Esl Teacher Professional Self-development Within Lifelong Educational Environment

Abstract

Ever changing socio-economic conditions impose specific requirements to the system of education, starting from general stage and up to the post-professional education. The article discusses the role and place of a diversified, multi-level system of professional ESL teacher training, which provides a variety of characteristics of educational and self-educational programs that actualizes the problem of improving the system of lifelong general and professional educational environment. ESL teachers being eager to develop themselves and their practice will be a great asset to both, their students and themselves. Successful ESL teachers enhance their professional lives by inservice training programs and postgraduate course, studying for higher ESL teaching qualifications and international certifications. Apart from formal training, however, there is a great deal ESL teachers could do to form their own individual professional educational route within lifelong professional educational environment. The introduced ESL Teacher Development Model provides the effective strategy of combining the forms of formal education, professional socialization and individual self-development within lifelong professional educational environment.

Keywords: Federal Educational Standards, ESL teacher, self-development, lifelong professional educational environment, individual professional educational route, ESL Teacher Development Model, teachers technologies and techniques of teaching and educational work

Introduction

The problem of modern schooling is that teachers due to continual and mechanical repetition of

everyday teaching activities gradually become less and less careful of the modern tasks of foreign

language teaching. More than that, ongoing changes and reforms of the educational system in Russia,

including new Federal Educational Standards introduction, teachers being under the administration

pressure are more engaged in adopting educational programs, writing reports, giving analytical data to

the officials and so on instead of teaching practice and professional self-development are problems.

The other barrier to professional development and self-development is the job qualification demands

reforms. Many teachers nowadays face the problem of official qualification status because of changes

in the job qualifications requirements. For example, according to the university diploma, a teacher

attended courses of Pedagogics and Methods of Teaching and even had the in-service teacher training

practice at school, but it turns out to be not enough now to teach at school because a teacher has not got

the note in the diploma that he or she is a teacher of the definite subject. So professional formal

education could not be a guarantee of getting a job at school.

In addition, teachers could experience financial difficulties being obliged to pay for their additional,

further education or professional retraining. They have to search for some grants and it is also a time-

consuming activity, sometimes they are not free in their choice of professional training course and

educational programs because the government pays their training. Considering that, we can say that

there is no place for the teacher individual professional educational route within current state of

educational environment.

Apart from formal professional education system problems, there is a great deal of restrictions in the

sphere of professional socialization and professional self-development connected with the lack of

necessary information and official support, self-organization and time management skills; poor

physical state and even health problems.

Problem statement

The analysis of ESL teaching experience and educational practice shows that in order to provide

sustainable professional and personal growth, teachers should not concentrate only on knowledge and

skill approach. There are plenty of opportunities of great assistance in making their professional

educational route of development and self-development effective and the lifelong educational

environment beneficial. Though there are a lot of research works devoted to the personality and

professional development and self-development, introducing lifelong educational system, such as

Ushinskii K., Selevko G., Tchoshanov M. and others; the problem of ESL teacher professional

educational development and self-development route within lifelong educational environment still

needs to be thoroughly considered.

Research questions

Is the introduced ESL Teacher Development Model valid or not? Are there significant differences

between current educational environment and the innovative one organized according to the introduced

model?

Purpose of the study

The objective of the research is to present a gist of theoretical analysis of the effective ways of

teachers’ professional self-development within life-long educational environment in accordance with

the new educational standards in the integration of the national education system into the world

educational space. Based on that, the Model of ESL teachers’ professional development and self-

development within life-long educational environment have been introduced and tested (Figure 1).

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The offered ESL Teacher Development Model should be realized within lifelong educational

environment and is based on Federal State Educational Standards of General Education and

Professional Education including post professional training programs. The important role of

professional socialization should also be taken into consideration when speaking about career

opportunities and professional growth of any educator. Any teacher starting the career has to be aware

of future perspectives, such as international certification, scientific research activity and so on. Lifelong

educational environment supposes the ongoing circle of development and self-development when the

student is in the center of learning process, which starts from the educator as an example and rounds up

with the student becoming a professional educator. So that, teacher is the first step on the way of

becoming an educator, which means not only the possibility to teach at all levels of educational process

(from pre-school to university), but readiness to develop within the world standards of education and

scientific work. At the same time, the process of self-development has got two main forms to support

the educator during all the professional activity: collaborative and individual. Both ways could be

integrated into the process of general and professional education, especially in a form of modules into

the post professional training.

Research methods

The key research methods are the analysis of national educational standards, professional

educational programs and scientific resources, modeling and pedagogical experiment. Base of the

research was provided by means of approbation of ESL Teacher Development Model of teaching and

learning, professional training and self-development within lifelong educational environment during

the implementation of the experimental model in accordance with the new educational standards of

general, professional and post-professional education. In the experiment, there have been schools of

Kazan and Republic of Tatarstan (Russian Federation) under the scientific and educational

management of Kazan Federal University; Institute of Philology and Intercultural Communication of

Kazan Federal University; Volga Region Center for Further Training and Professional Retraining of

Kazan Federal University. Experimental (200) and controlled group (200) of the respondents were

formed from the senior school children (School 122, 75, 9, 165), university students, postgraduates,

school teachers and university lecturers who passed different courses (formal education and additional

collaborative and individual tasks), took part in workshops and project work via distance learning and

within problem-solving projects, methodology seminars and scientific conferences. The research was

conducted within one academic year (from September to June 2015-2016).

