English in Italy: An analysis of five decades of teacher-training

The essay presents an overview about teacher-training courses (TTCs) in Italy in the last fifty years or so before pointing out missing features of contemporary teacher-training courses (TFA programs). Novel inquiries need to depart from what has previously been done, consider pros and cons, identify emergent weak areas, and propose ameliorations. This is what the present work does: prior TTCs are framed and analyzed within the gradual but persevering transformations and methodological consequences that have taken place in the field of EFL teaching and learning. A closer look at the gradual evolution of the training-teaching-learning mosaic will be of help in clustering the evolutionary landmarks that have characterized EFL teaching methodology and TTCs throughout the last five decades in Italy and, to a certain extent, in Europe. Further, three missing aspects in TTCs are taken into consideration. They may be summarized as follows: 1) the new role that foreign language teachers need to assume given today’s learning reality; 2) the radical changes in the students’ generation, and 3) the limited focus devoted to the emotional worlds of both teachers and students.