As English language teaching professionals, regardless of what role each of us plays in his or her institution, we are charged with responsibilities to provide optimal learning conditions for our key constituents, English language students. Ensuring that faculty members have the relevant qualifications and experience in what they teach is necessary. Also, making certain that faculty keep abreast of current theories and best practices in second language acquisition is of crucial importance for any language program to fully achieve its stated goals and missions. Dufour and Marzano (2011) noted that if student learning is directly related to instructional quality, it seems that the best way to enhance student achievement is by emphasizing the development of knowledge and skills of each teacher.

A professional learning community is defined by Dufour, Dufour, Eaker, and Many (2006) as educators who are committed to working together to achieve better results for their students. They also indicated that continuous learning for educators is the key to improved student learning. Daily teaching activities can be repetitive, tedious, and boring if classroom teachers do not make a concerted effort to deepen their professional knowledge and continuously hone their skills to meet the needs of constantly changing student populations with diverse linguistic, religious, and cultural backgrounds.

A common assumption among program administrators is that as English language teaching professionals, faculty members have to take charge of their own professional development activities and agendas. The reality is actually far more complex—at least in the context of the United States, where the vast majority of English language teachers in most colleges, intensive English programs, and other English language teaching institutions are part-timers, even if they wish to be full time. They are mostly highly qualified, dedicated teachers and heartily wish to be employed full time so they can fully contribute to their respective institutions, but the harsh reality of working part time seems to have robbed them of their deserved benefits and financial stability, which in turn affects their active and full participation in a wide range of available opportunities for professional development such as attending regional and national conferences in teaching English to speakers of other languages. Maintaining memberships with professional organizations could also be a challenge for those who have to save every dime for their living expenses.

The reason for mentioning the current adversities of most adjunct or part-time teachers is to show that one of the responsibilities of English language institutions is to offer its faculty members, full and part time alike, affordable and doable opportunities for continuously widening and deepening their professional knowledge and skills. One of the most important roles of program leaders is to initiate and sustain teacher learning in various ways. Each program or institution has its own creative plans for its faculty professional development that work best for its specific context, situation, human resources, and financial capacity. What follows are some activities we have adopted in our program to support our faculty members.

Continuing professional development, for our program, is a must for both faculty members and administrators in the program. Although faculty members are responsible for their own professional development, our program provides faculty with consistent assistance. Faculty members are offered opportunities to attend regional and national professional conferences depending on funding availability. Investing in part-time faculty members by covering partial or full conference expenses could be quite costly (and risky, as they may leave our program any time), so we often give priority to those who have stayed with the program for a relatively long time and are likely to stay with us for at least a few semesters. Factors including sustained contribution to the program and active engagement in program academic and extracurricular activities are also considered when we make professional development funding decisions. Moreover, those faculty members who are able to conduct workshops and training sessions to share what they have learned from the conferences they have attended are also given favorable consideration. Administrators in our program share the idea that like faculty members in the program, we have to lead by example. We commit time to professional development in various ways similar to those in which faculty members are involved. We write reports on the conferences we have attended and orally share what we have learned with our faculty during meetings to initiate discussions relevant for our classroom situations.

In-service training sessions, professional reading discussion sessions, and webinars are also available throughout each semester. Each faculty and staff member is strongly encouraged to keep an annual professional development log to allow supervisors to monitor faculty and staff professional development. Those faculty members who show a high level of commitment to continuing professional development are given priority in class assignments, better opportunities to attend professional conferences, and a possible annual merit pay increase.

In an ambitious effort to give faculty without an MA in TESOL an opportunity to obtain a TESOL certificate, we received approval to offer full coverage of the cost of the program to those who wished to attend. Even those who already possessed the qualification wanted to participate in the program to refresh their memories and explore some new ideas from the program. The written and oral reports from the teachers who have completed the program are highly positive in terms of teacher professional development and their classroom instructional quality. One teacher, who was particularly against the use of some current textbooks available on the market, confessed that the course enabled her to understand the theoretical underpinnings of current textbooks. After participation in the program, she was, in fact, fond of using the materials that she had at first not preferred. Another teacher indicated that the program gave her a chance to understand the rationale behind the way she taught. What was encouraging to administrators was the fact that teachers were able to utilize what they learned from the program to implement in their own classroom and reflect on the success of such activities during faculty meetings and discussion sessions in which each of the faculty members takes turns leading the session by reviewing an article of relevance to our program and initiating and facilitating the discussion.

Richards and Farrell (2005) offered 10 different ways for teachers to develop professionally: self-monitoring, support groups, journal writing, classroom observation, teaching portfolios, analysis of critical incidents, case analysis, peer coaching, team teaching, and action research. Each faculty member in our program may choose a different method to continue his or her professional development. Some professional development activities our faculty members have been doing are peer observations; leading and/or participating in professional reading discussions; leading and/or participating in in-service training sessions; developing supplemental instructional materials (e.g., handouts, booklets, recordings); taking short courses (paid for by the program); and attending webinars, workshops, and professional conferences.

We have long encouraged mentoring in our program by asking new faculty members to work closely with veteran faculty members to learn from their wisdom and experience, but we have also seen novice faculty members who possess better computer and other technical skills help veteran faculty members use new software programs or improve their computer skills. Mentoring, therefore, in our program has been a mutual learning process for both new and veteran faculty members. Continuing professional development activities are accepted if the faculty members can offer convincing arguments that what they are involved in helps them develop professionally to benefit themselves, their students, the program, and the university. As a program, we strive to achieve our mission by enabling students to achieve the learning outcomes desired and by creating an environment where administrators, faculty members, and students engage in learning. Just as students are responsible for their own learning, faculty members and their supervisors are charged with the task of keeping themselves informed of developments in second language acquisition theories and best practices to create learning conditions most conducive to student learning and sustained motivation.

References

Dufour, R., Dufour, R., Eaker, R., & Many, T. (2006). Learning by doing: A handbook for professional learning communities at work. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Dufour, R., & Marzano, R. J. (2011). Leaders of learning: how district, school, and classroom leaders improve student achievement. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Richards, J. C., & Farrell, T. S. C. (2005). Professional development for language teachers: strategies for teacher learning. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Thu Tran received his MA in TESOL from the University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia and his doctorate in TESOL from Alliant International University, San Diego, California. He is the student program administrator of the Intensive English Program at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, Missouri, USA.