Recommendation for Sustaining the In-service Professional Development of Tertiary EFL Teachers

Abstract

The increasing influence of English as a lingua franca or an international language has brought new trends of teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). But on the way to these new trends some issues have inevitably appeared, and one of them is the continuity of EFL teachers’ in-service professional development. This study aimed to investigate the opinions of the tertiary EFL teachers on the multilayered peer coaching model (the MPC Model) that they had employed for their in-service professional development, and make the recommendation of this model for sustaining tertiary EFL teachers’ in-service professional development. The information was obtained from the EFL teachers at Guiyang University in China with the help of such instruments as observation, teacher’s diary, the researcher’s field note, questionnaire and interview, and the data were analyzed in both qualitative and quantitative methods. The results revealed that the tertiary EFL teachers had positive attitudes towards the MPC Model and it could be recommended as one of the effective tools for the tertiary EFL teachers to sustain their in-service professional development.