HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ------------ HO THI THUY CHI A STUDY ON PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT NEEDS OF ENGLISH TEACHERS AT SOME HIGH SCHOOLS IN QUANG TRI PROVINCE MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, University of Foreign Languages and International Studies, Hue University THUA THIEN HUE, 2022 HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ------------ HO THI THUY CHI A STUDY ON PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT NEEDS OF ENGLISH TEACHERS AT SOME HIGH SCHOOLS IN QUANG TRI PROVINCE MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 8140111 SUPERVISOR: ASSOC. LE PHAM HOAI HUONG THUA THIEN HUE, 2022 ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ ------------ HỒ THỊ THÙY CHI NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHU CẦU BỒI DƯỠNG NGHIỆP VỤ CỦA GIÁO VIÊN TIẾNG ANH TẠI MỘT SỐ TRƯỜNG THPT TRÊN ĐỊA BÀN TỈNH QUẢNG TRỊ LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 8140111 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: PGS. LÊ PHẠM HOÀI HƯƠNG THỪA THIÊN HUẾ, 2022 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due references are made.
Signature Ho Thi Thuy Chi Date: 20/12/ 2022 i ABSTRACT This study aims to investigate the perceptions of professional development of EFL teachers at some high school in Quang Tri Province and the ways they would like to carry out their professional development acitivities. The partiticipants included sixty EFL high school teachers with their teaching experience ranged from 2-30 years and their ages from 23 to over 50. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and an interview protocol. The findings show that most of high school EFL teachers in Quang Tri province perceived PD as the process that helped teachers to develop new skills, stay up-to-date on current trends, and advance their career.
In particular, participation in a network of teachers was considered to be the most common PD activity reported by all the participants. Moreover, various benefits of PD activities were mentioned by EFL teachers. One of the PD activities’ benefits mentioned by most participants is the ability to enable schools to develop and apply new strategies concerning the curriculum and other aspects of teaching practice. What’s more, the other helpful thing that PD brings to teaching found in this study is helping novice teachers or the teachers who are not very confident about their teaching ability gain more experience and teach more effectively.
The participants also stated that taking part in PD activities served the need for understanding more about the cultures of English - speaking countries in order to convey the lessons to students more accurately and effectively. Besides, the results indicate that the need to know how to select appropriate materials and the ways to adapt them contributed to EFL teachers’ PD. From the findings, implications for administrators and teachers are put foward for EFL teachers to realize their needs for improvement. Key words: Professional development, EFL teachers, common PD activities ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the following people for their support, guidance and help throughout the entire process of this research paper.
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Associate Professor Le Pham Hoai Huong, who assisted me in the early stages of my research proposal and offered valuable advice, intellectual guidance, and constructive feedback throughout the period of this investigation. Second, I am also very grateful for the assistance of the teachers at the English Department of Hue University, University of Foreign Languages and International Studies who taught me in the master’s program. Third, my sincere gratitude is sent to the teachers of English from 11 high schools in Quang Tri province for their enthusiastic participation in answering my questionnaires and interviews. Thanks to their cooperation and encouragement, I have collected the accurate and valuable data to serve the purposes of my paper.
Last but not least, I am truly indebted my family whose love, care and wishes supported and motivated me a lot to complete this research. iii List of Tables Table 3.1 Research sites and number of participants for questionnaire .3: Participants’ descriptions for interview .4: Summary of the questionnaire .5: Time of research activities .6: Research sites and number of participants for pilot questionnaire .7: The reliability of the pilot questionnaire.8: The reliability of questionnaire.1 The teachers’ perceptions toward the definitions of PD .2: One-Sample T Test of EFL teachers’ perceptions towards the definitions of PD.3: Descriptive statistics of EFL teachers’ perceptions towards the activities involved in PD .4: One – sample T Test of teachers’ development in their career (Q1) .5: The teachers’ perceptions toward the common PD activities.6: One – Sample T Test of EFL teachers’ perceptions towards the common PD activities .7: Descriptive statistics of EFL teachers’ perceptions toward common PD activities .8: One- Sample T Test of Teachers’ participation in a PD network .9: The EFL teachers’ perceptions toward the aims of PD activities in teaching English .10: Descriptive statistics of EFL teachers’ perceptions toward the aims of PD activities .11: One- Sample T Test of “PD enables schools to develop and apply new strategies concerning the curriculum and other aspects of teaching practice” (Q14) .12: The EFL teachers’ needs of PD .13: Descriptive statistics of EFL teachers’ needs of PD in teaching career .14: One- Sample T Test of “I need the opportunity to know more about the cultures of English speaking countries so that I can teach culture related lessons more accurately and effectively” (Q23) .15: Ways to implement PD activities by EFL teachers .16: The descriptive statistics of ways to implement PD activities by EFL teachers .17: One- Sample T Test of “I like to consult online sources (English websites, watching videos by foreign teachers on YouTube)” (Q39). 57 v List of Figures Figure 4.1: The relationship between the needs of EFL teachers for PD and their teaching experience .2: The relationship between teachers’ teaching experience and their needs to implement PD activities. 58 vi List of Abbreviations PD : Professional Development EFL : English Foreign Language ICT : Information And Communication Technology SPSS : Statistical Package for the Social Sciences MA : Master vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement of authorship.
