The Effect of an Intensive In-service English Teacher Development Program on Teaching Performance

Abstract

In an attempt to investigate the efficacy of an in-service teacher development program for English teachers, this study explored how effective the program was in upgrading teachers' ability to conduct English classes in English focusing on their overall teaching skills and instructional use of English. Video recordings of teaching performance were used for expert evaluations. Self-evaluations and peer evaluations were implemented as well. Statistical analyses produced several important findings. First, all the evaluations showed that the in-service teacher development program was highly effective in enhancing the ability of participating teachers to carry out TEE (teaching English in English) lessons given the finding that the teachers made marked improvements in both overall teaching skills and the use of classroom English regardless of school level. Secondly, the expert evaluations indicated that the elementary school teachers achieved more than their counterparts at the secondary level suggesting that there is a more urgent need for priority to be given to elementary school teachers in offering the teacher development program. Thirdly, the evaluations, especially the expert evaluations, showed that developing English skills is more difficult than enhancing teaching skills raising the need for a curricular revision to the program. Finally, analyses of the evaluations strongly suggested the need for the use of a combination of these evaluations in order to gain a fair and valid assessment. Implications of the findings are discussed along with directions for future research.