EFL teachers as lifelong learners: Rethinking the link between teacher evaluation and in-service professional development

Abstract

Many educational systems in the world try to help in-service teachers develop their teaching practice by holding in-service teacher professional development (TPD) programs and designing researchbased teacher evaluation systems (TES). The present study aimed at investigating Iranian EFL teachers’ perception of the impact of current in-service TPD programs and the TES on their teaching practice. It also tried to identify the EFL teachers’ and teacher educators’ ideas on how to help in-service teachers improve their expertise more effectively. To this end, in the quantitative phase of the study, 160 EFL teachers were asked to complete Teachers’ Attitudes about Professional Development Scale (Torff, Sessions & Byrnes, 2005), and a researcher-made scale about the effectiveness of TES. The results of this phase indicated that the majority of the teachers believed that the current in-service TPD programs are not effective since they have meager impact on their teaching practice, and that the current TES cannot help them develop professionally. In the qualitative phase of the study, 20 EFL teachers, and 10 teacher educators were interviewed. Overall, they believed that, to be effective, there should be a close link between TES and TPD programs. They further maintained that this strong link can make TPD programs more need-based, contextualized, and ongoing which can help teachers be lifelong learners.