From Teachers’ Learning to Teaching Practice in the Classroom Level: A Qualitative Study of EFL Teachers at a University under the Ministry of Public Security.

Abstract

Participating in-service professional development activities plays a pivotal role in determining teachers’ long-term professional development and the long-term success of the program they involve themselves in (Richards & Farrell, 2005). Specifically, this issue has received growing prominence in many institutions under the supervision of Ministry of Public Security (MPS) towards the long-term objectives for practitioners, including EFL teachers, in developing their professionalism. However, little research has been conducted to examine the extent of applicability in terms of the EFL teachers’ exposure to professional development opportunities (PDOs) in support of their teaching pedagogies. To address this gap, this study aims to explore the internally MPS-based PDOs as well as the PDOs’ impacts on the EFL teachers’ pedagogical implementations. Based on the purposeful sampling, six EFL teachers with at least five years of teaching experience were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate that although the teachers the most PDOs are top-down and formal, they preferred self-initiated, informal ones. They also showed their positive personal reflection on the impacts of PDOs on their classroom-level decisions as well as several contextual factors mediating these impacts. The research results inform suggestions for the researcher’s own institutional context in defining and addressing the existing teaching-and-learning weaknesses when it comes to the accessibilities of PDOs to facilitate teacher learning for the sake of teaching competence.