Professional Development and IELTS Training Course: a case of EFL Teachers in Iran

Hamid Ashraf*, Zeinab Kafi**
* Assistant Professor, Department of English, Islamic Azad University, Torbat Heydarieh Branch, Iran.
** Research Scholar, Department of English, Islamic Azad University, Torbat Heydarieh Branch, Iran.
Periodicity:January - March'2016
DOI : https://doi.org/10.26634/jelt.6.1.4807

Abstract

The current study aimed at investigating the status of Professional Development (PD) through examining teachers' perspectives over how effective they consider exam specific teacher training courses (IELTS in this case) which aim at increasing their PD. To this end, a group of EFL teachers, from different language schools in Mashhad, Iran took part in this study. There existed 30 teachers, most of whom were professional in teaching and had a good English proficiency. This training course consisted of all the skills and sub-skills of IELTS as well as the best possible ways to teach different skills of English. Teachers attended this program three times a week which started in February 2015 and ended in May 2015. As the main data collection mean in this study was a qualitative one, two open-ended questions were employed in the data collection process which aimed at finding what the participants' ideas about the T.T.C course they took were and also what the main motivating reasons for the teachers were for taking part in the T.T.C program. The accumulated answers were then analyzed and categorized into different groups and the percentages for each extracted category were calculated through SPSS. Besides, as for the quantitative data collection phase and also in order to check the probable relation of the program and teachers' Professional Development (PD), a researcher made questionnaire was designed and expert validity was employed to carry out the instrument's validation process. Therefore, two experts' opinions in the field were accumulated and further comments and modifications were done accordingly. The questionnaire, using Cronbach Alpha, revealed to possess a high degree of .902 reliability. Afterwards, the PD questionnaire, which mainly focused on teachers' self-declaration with regard to this case specific teacher training program and how effective they believed the program to be on their PD, was administered. Finally, the results were correlated through Cross tabulation and Chi square test. The results exhibited that, there exists a significant relation between the two variables i. e. majority of teachers believed the T.T.C program has been “influential” in their professional development.

Keywords

Professional Development, Teacher Training, EFL Teachers, IELTS

How to Cite this Article?

Ashraf, H., and Kafi, Z. (2016). Professional Development and IELTS Training Course: A Case of EFI Teachers in Iran. i-manager’s Journal on English Language Teaching, 6(1), 15-24. https://doi.org/10.26634/jelt.6.1.4807

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