iii List of Tables. iv List of Figures. vi List of Abbreviations. vii Table of contents.
viii Chapter 1: Introduction .1 Rationale of the research. Scope of the research. Structure of the thesis. 4 Chapter 2: Literature Review.
Definitions of teachers’ professional development. The significance of professional development for teachers. The needs of professional development. Teacher professional development activities.
Elements of effective professional development. The barriers to teachers’ professional development. Related previous studies. 21 viii Chapter 3: Methodology.
Data collection tools .7 Research reliability and validity. The reliability statistics of data collected from questionnaire in the pilot study. The reliability statistics of data collected from questionnaire in the main study. 33 Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion.
EFL teachers’ needs on professional development. EFL teachers’ perceptions towards the definitions of professional development (sub- cluster 1). EFL teachers’ perceptions toward the common PD activities. EFL teachers’ perceptions toward the aims of PD activities in teaching English (sub- cluster 3).
EFL teachers’ needs on PD. Ways to implement of professional development by EFL teachers. EFL teachers’ needs of PD in teaching English. Ways to implement professional development by EFL teachers.
Summary of the chapter. 65 Chapter 5: Conclusion and Implications. Summary of the key findings. The EFL teachers’ needs of professional development.
The ways EFL teachers would like to carry out their professional development. For EFL teachers. For teacher trainers. Limitations of the study.
Suggestions for futher research. 1 x Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter firstly presents the background of the study. It then describes its rationale, the research objectives, research questions and research significance. Finally, the scope of the research and structure of the thesis are presented in the chapter.1 Rationale of the research Professional development (PD) is an ongoing process that plays an important part in personal growth of teachers.
It is also an integral element to help improve the quality of schools (Muhammad & Kasthuri, 2013). Moreover, PD helps teachers to acquire new professional knowledge and pedagogical methods to improve teaching practices, bringing changes to individual teachers, students and the whole education system (Truong, Dinh, Tran et al, 2021). Together with the process of international integration, it is undeniable that teachers and students nowadays are making every effort to enhance the effectiveness of learning and teaching English. Vietnam is in the process of strongly renovating education and training under Resolution No.
29-NQ/TW on fundamental and comprehensive renovation of education and training. The general education is approached according to the output standards, aiming to form and develop the essential qualities and competencies of students in Circular 32/2018/TT-BGDĐT on promulgating the program. Therefore, there have been various challenges and differences in teaching that teachers have to face so that they can meet the requirements of the Ministry of Education and Training. Moreover, recently the Covid – 19 pandemics has spread all over the world and has also affected schooling.
Instead of face-to-face learning as before, students now sometimes have to learn online. There have been many differences in the way students are taught, tested and assessed when learning online. Both teachers and students have made lots of effort to get familiar with the new situation in order to teach and learn effectively. Specially, next year students in Quang Tri province will change their English textbooks to 1 a new set of books.
This requires a very thorough preparation of the teachers' professional development to be able to help students adapt to the new book series and bring the best results. Therefore, teachers' professional development needs to be taken into serious consideration as a top task for teachers to meet the above requirements. Teaching is a complex and high skill activity and it is normally recognized as a profession. The term “profession” means that “a kind of occupation which can only be practiced after long and rigorous academic study (Wallace, 1991).
Teaching as profession involves a considerable amount of challenges and decision-making. As professional, teachers are recommended to continually upgrade their understanding about their knowledge of teaching and learning. The knowledge of teaching and learning includes the knowledge about subject, learners, curriculum, pedagogic, teaching performance, context, and self-recognition as a teacher (Meijer et al. Teachers in general and foreign language teachers in particular have been looking for ways to improve their professional skills to meet the requirements of learners and society in general.
As a teacher with little teaching experience, the researcher is not really confident when imparting to students. Besides, being aware of the importance of professional development for teachers, the researcher wants to focus on understanding the professional development needs of teachers in Quang Tri for the following reasons. Firstly, the research would like to collect teachers’ needs by their own voice. Since PD is really important to teachers, PD activities should therefore be relevant and meaningful to the teachers’ needs.
However, like the findings from the research done in Malaysia by (Kabilan et al., 2008), in Vietnam in general and Quang Tri in particular, the way which PD is planned and conducted is very centralized, dominated by top-down programs that are not really concerned about the real needs and interests of teachers.