English Language Teacher Education in Turkey: Why Do We Fail and What Policy Reforms Are Needed?

Abstract

With the changing paradigms in mainstream educational sciences identifying teacher education as a relatively independent area, approaches and policies in second language teacher education have undergone significant reforms throughout the world in the last two decades. Turkey, as a country in the midst of both social and cultural changes due to stream of events around it, has also attempted for such reforms in its English Language Teacher Education (ELTE) policies since the foundation of Higher Education Council leading to a unified model of preservice teacher education. Teacher education, however, has always been one of the highly debated and criticized issues in the country by all the stakeholders. This paper scrutinizes the current ELTE policies in both pre-service and in-service levels in Turkey. The pre-service ELTE programs and how teachers are trained after graduation are presented focusing on the weaknesses and the drawbacks of the programs addressing to the relevant literature. Finally, the necessary policy reforms at all levels of teacher education are suggested by referring to the implementations of countries with high-quality teacher education systems.

General picture of english language teaching programs and students in turkey

“…Considering these students as a whole and potential future ELT candidates of Turkey, low English proficiency has already been criticized by the researchers (Çetinavcı & Yavuz, 2010;Köksal & Ulum, 2019). Moreover, scholars do not shy away from relating this to low admission requirements of ELT programs and inappropriate and inefficient system followed for measuring English proficiency (Köksal & Ulum, 2019;Öztürk & Aydın, 2018).…”

“…As to training future English language teachers, the ELT program plays a significant role in determining the quality of language education in Turkey and, beyond doubt, the place of Turkey in future English proficiency indices. As all teacher education programs, the ELT program in Turkey administered centrally by CoHE is also criticized on several aspects (Öztürk & Aydın, 2018). However, one of the ways to overcome the existing problems is to understand the organizational structure of these programs.…”

“…Not surprisingly, English language teacher education programs at universities get their shares from criticism as well due to the failure in fulfilling their role to make the country reach the target level in English language competence (Öztürk & Aydın, 2018). Apart from the consensus reached on lack of success in providing future language teachers with the 21 st century skills, lack of feedback on tasks and limited school practice experience, theory-based education, lack of training for higher technology literacy, using outdated teaching techniques, and prospective teachers' focus on passing national examinations to work for the government are among the major criticisms for ELT programs in Turkey (Öztürk & Aydın, 2018).…”

Do Admission Requirements Matter? A Comparison of the Requirements for Admission to the ELT programs in the Netherlands and Turkey

“…In this regard, there have been constant changes in Turkey's policies on the teaching of English and English language teacher education. Hence, scholars and teacher educators pay particular attention to understand them (see Ar›k & Ar›k, 2014;Erarslan, 2018;Gürsoy & Eken, 2018;K›rkgöz, 2007;Öztürk & Ayd›n, 2019;Yavuz & Zehir Topkaya, 2013).…”

“…However, despite the importance attached to the teaching of English, Turkey continuously ranks among the least successful countries in terms of English proficiency (Education First [EF], 2019). Although there may be several reasons behind the failure in English proficiency of Turkish learners, inadequacy in the language proficiency of pre-service teachers of English (see Çetinavc› & Yavuz, 2010;Köksal & Ulum, 2019) and weaknesses in such important aspects of ELT programs as not equipping the learners with the 21st century skills, being theory-driven rather than providing first-hand authentic classroom experience, lack of guidance for students, and not using the modern teaching techniques (Öztürk & Ayd›n, 2019) have always faced criticism. Decrease in the quality of pre-service English teachers as one of the reflections of the changes in admission requirements has also been reported among the reasons for their unpreparedness to teach (Çelik, 2017).…”