Abstract
Continuous Professional Development (CPD) has been one of the cornerstones of quality assurance and improvement practices as monitored by accrediting agencies. With many studies reporting inefficiency of traditional CPD methods, institutions are in pursuit of forming their new CPD agendas that are context sensitive. With this in mind, this case study reports the findings of a newly launched CPD program in an effort to integrate teacher autonomy into CPD at the School of Foreign Languages of a Turkish university. Specifically, the program offered the instructors four CPD activities to select from after analyzing previous semesters’ feedback forms, conducting an extensive literature review, and consulting to the institution’s CPD coordinators to determine the feasible CPD methods. Teacher trainer observation (TTO), peer observation (PO), self-reflection (SR), and teacher exchange (TE) were offered as alternative CPD activities. Data were collected from 123 instructors during the two terms when the system was implemented. Data analysis was conducted based on CPD documents of instructors’ selected activities, thematic analysis of interviews regarding the implementation of the new system and the patterns found in the document analysis. The findings showcased SR was the most preferred activity during both semesters whereas TTO was not selected at all. Among those who completed a CPD activity in both semesters, about half of them tried out a new method while the other half selected the same method for both semesters. The thematic analysis provided insights into these patterns and instructors’ perceptions towards the integration of autonomy into CPD activities.
Author Information
Nilüfer Ülker, Istanbul Technical University, Türkiye
Pınar Kır, Istanbul Technical University, Türkiye
Esra Meşe, Istanbul Technical University, Türkiye
Paper Information
Conference: ECE2024
Stream: Higher education
This paper is part of the ECE2024 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Ülker N., Kır P., & Meşe E. (2024) Autonomy-Guided Professional Development in Higher Education ISSN: 2188-1162 The European Conference on Education 2024: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 397-406) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2024.32
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2188-1162.2024.32
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