Research “Fitting” Practice: Firth and Wagner, Classroom Language Teaching, and Language Teacher Education DONALD FREEMAN University of Michigan School of Education 610 East University, Room 1228B Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1259 Email: donaldfr@umich.edu This article argues that Firth and Wagner’s 1997 contribution gained influence in sec- ond/foreign language teaching partly owing to a loose group of conceptual and ideological preconditions that drew on classroom methodologies, debates over educating second language teachers, and new views of how teachers could document and analyze their own practices. The article is organized around four issues drawn from Firth and Wagner: focus (How was classroom language teaching refocused by their critique?); meaning (What is the nature of meaning as the central driver in instructed learning?); locus (Given the preceding questions, how then does the locus of activity in the language classroom shift?); and identities (How are the notions of learner and teacher identities reshaped by this critique?). The discussion draws connections between the thinking articulated by Firth and Wagner and the practices of classroom language teaching, and includes suppositions that are susceptible to further investigation. A LANDSCAPE OF INCOMPATIBILITY The idea that theorizing in second language acquisition (SLA) research has never really fit classroom language teaching 1 has been a point of ongoing discussion for decades (Firth & Wagner, 1998; Ortega, 2005). Although some might ar- gue otherwise, SLA research, writ large, has ac- tually had only a modest impact over the years on the classroom practices of language teach- ing (Katz & Watzinger-Tharp, 2005). To be sure, there have been periods in second/foreign lan- guage education during which such research has been an ascendant influence. From time to time, scholarship on language teaching method- ology (e.g., Brown, 1987; Omaggio Hadley, 1993) and on language curriculum design (e.g., R. K. Johnson, 1989) has shown the persuasiveness of The Modern Language Journal, 91, Focus Issue, (2007) 0026-7902/07/893–906 $1.50/0 C 2007 The Modern Language Journal research findings from SLA on these domains. However, overall, it is hard to claim that lan- guage teaching has been a practice informed by research. This is a somewhat perplexing state of affairs, because understanding how people, whether adults or children, learn languages beyond their first or mother tongue should arguably be the cen- terpiece of any language teacher’s craft. Certainly in terms of professional preparation, this knowl- edge should play an important role in the edu- cation of individuals who intend to become lan- guage teachers. In the main, however, the work of language teaching seems not to have been widely affected by this important and relevant domain of knowledge. The foregoing is offered as a characterization of the status quo; it is not a position that I wish to ar- gue for (or against). I come to these discussions as a language teacher educator and as someone who is concerned with how language teachers learn (through professional preparation) and change