PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE LIVES OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER: THE TURKISH CONTEXT

Although professional development is assumed to be of value and considered as an essential component of quality teaching, there has been little research on how and why teachers engage themselves in continuous learning and whether professional development affects teaching or student learning. With respect to this issue, the present study aimed to investigate how EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers in Turkey perceive professional development and how they engage in professional development practices. For this purpose, the researchers explored the professional development efforts of 33 in-service Turkish EFL teachers throughout their career by means of a cross-sectional survey. Follow-up, structured interviews were carried out with two EFL teachers to supplement the questionnaire results and to detect the perspectives of in-service teachers about professional development in terms of conditions in their lives and institutions. Both quantitative and qualitative data indicated that if EFL teachers in Turkey are encouraged with institutional support by means of a manageable workload and appropriate working hours, they could most likely be more motivated to reflect upon their own practices, have the necessary skills to become multitaskers and share their experiences and problems with colleagues to improve professionally.