Study abroad as professional development for FSL teachers

In July 2009, a group of over 80 FSL teachers from British Columbia (BC) participated in a two-week sojourn at the Centre d’Approches vivantes des Langues et des Médias (CAVILAM) in Vichy, France, as part of an initiative to address the critical shortage of qualified French language teachers in the province. After almost four decades of study abroad (SA) research, the literature offers little insight into teachers’ professional development abroad. The following article attempts to situate the recent sojourn of the BC teachers within the field by presenting an overview of some of the major research trends of SA research as well as summarizing how teachers have been acknowledged in the literature to date. A description of the program at CAVILAM and the current research study is presented to highlight some of the emerging opportunities for future research on teacher education within a SA context.