A Handy Resource for Educators

Ramesh Khatri

The bookInnovation in the Continuing Professional Development of English Language Teachers, edited by David Hayes provides ubiquitous insights of transformations for the professional development of teachers. It reflects the essence of teacher development for the improvement of educational sectors. It provides information about how continuing professional development programs are structured and how they have influenced the community.

 David Hayes started writing from two aspects: ‘innovation’ and ‘continuing professional development’. This book opens with galvanizing ideas of innovation in continuing professional development for English Language teachers and closes with an analysis of the long-lasting influence of a continuing professional development program in Bulgaria. 

 The teachers can build a network among professionals. However, technology has become a gift for them to make their project possible. This type of program addresses the individual needs of teachers. Each chapter focuses on the particular problems of continuing professional development.

Chapter one by Emma Sue Prince and Alison Barret describes how British Council, India has been working with several state governments including Assam, Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Punjab to uphold CPD for teacher educators along with teachers in both their language teaching skills and their English language proficiency. This chapter includes the importance of CPD. This project has been designed to develop their personal and professional qualities to improve their knowledge, skills, and practices. This program has helped to provide opportunities for various activities such as mentoring, self-evaluation, action research, peer coaching, and learning. The CDP has provided an opportunity for the collaboration and sharing of learning experiences to enhance critical self-reflection. It could be beneficial for both teachers and students to develop a positive learning attitude. This volume has dealt with the learning outcome of India where 280 million learners were studying. This program could be a cornerstone of the Indian education system where the quality of teaching is paramount. India has tried to improve the standard of English through this program. They have talked about the barriers that had created challenges for the development of CPD in India. The pre-service training is based only on theory and there is a gap between external and internal understanding. The day-to-day classroom practice is quite different from imagination. Teachers are not encouraged and motivated for their professional growth.

Chapter two discusses the experience of Uzbekistan by Jamilya Gulyamova, Saida, Irgasherva, and Rod Bolitho, mentioning that innovation requires a significant change in an established practice. This chapter provides information about the educational reforms after the end of the Soviet era and that allows reforming the curriculum for the pre-service training and education of teachers of English. The pre-service training was previously focused on linguistic and language systems. The practice of CDP has provided excellent opportunities for reforming and transforming the curriculum by including varieties of projects for the betterment of participants, teachers, and stakeholders. The project was successfully implemented to bring changes in professional development. Though there were rejection and failure of the project, it has helped to make their horizon wider to deal with vested interests that favored the maintenance of the status. Freedom was given to evaluate new ideas from their perspective, which have encouraged collaborative teamwork and intensive discussion. The participants got a chance to share their feeling with other fellow members. The project had been led out of the box and think independently. The teachers were not limited to the course book. The teachers were made to practice new ideas and innovation in their classes. Most of the teachers fell in love with their profession and gained confidence in what they were doing. The project provided a positive impact on the students and the teachers.

Ann Burns and Emily Edwards, in their section, introduce innovation through action research in an Australian national program. Action research is advocated as a means of empowering teachers. Action research has given opportunities to the teachers to reflect on their teaching practices and support them to raise the classroom voice. This project has allowed a critical examination of their good and bad practices through reflection. Australian English Language Intensive Courses for overseas students were introduced for professional development. A key strategic goal of English Australians was to facilitate high levels of professional practice. 

Isabela Villas Boas focuses on continuing professional development with an emphasis on programs implemented at an institutional level. This chapter describes several initiatives in ELT in Brazil aimed at embracing teacher-centered professional development to serve teachers’ individual needs. This unit provides information about the practices of the traditional approach, which was, adopted a one-size-fits-all. 

Chapter five of the book discusses the champion teachers’ project funded by the British Council in Chile and endorsed by the Chilean Ministry of Education. The main objective of these projects was to motivate and help a cohort of secondary school English teachers in Chile. The objectives of the projects were to identify problematic issues. Another clear aim was to develop the project coordinator’s understanding of the time constraints of promoting teachers’ research as a means of professional development in the Chilean secondary school context. 

Andy Keedwell, in a different section, cites challenging conditions faced in his account of the introduction of the self-access centers within the peacekeeping English Project in Ethiopia and English for defense and security projects in Afghanistan. CPD was very new to participants in Ethiopia and Afghanistan. It was taken a very innovative and significant shift in the context of Ethiopia and Afghanistan. These two projects were managed by the British Council on the behalf of the British embassy, the UK Ministry of Defense, and the Africa conflict prevention fund in Ethiopia. This project aimed to work together with local partners to secure sustainability after eventual handover. This project mainly focused on the development of systems, design, and delivery of teacher training and trainer training. Self-access could support the military force to be self-sufficient, independent, and resourceful learners who could take the initiation of their learning. This project has provided an opportunity for learners to meet their own needs and aspirations. Local access centers were not effectively managed by local military administration led to a situation where many computers did not function well. The birds were nesting in the center roof. There was not care of properties or these were theft or misused. The key holders could be busy with their duties. They could be away from the Centre by locking the door. Thereafter, they motivated the military and supported each other to bring positive experiences of self-access. After the implementation of CPD, they become independent learners. The learners have choices and a fair level of autonomy.

