Ongoing self-development is essential in any professional field, how do you define teacher development?
Teacher development is an on-going process that provides opportunities for teachers to obtain new information, upgrade their professional knowledge, reflect on their own practices, exchange ideas and explore issues with colleagues through workshops, professional journals and on-line and face-to-face communication.
How important is English language teacher development in China?
Although the majority of English teachers in China have been trained through communicative language teaching approaches, the lack of an English environment outside the classroom, the work overload, the exam-induced pressure on teaching and the lack of opportunities to live and study abroad all have contributed to the need for large-scale teacher development opportunities. Needless to say, teacher development is essential in producing communicative competent English learners and users.
You have been a college English educator in China for 10 years, how do you see the English teacher training programs in China? Is training sufficient or in- sufficient? Any problems?
I would say teacher training is insufficient on the one hand, and ineffective on the other. At best, some teachers are sent abroad for a few weeks or few months to experience the culture of the host country. At worst, some teachers attend some training sessions organized by local supervisors. And there are several problems with teacher training in China. The first one is the lack of systematic and strategic planning of what to focus training on, who should get it and when. The second problem in the quality or suitability of the trainers. Some foreign experts are great in both their knowledge and skills, and yet, due to a lack of understanding of the local culture and the local teaching situations, the effectiveness of their training is often questionable. Local trainers, on the other hand, know very well what is going on in English teaching, that's why they tend to overemphasize the local aspects of the training, without much new information to offer.
What areas do you think current teacher development programs should put emphasis on?
Teaching principles, teaching methodology, and English communication competence are the three areas our teacher training should focus on. Teaching principles help teachers understand teaching philosophy and ideology, thus equipping them with the current knowledge and ideology on language teaching. Teaching methodology training will focus on teachers' reflective thinking in the entire process of teaching from course design, content delivery, proficiency building, to assessment. Given the English as a Foreign Language environment, teacher training should always focus on the improvement of the teachers' own communication competence.
Can you introduce some popular TESOL teacher development programs in the US and give some examples and statistics if any?
Well, summer courses on themed topics in TESOL are very popular for teacher training as teachers can afford the time to participate over a period of concentrated time. Weekend workshops or conference workshops that can offer credits are equally popular for teacher training. Teacher Certificate Programs are used as a requirement for any ESL teacher teaching in K-12 settings. Certificate Programs are less demanding than degree programs in the US, but they require at least 12 to 16 credit hours to complete.