Findings

ESL teacher development and self-development could be successful when breaking the well-known

teaching rules or norms as a way of challenging what has been taken for granted. More than that, it

should involve trying out new ideas or changing the ways of using the old ones; investigating

something unknown or even bewildering and frustrating. Overall, in these cases the idea is not only to

improve teacher’s individual performance, but also to learn more about teaching and about the

educational environment itself.

From the Table 1 you can see that schoolchildren and teachers (75% both) are in greater need of

improvement than educators (60%) and lecturers (45%). That means low level of reflection and self-

assessment; the reason might be in the lack of monitoring and management from the side of school and

university administration staff. Nevertheless, such criterion as “understand the necessity” varies greatly

comparing with “in need of improvement” in all groups. For example, senior schoolchildren who

should be ready to choose their educational route show very low level of understanding their needs and

weak points. In this case they could not be ready to both formal educational development and self-

development as the highest level of personality progress. The most problematic is the last criterion

“ready to improve” which shows stable decrease in all groups.

Analyzing the given data we could denote that low level of readiness to develop and self-develop is

the result of the discrete system of general, professional and post professional education. Only a well-

balanced lifelong educational system could provide sustainable growth of development and self-

development intention and readiness.

When speaking about the level of language competence of ESL teacher, we should mention the

tendency to prove that level with the help of international exams. As one of the most popular

international exams in Russia is IELTS, it was used as the instrument for assessment and interpretation

of the research results. Table 2 shows the dependence of the level of English language competence

(given in numbers 1-9 according to the IELTS levels of language competence within Common

European Framework of Reference, level “0” is excluded as most of the experimental and controlled

group respondents have at least level B1) on the level of individual self-development. The dependent

level is typical for all groups; it means that the entire respondent could not continue their development

on the level of self-mode. The educators and lecturers are potentially ready to improve, whereas

teachers and senior school children usually stop when reaching the level which suits them at the

moment. At any rate in all groups, the level of self-development is dependent, so there would not be

any significant progress in English language competence in all groups of respondents. In case of

teachers and senior school children it even could be followed by general digress of the professional

competence in future. When implementing the experimental model of ESL Teacher Development, the

results in the experimental groups have changed greatly within one academic year (the results are

shown in green and orange). As we can see from the table the experimental groups show the stable

tendency to develop their language competence within the formal educational institutes and the level of

self-development has changed to active due to the introducing of the new strategies and educational

technologies into the process of teaching and assessment of the subject, meta-subject and personality

results.

The main educational objective of ESL Teacher Development Model realization is the professional

competence development through different types of professional activities. Creation of conditions for

motivation to further training and development remains to be of paramount importance. For this

purpose, the curriculum of school, university and postgraduate programs of further training and

retraining should include additional disciplines or modules. So, there have been introduced such school

courses for gifted children at schools (senior school children) like “Olympiad training”, “International

Exams training”; constant workshops for school teachers “Main issues of school scientific research”,

“Modern educational technologies in teaching English”; new courses for university students

“Interactive technologies and methods in teaching English”, “CAE course”, “TKT course”; scientific

conferences for educators and lecturers dedicated to the problems of modern testing system, methods

of assessment of language competence. Some of the results of these activities are:

1) Winners of English Language Olympiads at the regional and federal levels;

2) High results in IELTS and TOEFL tests (schoolchildren and university students);

3) Winners at the scientific conferences at the regional and federal levels;

4) Creation of web resources for students and teachers for further self-development

One of the examples of the project work of the students (experimental group) within the university

courses “Interactive technologies and methods in teaching English”, “CAE course”, “TKT course” is

the English Language Teaching – Kazan Federal University blog (http://elt-kfu.blogspot.ru). It could

be a great resource for any educator to gain both motivation to development and experience of

professional activity.

Conclusion

Formation of system of professional development and self-education of ESL teacher within lifelong

educational environment is based on promotion of pedagogical experience at all levels. ESL teacher

experience takes place in the different forms reflected in the experimental model. Thus, the actions are

directed on comprehensive increase of competence and professional skills of ESL teacher, carried out

for mastering teachers technologies and techniques of teaching and educational work, their creative

application on occupations and in extracurricular activities, search of innovative, new and most rational

and effective forms, and methods of the organization, carrying out and analysis of educational process.

Considering internal and external factors of the lifelong educational environment, the existing result

of experimental training allows to speak about the created competence of ESL teacher carrying out

types of professional activity on the level of active self-developing competence.

Acknowledgements

The research was conducted within schools of Republic of Tatarstan and Kazan Federal University. We would like to thank all the students and teachers who collaborated in this research.

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