure’ (Hedgcock & Lee, 2017: 18). Then there is pedagogical content knowledge, which includes ‘familiarity with curriculum development, teaching methods, and classroom management’ (Hedgcock & Lee, 2017: 18). The third, they say, is procedural knowledge, which ‘involves a teacher’s repertoire of technical competence, such as lesson planning, pedagogical reasoning, and observational strategies’ (Hedgcock & Lee, 2017: 18). These three types of knowledge could be used as lenses through which to study writing teachers and draw helpful distinctions between them from the routine and adaptive expertise perspectives. That is, writing teachers could be examined from the vantage point of their possession and use of each of these types of knowledge, leading to a delineation of the combinations and degrees of such knowledge that mark routine and adaptive experts. The advantage of this approach is that it establishes categories from which to work, and these categories account for both the epistemological and pedagogical domains. An additional option worth considering is viewing the routine– adaptive classifications relative to different instructional contexts, such as pre-college and college settings, or English for academic/specific purposes courses and general academic writing courses. What constitutes routine and adaptive expertise could vary considerably depending on the context in which writing instruction is taking place, and it would be helpful to Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM 24 Second Language Writing Instruction in Global Contexts know what we consider a routine and an adaptive expert relative to these different circumstances in which L2 writing instruction takes place. An important underlying point relative to each of these potential schemes is that, unlike the novice-expert dichotomy, the routine–adaptive expert model does not have to be used as a judgement of teacher quality. In writing teacher education courses and programs, in particular, it is not necessary to declare that one type of teacher is bad and the other is good, although it is probably difficult to avoid the assumption that the adaptive expert is the better teacher. Stigmatizing the routine expert and glorifying the adaptive expert achieves very little, especially in working with preservice teachers. For them, becoming a routine expert may be an appealing initial prospect or an alluring goal relative to their developmental trajectory. Introducing novices to the features of the adaptive expert in order to establish a long-term professional goal could be a valuable tool in a writing education course, but not in the sense of tainting the necessary step of first acquiring routine expertise. Helping such teachers understand both routine and adaptive expertise will equip them with knowledge of the options awaiting them as they ease their way into the world of L2 writing instruction. Here is where the continuum idea mentioned earlier could be useful. Likewise, practicing teachers participating in in-service writing teacher courses or programs could benefit from an awareness of the routine–adaptive expert distinction as a developmental concept rather than a tool for judging them, similar to the approach adopted in the previously cited work of Dreyfus and Dreyfus. In-service teachers, especially in the case of L2 writing, may lack relevant experience or prior professional development work and thus may benefit from knowing about routine and adaptive expertise as stages of expertise to pursue. Anecdotally speaking, it is not uncommon for individuals to enter L2 writing instruction after acquiring teaching experience in another content area or discipline, or to have received little or no training about teaching writing in an L2 teacher preparation program, as Larsen’s (2013, 2016) research has shown. Hence, they, like novice teachers, may need the initial comfort zone of routine expertise as a realistic fi rst step towards later professional growth. Here, again, routine and adaptive expertise can be viewed as a continuum of expertise rather than a dichotomy that, in essence, relies on a ‘bad teacher– good teacher’ dichotomy. To augment the routine–adaptive expert model in both research and teacher education settings, a construct from teacher agency scholarship that was introduced by McNeil (2000) and developed in depth recently by Johnson and Golombek (2016), that of ‘growth points,’ could be useful in looking at L2 writing teachers along the routine–adaptive continuum. Johnson and Golombek (2016: xii) describe growth points ‘as a moment or series of moments when teachers’ cognitive/emotional dissonance comes into being.’ Working from the routine–adaptive expert framework, Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM Second Language Writing Teacher Education: The Role of Adaptive Expertise 25 writing teachers’ movement from routine to adaptive expertise could be charted via ‘growth points’ they encounter over time, such as through instructional experience or engagement in professional development opportunities like workshops or in-service teacher education courses or programs. Identifying such growth points could enhance understanding of transitions in L2 writing teacher expertise, and these could in turn be used in future preparation of L2 writing teachers. There are no doubt other ways in which the notions of routine and adaptive expertise could be used in both studying and developing L2 writing teachers. However it is employed, the routine–adaptive expertise model has the advantage of providing a degree of flexibility not available in the more common novice–expert distinction. That flexibility should hold appeal in the process of making expertise itself a more visible and important component in L2WTE work. Conclusion What this chapter has sought to do is, fi rst, to make a case for overt, focused exploration of the notion of ‘expertise’ in L2WTE scholarship. This is the ‘unstudied problem’ that confronts us, especially relative to teacher education courses and programs that seek to develop L2 writing teachers. As teacher educators, an important goal in our work is to produce experts who can better serve the needs of L2 writers. Having visible, concrete knowledge of what constitutes expertise would help greatly in that regard, and here the routine–adaptive expert model could be especially beneficial. This situation is akin to the vexing problem of knowing exactly what we mean when we speak of ‘good writing.’ To paraphrase Ilona Leki (1995) and her ‘good writing: I know it when I see it’ statement which captures the challenge of pinning down the features of good writing, we appear to have a similar situation with respect to L2 writing teacher expertise: ‘Expertise: I know it when I see it.’ This is not an adequate way of accounting for teacher expertise. We need to move meaningfully beyond that vague stage. Studying L2 writing teachers through the lens of routine and adaptive expertise is one way of solving the ‘unstudied problem’ and overcoming the ‘expertise gap,’ as this characterization provides the kind of focused analytic lens currently lacking. We will have concrete grounds on which to say that we know what we mean when we discuss writing teacher expertise. Thus, as we move forward in studying L2 writing teachers in action, we need to have at our disposal a belief that understanding what expertise entails matters. While beneficial to a certain point, it is not sufficient to know what teachers believe about L2 writing and writing instruction as well as what they do in their classrooms. It is also important to understand what signifies different levels or types of expertise, as in the case of routine and adaptive expertise. As Berliner (1986), cited earlier, pointed Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM 26 Second Language Writing Instruction in Global Contexts out, novice teachers in education preparation programs or courses need an understanding of expertise to help them frame their goals and expectations for teaching. Likewise, those who teach novices in pre-service programs or experienced teachers in in-service programs or courses will benefit from having clearly delineated notions of writing teacher expertise to work from. Seeing these notions through the lens of routine and adaptive expertise could be especially beneficial in such work, as comparisons between routine expertise and adaptive expertise might help developing L2 writing teachers better understand the parameters and possibilities of L2 writing instruction. There can be an enormous gap between the novice teacher and the expert teacher and so, for teachers in preparation, a realistic pathway to expertise may be difficult to grasp. By contrast, comparisons between routine and adaptive experts may be far more productive from their perspective, especially when each type of expertise is seen as having value, as opposed to positioning one as bad and one as good. However, establishing well-defi ned notions of writing teacher expertise requires a framework or model of expertise to work from. In this chapter I have suggested that the notion of adaptive expertise meets this need, especially within the routine–adaptive expert model described earlier. Specifying what characterizes routine expertise and what characterizes adaptive expertise, as well as what can promote the transition from routine to adaptive expertise, would provide both writing teachers and writing teacher educators with an important tool to use in helping preservice and in-service teachers visualize their journey through the acquisition of writing teacher expertise. Thus adopting, and adjusting, Higano and Inagaki’s model of routine and adaptive expertise for the purposes of writing teacher education is a move worth making as we continue to conceptualize and implement writing teacher education and writing teacher research. In writing teacher education courses, ‘how to’ books aimed at preparing teachers of writing help articulate ideas about and suggestions for what L2 writing teachers should know, and thus can be used in conjunction with descriptions of routine and adaptive expertise. Such books provide beneficial declarative and procedural knowledge about writing instruction, as well as reviews of writing theory and epistemology, which can augment portraits of expertise. In the case of a recent publication of this type, Ferris and Hedgcock’s (2014) important volume, Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process, and Practice, the authors briefly use the term ‘deep professional expertise’ (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2014: 2) in introducing their book and thus suggest a notion of expertise that could be connected to discussions of routine and adaptive expertise. To supplement valuable instructional resources of this kind, we need to complement them with knowledge of the features of writing teacher expertise, especially through a continuum that draws from key constructs such as routine and adaptive expertise. Brought to you by | provisional account Unauthenticated Download Date | 12/20/19 8:21 AM Second Language Writing Teacher Education: The Role of Adaptive Expertise 27 Meanwhile, there is also a research agenda to pursue, one that focuses on foregrounding and demystifying the notion of expertise as it applies to writing instruction. This is the work we have not yet seen performed much in L2 writing research, and which is a noteworthy aspect of the ‘expertise gap’ in the field’s scholarship. Such an agenda aimed at addressing the ‘expertise gap’ would be facilitated by the creation of research questions worth pursuing, and here I will put forward three that are adjusted versions of questions that drove Tsui’s (2003) case studies of expertise among four ESL teachers cited earlier: (1) What are the critical differences between routine and adaptive experts in L2 writing instruction? That is, what are the characteristics that distinguish the routine expert from the adaptive expert? (2) How does a writing teacher become an adaptive expert? What are the phases that s/he goes through in the process of transitioning from routine to adaptive expertise in L2 writing instruction? (3) What are the factors that shape the development of adaptive expertise among L2 writing teachers? Two additional questions worth addressing are these: (4) What are the ‘growth points’ that facilitate teachers’ transition from routine to adaptive expert? (5) Based on explorations of routine and adaptive expertise among L2 writing teachers, what is a useful operational defi nition of L2 writing teacher expertise? No doubt there are other research questions worth addressing, and the routine–adaptive expertise model is not the only one worth using as an analytical lens for studying L2 writing teachers in action. What matters most is that we take a step forward in L2 writing research by placing greater emphasis on studying writing teachers and, while doing so, exploring their writing instruction within the guiding framework of L2 writing teacher expertise instead of assuming that expertise is already a well-understood construct. We also need to analyze and interpret teachers’ beliefs and actions as reflected in their practice so as to arrive at a deeper, more profound understanding of L2 writing teachers and teaching, especially by establishing a common understanding of what constitutes expertise in L2 writing instruction. 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