TEACHERS TRAINING AND TRAINERS LEARNING: A MIDDLE WAY TO ENHANCE TEACHING QUALITY IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT |
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David William Sansom Macao Polytechnic Institute |
Abstract Teacher professional development can be said to have quality outcomes if there is a change in teachers’ knowledge and skills by the end of the course (such as innovative classroom methods), and also implementation of improved teaching practices when teachers return to local classroom contexts. A recent external teacher development course in Macau made use of teacher workshops—the participating teachers prepared and ran workshops for their fellow teachers addressing common needs and concerns in English language teaching contexts in Chinese schools. These workshops provided the course trainers with evidence of quality outcomes among the teachers at the end of professional development, and also made classroom teaching improvement more likely when the teachers return to their schools, so meeting the quality requirement of these institutions. This paper outlines why this approach was necessary, how it was used, and what the implications are for maximising quality outcomes from teacher professional development. |
Author Profile(s) Dr David W. Sansom is an EFL teacher and teacher educator, and is currently the Deputy-Director of the MPI-Bell Centre of English at the Macau Polytechnic Institute. He has worked with students and teachers in Europe and across China, and has been in Macao for over 10 years. His research interests include teacher change and innovation implementation among experienced inservice teachers, and the effects of institutional teaching contexts on teachers during and after teacher professional development. |