Teacher development is important to us and at the heart of everything we do. But how do you feel about it? We surveyed teachers, coordinators, teaching assistants and directors of studies around the world to find out. In the first part of our State of Teacher Development series, we’re looking at how institutions deal with it and where more support is needed. How do your experiences compare?
The results of our survey told a clear message – no matter your role, everyone felt teacher development is important. But is that reflected within institutions? Over 30% reported that it’s not compulsory and many of those who took part felt unsupported. Teachers are struggling to find resources on everything from language skills to teaching newly-arrived migrants and refugees.
Does your institution give you teacher development support?
Our survey revealed that 97% of ELT professionals stated that teacher development was important, but it’s compulsory in less than half of institutions. Further to this, a third of teachers who actively seek out development materials struggle due to lack of support from their institutions.
Here are the places where teacher development is most and least likely to be compulsory:
But does this correlate with where respondents reported feeling the most and least supported?
What do you want support with?
So we know those that completed our survey wish they had more support from their institutions… but on what area? A massive 70% are looking for help on teaching skills (speaking, listening, reading, writing, etc) and over half want to get a better understanding of teaching methodologies for language teaching.
Which teaching segment is most likely to engage in teacher development?
When you break the results down by teaching segment, it looks like a massive 56% of those working into the adult learning sector were after help using digital resources. But those in which segment are the most likely to engage in teacher development?
Why don’t you engage with teacher development?
After looking at those most likely to engage in teacher development, we then wanted to find out why people didn’t. Below are the top 5 reasons preventing people in partaking in teacher development. We also had more personal reasons given, for example, the fear of being exposed in an underdeveloped skill area. Does anything stop you carrying out teacher development?
Don’t miss the second instalment of State of Teacher Development results! We reveal your music habits while studying…