EFL teachers' preferences for teacher learning activities in a professional development course

Abstract

The Turkish Ministry of National Education (MEB) renewed English language teaching programs for the primary and the secondary state schools in Turkey (MEB, 2013). This renewal requires teachers to employ new approaches to teaching English. Several in-service teacher-training (INSETT) programs are organized by MEB to help EFL teachers to cope with the requirements of the recently prepared language teaching reform. This study was designed to express secondary state school EFL teachers' expectations from the INSETT programs by identifying their perceptions of the most influential teacher learning activities that contribute to their learning and their suggestions related to the improvement of INSETT policies. The findings indicated that the teachers value practical and experiential activities that help them to learn how to observe and assess their teaching practices and themselves as teachers. The findings also covered the teachers' suggestions regarding INSETT guidelines to be set in areas such as the identification of teacher needs; the organizational features; matching the content focus of the programs to the strategies used by the trainers; establishing a culture of empowerment at schools; and building local teacher networks.