Exploring university English language teachers’ understanding of their continuing professional development: a narrative inquiry into the Pakistani context.

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore Pakistani higher education (HE) English teachers’ understanding of continuous professional development (CPD). Professional development (PD) is provided through either campus support or elsewhere for formal and informal activities, such as studying for a teacher training qualification, achieving skills, establishing a community of practice (CoP), and in-service CPD. There are issues such as the CPD policy, effective and ineffective CPD, and follow up measures and evaluation. These issues are likely to be connected to the English teachers’ understanding of CPD and its proper utilisation to help them become motivated faculty members.

The study adopted a social constructivist approach. Participants were public/private university English teachers with 15 years of teaching experience. The data was obtained through interviews and analysis of participants’ profiles. Narrative inquiry (NI) was used as a framework to understand the participants’ awareness of their need for CPD, the level of support of their department, the affordances and barriers to their CPD, and the essential features which characterise their early and later years of the teaching.

The findings show that the English teachers have a clear understanding of their personal development. However, English teachers say there is a need to focus on the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and institutional support for creating ongoing and mandatory CPD that positively impacts students. Participants also indicate challenges in the form of scarcity of CPD resources, policy gaps, lack of executive efforts and a non-collaborative environment. In the context of affordances, language teaching is considered an asset and source of social prestige. However, the institutional role in CPD is so explicit for participants that they did not mention it as an influencing factor. Furthermore, the results indicate that participants successfully applied a range of skills acquired through CPD courses, even though they had not initially intended to enrol in any such courses. The skills included being reflective, student-centred, and balancing teaching and students’ learning. It is expected that the study will raise implications for stakeholders to consider more accessible CPD experiences.