Exploring EFL Teachers’ Site-Based Professional Development: Beliefs and Practices

Abstract

To be effective in the context of their PD practices, teachers are expected to have positive beliefs about TPD in general because what teachers practice in their professional life reflects their beliefs. Thus, this descriptive case study focused on primary school (grades 5-8) EFL teachers' beliefs and practices regarding teachers' professional development. Interviews, observations and diary writings were employed to collect data from two EFL teachers who were selected based on maximum variation sampling strategy from the total population of 19 EFL teachers who taught the target grades at the primary schools of Shambu town. Data were collected from the sampled teachers when they were in their actual work context. The collected data were analyzed based on strategy of thematic analysis. The findings of this study revealed that EFL teachers had positive beliefs about TPD in general, but their professional development practices were inconsistent with the positive beliefs they had because the teachers' professional development practices were traditional based approach of TPD. The main reason for this was that the teachers had not sustainable support from other stakeholders of education which negatively influenced them to develop negative beliefs about the practical work of ongoing teachers' professional development which is based on the contemporary approach of TPD. This means, the stakeholders of education had given less attention for the teachers, teaching profession and TPD. This influenced the participants to be inattentive about their professional responsibility, develop negative beliefs about using the current approach of TPD and work their professional development for the purpose of evaluation rather than for its real purpose that in turn influenced them to use traditional method of teaching in the classroom. Thus, to alleviate the problem, it is essential to have positive beliefs and give serious attention for the teaching profession and TPD at the side of external and internal stakeholders of education by accomplishing their professional responsibilities based on the ethics of the profession.