Libyan English as a Foreign Language School Teachers’ (LEFLSTs) Knowledge of Teaching: Action Research as Continuing Professional Development Model for Libyan School Teachers

Abstract

Teachers are the source of knowledge, ideas, information and practices to their learners. Libyan English as a foreign language school teachers (LEFLSTs) are doing that in a language that is not their language to students to whom it is not their language, at the same time as they are doing it in a hard cultural context. Teachers are constrained, as teaching is an activity in which the extent to which the teacher can decide what they are going to do is limited because of the way that things are decided. English as a foreign language (EFL) Libyan school teachers may have extra issues and constraints in that they cannot use a lot of the techniques or aids that teachers of other subjects use. This is because they have to work in a language that is not native to the learners. Then, if the teacher is not a native speaker either, it will be another constraint. LEFLSTs may have additional constraints than, for example, a Spanish teacher teaching English to Spanish students. These limitations may come from their cultural settings, such as the impact of Libyan community on learning, impacts of teachers’ age and gender, time managements within classrooms, the way learners’ use to learn (their learning styles and background knowledge). Besides the last political situation (Gadhafi’s era) which has influenced the way that LEFLSTs teach and deal with the foreign languages. In other words, LEFLSTs are strongly controlled by the wall of culture, political interference in education, and their subjects and how to deliver it. Thus, if we pursue to offer support, we need to explore in details the influences affecting their teaching approaches in the language classrooms. It may then be possible to suggest a model or an approach of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to work within these constraints. This paper is the Third conclusion of my research studies on the Libyan EFL school and university contexts which presented (the two previous researchers) ideas and justifications of implementing Action research as model of CPD for EFL university teachers within the University of Benghazi –Libya. The main research questions are:  To what extent are knowledge and cultural constrains faced by the LEFLSTs influence they ways, choices and methodologies of teaching?  To what extent are the possibilities of implementing Action Research as CPD among LEFLSTs?