Using Technologies to Develop Skills and Autonomy in Foreign Language Teachers

Abstract

This study focuses on the peculiarities that training courses mediated by technologies need to feature to positively affect the motivation and the building of metacognitive and didactic competences in teachers of foreign languages. What is especially highlighted is the fact that the advantages of these courses are closely related to the variables internal to the virtual environments that put the participants in control of their own learning process. With this in mind, two areas are taken into consideration, the constructive-interactional approach regarded as a model to design virtual learning environments on the one hand, and on the other the characteristics of e-learning tools and web-based tasks that help teachers acquire and refine metacognitive strategies, critical thinking and digital practices useful for their professional development.