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Language teacher development in integrating technology: mind the gap
This paper presents ongoing research into teachers' responses to the push towards greater technology use in a Russian Higher Educational. It discusses the state of the art in the language teacher development in the country. It is argued that traditional reflection based teacher development frameworks such as Action Research or Cooperative Development require thorough consideration before implementing in Russia top down due to historically shaped ‘one size fits all’ language teaching methodology and Soviet authoritarian ideology, which inevitably influence teaching practice. I propose an alternative, a bottom up strategy with the aim of understanding how the concept of perezhivanie can be used as a heuristic tool in the complex settings such as the technologically enhanced language classroom. ‘Capturing’ teachers’ perezhivanie provides insights into teacher responses to top-down initiatives and offers directions how to dialogically shape those responses. I suggest that perezhivanie has a formative power on teachers and therefore can be used in teacher education, training and development programmes.