Creating bottom-up academic salons for foreign language teacher educators’ career development

Research and practice show that university-based teacher educators experience great challenges to become teacher-educator-researchers, and need academic support to facilitate their academic development. This paper reports on a grassroots school-baed academic salon in a national teacher education university in China to support foreign language teacher educators’ academic development. Semi-structured interviews and facilitators’ longitudinal observations were employed to collect data. The findings indicate its appeal to teaching-focused mid-career teacher educators who either lacked PhD research training or continuous research experiences, and aspired collegial support to achieve teaching-research integration. Meanwhile, its sustainability arose as a serious issue, suggesting a need for adjustment of its operational mechanisms and administrative support to the facilitating team’s continued efforts. The study suggests the necessity of systemic efforts to support its ongoing development.