The chapter that follows examines the use of technology to give greater access to continuing professional development training materials through the Internet, while chapter eight describes the rationale for an online platform for communities of practice developed for primary English as a foreign language teacher in Greece. Further down the lane, there is a description of the experiences of delivering online CPD opportunities to English teachers in Omen. The main aim of this course is to provide a contemporary form of CPD to the existing face-to-face provision delivered in regional training centers and workshops in schools. This project has allowed English teachers in a vast country with many schools in remote areas. It was typically prepared for schoolteachers of English in Oman and had added potential value to the CPD courses. This chapter supports certain ways to fill this gap. The chapter also deals with a specific country context of Oman. A collaborative venture between the ministry of education and the British Council. Instead of designing something new, but they were decided to outline an existing course and work towards an external qualification. Though there were several challenges for teachers, the teacher’s feedback was positive. They were asked for more courses of this kind for the future.

Chapter ten discusses a new approach to continuing professional development through the use of mediated video, peer support, and low-cost mobile phones in Bangladesh. It has talked about the context within which CPD operates in Bangladesh. They provided the innovative concept of mediated video that EIA has developed using materials on the secure digital card. Low-cost mobile phones were used to deliver a more personalized and reflective approach to teacher professional development. The focus is on making the highest quality, most engaging, and most appropriate continuing professional development. The aim of this project was not to promote technology for technology’s sake. This project motivates the teachers to apply technology in their professional development. The English in action has been attempting to find a successful alternative to previous CPD approaches by addressing some of the major constraints and limitations.

Chapter eleven discusses continuing professional development policy think tank: an innovative experiment in India. Amol Padwad and Krishna Dixit elaborate on how the think tank has helped to bring a change for a teacher to be a more difficult understanding in which teacher agency took Centre stage. The think tank has provided the stimulus for a shift in perceptions of CPD in India from a peripheral issue to a central concern. Though initiated and financially supported by an external agency, the British Council, this has an autonomous group consisting mostly of Indian professionals. The primary focus of the project was to expand and deepen the understanding of CPD in the Indian context. Think tank has demonstrated a new model of organized collective thinking, different in nature, and functioning from the typical think tank. Think tank was strongly based on local cultures, which helps in making them more relevant through situating all CPD related work in the social-cultural situation. Think tank work has provided an opportunity for constant and open sharing of ideas and experiences. This was supported by two things: the use of various modes and channels for sustained communication.

Chapter twelve seeks to uncover how the South Korean education system meets the increasing demand for continuing professional development among English teacher educators. Furthermore, it has focused on the CPD experiences of education officials and university professors themselves. Though the roles of teacher educators are important for making education policy, the demands on them are often left out of the professional development debate. 

The last chapter of the book describes the process of evaluating the long-term influence of training programs developed for a group of teacher trainers in Bulgaria with lifelong learning and continuing professional development. Two innovative aspects of the evaluation were applied in the program. The first innovative aspect is to focus on the formal endpoint of the program, which is rare in project evaluation. The second aspect of the evaluation is re-evaluated by analyzing the trainer’s life stories using narrative history and life stories as a methodology. The evaluation access the long-term influence of the original program. The CPD project in Bulgaria aimed to develop a cadre of teacher trainers to meet the urgent need to re-train hundreds of teachers to teach English.

All the writers attempt to show the practices of CPD and its positive and negative impact on continuing professional development. The book is a practical guide for novice teachers and educators. It exhibits good and bad practices of professional development in the ELT/EFL landscape.

This volume can serve as a reference book for ELT/EFL researchers, university students, teachers, educational administrators, social change agents and policymakers, who are interested in language teaching and development. Apart from some minor errors in typing, the volume is extremely interesting and well edited. 

[Ramesh Khatri is an M.Ed. in English language Education from Tribhuvan University. Presently an MPhil scholar in ELE at Kathmandu University, He is also working as Social science teacher at John Dewey High school, Baluwatar, Kathmandu. Besides, teaching he loves writing poetry, review books and articles in his spare time. He has reviewed some article on reflective practice, action research in school and voices of classroom.]