Exploring an integrated approach to professional development for the enhancement of English language teaching and learning

Abstract

Professional development is widely recognised as an essential path to promoting quality teaching and learning, but ‘effective’ professional development is dependent on core features such as duration, relevance and active teacher participation, all of which are central to teacher-centred research (Garet et al., 2001; Sanford, 2015; Scheerens, 2010). In Portugal, where continuing professional development is mandatory, teachers often find short-term and ‘one-size-fits-all’ seminars – which generally do not meet these core features - only remotely relevant. This paper describes an alternative path to professional development developed at the University of Coimbra which encourages English language teachers to develop research projects based on their own teaching experience. The results so far reveal that, when given the opportunity, teachers focus on problem areas which emerge directly from their daily concerns about student learning and motivation. It is therefore our thesis that the kind of professional development generally on offer paradoxically fails to help teachers develop their aptitude to examine and provide solutions for the problems they diagnose in their own classes and schools, thus failing to allow professional development to have an effective and immediate impact on teacher practice and student learning.