In-Service Secondary School English Language Teachers' Instructional Practices, Challenges, and their Training Needs: A Focus Group Interview Study
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Abstract
This article aims to report the findings of a descriptive qualitative study on in-service teachers’ beliefs toward their teaching practices, teachers’ beliefs concerning integrating local and global issues into English lessons, the challenges that they faced throughout their professional growth, thus for far, and their needs of the training program, as reported by eight Thai female high school teachers of English in Narathiwat province. All of them volunteered to participate in the present study. Six of these English language teachers are from an urban high school, and two of them are from a high school in Tak Bai District. They all participated in the data collection. All of them had experiences for participating in the professional training program. The data were collected by means of focus group interviews and analyzed in order to identify teachers’ educational backgrounds, teachers’ teaching practices, challenging issues, and their needs of a training program.
The findings clarified that Thai English language teachers faced many problems concerning their teaching practices and their workloads. However, all of them deal with those problems based on their knowledge and teaching experiences. Additionally, they needed to attend the training courses, in which various active activities were done such as doing workshops, and sharing ideas rather than lecturing. They agreed that the teacher professional development (TPD) training program increased their professional knowledge and practices and improved their teaching quality. They also mentioned that attending such a training program can improve not only their instructional knowledge and practices, but also their students’ learning outcomes. Moreover, all teachers of English thought positively about integrating local and global issues into English classrooms. They proposed that integrating local topics can develop students’ English proficiencies, cultural understanding, students’ attitudes of cultural differences, and cultural awareness.
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References
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