Mapping Conceptualizations of Teacher Learning in SLTE Research: A Different Form of Systematic Review

Systematic reviews generally synthesize findings about a particular topic to identify gaps. However, they do not usually examine how the topic has been framed conceptually or underlying assumptions in the methodical decisions that have been made. This article recounts the process of taking a different approach that focuses how one research community, from second language teacher education (SLTE), has defined and studied teacher learning. To systematically review how teacher learning has been framed in the output of the SLTE research community, we identified 136 articles from 90 peer-reviewed journals, published between 1992 and 2023, that addressed the topic. We asked how these studies framed teacher learning conceptually and how they studied this focus. Focusing on empirical articles ( n = 109), we used Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF), to distinguish between versions of teacher learning as a research foci that were widespread (appearing in more than 60% of documents) versus those that clustered around particular definitional ideas (appearing in fewer than 59% of documents). In examining the research methodologies, we found that the SLTE research community has favored an idiographic orientation to data collection and analysis, suggesting that, while it is seen as socially situated, this sample of SLTE research has portrayed teacher learning as a particularist, idiosyncratic process. We suggest the prevalence of idiographic work might reflect Shulman’s (1981) observation that education is a field of study and not itself an academic discipline, thus research does not draw on a single, identifiable parent discipline for its norms and procedures.