What impact can a TBLT teacher education course have?

Abstract Despite teachers’ overall positive perceptions about Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) ( Ellis et al., 2020 ; Van den Branden, 2022 ), support in the form of teacher education appears to be crucial in helping current and future teachers in their efforts to implement TBLT ( Brandl, 2017 ; East, 2022 ). This article examines the impact of a 13-week-long course for pre-service teachers of Spanish L2 on participants’ beliefs about and understanding of TBLT, and on their ability to design tasks. Drawing from Erlam (2016) and Ogilvie and Dunn (2010) , data were collected using a pedagogical beliefs questionnaire, written reflections gathered throughout the course, the analysis of three pedagogical sequences, and the design of a task as the final project in the course. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data show that participants’ disposition towards using TBLT in their future teaching practice increased throughout the course and that 80% of the final tasks fulfilled all or most of Ellis’ (2009) task criteria. The study contributes to the growing body of research on the role of teacher education in the diffusion of TBLT as a pedagogical innovation.