EFL Teacher Professional Development: Exploring Perspectives and Dominant Efforts in Teaching Integrated English Skills

Abstract

Teacher professional development (TPD) is interesting to examine since its outcomes relate to the teachers' improvement in professional learning. In this small-scale exploratory study, TPD has been linked to teaching integrated English skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and has become a trend in English Language Teaching (ELT). This mixed-method study aimed to reveal the English teachers' perspectives and their dominant efforts on TPD, referring to the eleven procedures (Richards & Farrell, 2005) in teaching integrated skills. The participants of this study were ten professional English teachers who were teaching at ten different public and private junior high schools (middle schools) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires supported by teachers' academic documentation. Findings indicated that teachers have a good perception of TPD and did some procedures as efforts of TPD. The total mean was 4.43, indicating that teachers' perspective was categorized as positive and very good since the range of scale of this category was 4.01-5.00 for excellent interpretation. The teachers' dominant efforts in teaching integrated skills included workshops, self-monitoring, teacher-group discussion, and action research.