An exploratory study of academic literacy socialization: Building genre awareness in a teacher education program

As apprenticeship models have evolved, language teacher education (LTE) has increasingly adopted evidence-based approaches to teacher preparation. Intended to promote subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and procedural knowledge, LTE curricula often target novice teachers' agency, identity construction, and critical awareness. An ongoing challenge facing LTE involves cultivating candidates' disciplinary knowledge and facilitating their socialization into professional discourses, yet little research has examined the role of genre awareness in language teacher development. This article explores two aspects of teacher learning in LTE: (1) influences of implicit and explicit genre-oriented practices designed to raise genre awareness and (2) teacher candidates' perceptions of genre-oriented instruction as a source of professional knowledge and skill. Guided by mixed-methods action research principles, the authors analyze quantitative and qualitative data from 58 teacher candidates in a US-based, graduate-level LTE program. Data collection methods included a questionnaire interrogating students' academic literacy experiences, and focus group discussions. While supporting the goal of developing candidates' pedagogical content knowledge, findings suggest that some methods for cultivating content expertise are perhaps insufficient for promoting critical disciplinary knowledge and appropriating genre expectations. The article discusses the potential benefits of genre-oriented approaches designed to enhance novice teachers' genre awareness and critical literacies.