ENGLISH INSTRUCTORS’ PERCEPTION RELATED TO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: A CASE STUDY IN A FOUNDATION UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Over the past decades, the importance given to Teacher Professional Development (TPD) activities and opportunities have been undoubtedly increasing day by day all around the world. As every living thing in the world is evolving, a language itself, a living phenomenon, is assuredly evolving which means that educators face new challenges they have to come up with new solutions for and adapt. The study aims to investigate the English language teachers’ perceptions with regards to teacher professional development and its related options. For that purpose, in the study, the sequential method was adopted. The participants were composed of 20 full-time instructors (16 female, 4 male) working in a foundation university in Turkey as English instructors. The data were collected using via both a questionnaire developed by Eksi (2010) and a follow-up interview. For follow-up interview, the respondents were gathered of 5 full-time instructors determined by simple random sampling method. The data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 25 and the data from the follow-up interview were coded and were analyzed by carrying out inductive content analysis.

Keywords: Teacher professional development; self-directed learning; personalized professional development; self-assessment