English Language Teachers’ Evaluation of an Alternative Professional Development Program

Abstract

Research on professional development programs (PDP) organized for teachers and foreign language instructors in Turkey has shown that they are not found to be effective by the stakeholders. Hence, the purpose of the current study is to find out the opinions of pre-service and in-service English language teachers and in-service foreign language instructors on PDPs in general and an alternative PDP applied (APDP) during the study in addition to the kind of PDP they prefer to receive having been practiced both of these applications. The APDP is prepared based on the needs of the participants’ and the literature review on the expected qualities of an effective teacher in line with the givens of the curricular changes framed for primary and secondary schools and higher education institutions. Two pre-service, four in-service teachers and four in-service instructors participated in the study. A pre-program protocol, post-module protocols and a post program interview were used as data gathering instruments. The responses of the participants were categorized under certain headings to interpret data. The findings of the study revealed that all participants preferred the APDP to the other PDPs, mainly because it made use of practice-focused rather than theory-based knowledge accumulation and practical applications.