Turkish ELT Professionals’ Conference Attendance Motives: Why Do They Attend and What Do They Take Back Home?

Abstract

Around the world many professionals attend conferences. The professionals working in the field of English language teaching (ELT) are not exceptions. Along with two major international conferences organized for ELT professionals, TESOL and IATEFL, there are a great number of other conferences organized by affiliated professional associations in many countries around the world. Given the time and money invested in conferences by attendees and organizers, research into this professional endeavor is almost absent in literature in this field. The present study endeavors to discover the conference attendance motives of Turkish ELT professionals, why they attend, what they are engaged in doing during conferences and what they take back home. The data for the study were collected through a questionnaire designed in four parts. A total of 83 Turkish ELT professionals who attended the 16th International INGED Conference participated in the study. The findings of the study revealed that Turkish ELT professionals attend conferences essentially to obtain new information. However, keynote speakers seem to be another major motive behind their final decision to attend a conference. Although the majority of participants stated that they spend most of their time at sessions the number of sessions that they generally attend was found to be only between 4-6. As for post-conference results, the participants were found to feel more confident, more motivated to attend conferences, and were inclined to integrate the information they obtained into their classroom practices. The study also revealed that the participants have budget-related concerns and this constitutes a major challenge with regard to conference attendance.

Virtual and Face-To-Face Academic Conferences: Comparison and Potentials

“…Not all systems need to provide all possible scopes, but the ones that they do support should be immediately and clearly visible" (p. 183). The application of certain principles and the flexibility in their implementation throughout the course of the conference are critical elements (Richards, 2015;Verbeke, 2015;Büyükyavuz, 2016). In short, no one size fits all.…”

“…Thus, the importance of conferences and participating in them in the visibility, consolidation and expectations is undeniable both at the professional, institutional and personal levels (Bhandari, 2018;Sousa & Clark, 2017;Finnegan, McGhee, Roxburgh, & Kent, 2019;Büyükyavuz, 2016;Borg, 2014;Hall, 2015). As a way of illustrating this importance of actively participating in conferences, the Binaya Bhandari's (2018) personal testimony is offered, which unequivocally demonstrates the personal and professional learning and development that his regular participation in conferences provided him:…”

“…This knowledge scarcity (Mair, Lockstone-Binney, & Whitelaw, 2018;Büyükyavuz, 2016) is reinforced as regards virtual conferences, for which there is not much information, research and assessment on aspects such as their number, implementation and type of market, quality and scientific success, but also on their social influence (Surendernath, Sharma, Schroeder, & Pandey, 2012;Fraser et al, 2017). The concept of "virtual" applied to technology has, itself, a socially polysemic dimension (Sköld, 2012).…”

Reflective Learning Views of Students, Teachers and Instructors: A Mixed-Methods Study

“…However, peer observation can be proposed to enhance activities among teachers; in addition to this, as was shown in a study by Karaaslan's (2003), the teacher can for the most part show opposition to being observed by a peer. One-off or repetitive activities such as a conference or a workshop are usually seen by teachers as away from reality and relevant classroom environments, hence impracticable and ineligible to the dimension of professional development being a continuous process (Büyükyavuz, 2016;Yılmaz, 2015). For this reason, in preparing, presenting and contemplating on a class that is taught as a team, there is an obvious necessity for them to research the ways to collaborate with a colleague.…”

“…All teachers need to keep up with the subjects of curriculum tendencies, foreign or second language teaching and learning studies; and testing-assessments (Richards & Farrell, 2005) have knowledge that educational methods and practices are constantly developing. Evaluation of student profiles and needs must be more extensive (Büyükyavuz, 2016). Besides this, one of the aims of teaching is to teach thinking performance to students (Semerci, 1999).…”