Image developed using ChatGPT. Prompt: “Make me a banner image for my PhD project page; here is the text”
Reimagining Language Teacher Education: KARDS as a self-regulating teacher education curriculum
This page introduces my doctoral research into emerging language teachers’ professional becoming for intercultural education in Australia’s monolingual and postcolonial context. Using narrative inquiry and hermeneutic phenomenology, the project explores how teachers’ experiences, relationships, identities and professional contexts shape their understandings and practices. Kumaravadivelu’s KARDS model provides a framework for examining these interconnected dimensions of teacher development.
In this page, I have gathered relevant publications, conference presentations and practical professional learning resources developed through this work. Resources include a Language Teacher Identity Reflective Framework and a KARDS Professional Stories Analysis Tool, designed for use in initial teacher education, mentoring, collaborative reflection and ongoing professional development. The frameworks I have developed are designed to support educators to connect research with their own professional stories, learning and practice across diverse educational settings.
KARDS Professional Becoming Resources
The KARDS Professional Becoming Resources support educators to examine how teachers’ knowledge, identities, beliefs, experiences and professional contexts shape what they know, do and see. Based on Kumaravadivelu’s KARDS model—Knowing, Analysing, Recognising, Doing and Seeing—the two complementary resources can be used in teacher education, professional learning, mentoring and collaborative reflection.
The first resource supports structured reflection on professional practice and development. The second emerged from my narrative research and provides a way of analysing teachers’ professional stories to identify the experiences, influences and turning points shaping their professional becoming.
Resource 1: Language Teacher Identity Reflection Framework
Originally developed in 2022, the Language Teacher Identity Reflective Framework supports reflection on the knowledge, identities, beliefs and contexts shaping teachers’ practice. It can be used when mentoring a preservice teacher, examining your own professional development or working with a colleague as a critical friend.
Since its development, the framework has been used in Brisbane Catholic Education professional learning, by school principals and within initial teacher education.
Language Teacher Identity Reflective Framework
Resource 2: KARDS Professional Stories Analysis Tool
The KARDS Professional Stories Analysis Tool emerged from my narrative research into language teachers’ professional becoming. It supports educators in mapping and analysing professional stories through the KARDS dimensions of Knowing, Analysing, Recognising, Doing and Seeing.
The tool formed the basis of my workshop at the 2025 AFMLTA International Languages Conference and can be used individually or collaboratively to explore how significant experiences, relationships and contexts influence teachers’ identities, understandings and practices.
Download the KARDS Professional Stories Analysis Tool
Publications, presentations and workshops
Barry, S. (2025). Reimagining support for emerging language teachers: KARDS as a framework for professional becoming. Babel, 59(3), 4–11. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.T2026031800005401600083057
25th AFMLTA International Languages Conference: Adelaide. “Reimagining language teacher education: a self-regulating teacher education curriculum” (2025) Slides available here
MLTAQ Conference: Innovative practitioners, innovative practice. “Intercultural teacher identities: Operationalising teacher skills and dispositions to develop global competence in students, and language engagement for life” (2022) Slides available here
AFMLTA International Languages Conference: Languages: Breaking through the walls, Hobart. Understanding intercultural language teaching: Links between theory and practice (2019)