Date

2010

Author

Ekşi, Gül

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The main purpose of this study was to assess the professional development needs of the English language instructors working at a state university in Istanbul. Ninety-two instructors teaching preparatory classes constituted the population of the study. Within that needs assessment, the instructors’ perceptions of professional development, the most common professional development activities instructors practice, factors that hindered instructors from attending professional development activities, the most difficult skill to teach and assess, the areas of teaching English where instructors needed a professional development program, and the instructors’ preferences for delivery methods and formats of the professional development programs were identified. This study also examined the role of year of teaching experience, workload of the instructors, department the instructors graduated, and instructors’ perceptions of professional development programs in predicting the professional development needs of the instructors. Findings indicated that participants had positive perceptions of professional development. The most common professional development activity type was found to be “Sharing experiences with colleagues.” The most important factor which hindered participants from attending professional development was determined as “inconvenient date/time.” The most difficult skill to teach and to assess was reported as “Writing.” It was found out that the area where the degree of need was the highest was “New theories and practices of English language teaching.” Most of the participants reported that they preferred professional development activities to be optional workshops at their own institutions. A trainer or an expert from an outside institution was the most preferred speaker type. Findings also showed that instructors preferred sessions which took up to 60 minutes, held on weekday mornings once a month. The result of the regression analyses indicated that only year of teaching experience was significant in predicting professional development needs of the instructors. Year of teaching experience was negatively correlated with the needs indicating that as the teachers got more experience, their degree of professional development needs decreased.

Subject Keywords

Teacher training in universities and colleges

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12612808/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/20299

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis