Background factors of the participants

In the first part of the research, the background factors of the instructors’ participating in professional development programmes were presented. The background factors are considered as key factors for effective organizational development and on-going staff and school improvement in many respects. Thus, the findings from this part of the research mainly highlight the main background factors for staff improvement on the personal and organizational levels.

In order to give detailed information about the background factors, the instructors were asked to rate factors such as heavy workloads at school, intense pacing and lesson planning. They also reported on their appraisals, rewards, feedback, and the financing for CPD activities as well as other supplemental help such as funding, convenient scheduling or flexibility. Considering their views on professional development at their universities, they evaluated the CPD trainers’ qualifications and experience as well as the importance of being informed about upcoming events.

Moreover, related to EFL instructors’ experiences and CPD interests, they rated the factors in tables 6 and 7 according to their expectations. To illustrate this, most of the instructors pointed out the main barriers to participating in CPD were the heavy workload and the intense pacing of lessons at their schools. From their perspective, they wanted to spend their time on the CPD topics that appealed to them according to their needs and interests, and they generally did not want to be forced to participate in any CPD courses that did not present any practical or useful knowledge. In light of this information, they were asked to rate some aspects of their professional development according to level of importance.

In the second part of background factors, in order to improve the CPD practices at their schools, the EFL instructors rated the items according to the organizations where they were working. To illustrate this, they rated their organizations’ CPD policies, such as objectives, planning, reflection, analysis, and their satisfaction in terms of whether they had sufficient time to work on their CPD. Finally, it is important to keep in mind that the financial resources available to instructors are very important in order to improve the quality of CPD. For this reason, the instructors evaluated the financial resources available to them to participate in CPD activities, and they were also asked to rate other kinds of resources, such as support services, CPD providers and trainers or other kinds of networks available for them in their organizations. Finally, participation in professional development programmes is represented on the personal and organizational levels in this section.

a.Participation in professional development programmes on the personal level.

Table 6. Frequency of the institutional factors affecting instructor participation in CPD a.Participation in professional development programmes on the personal level.

Table 6. Frequency of the institutional factors affecting instructor participation in CPD Not True Rarely True Often True Mostly True

heavy workload at school, intense pacing, lesson planning

f 9 37 107 129

% 3.2 13.1 37.9 45.7

organizational support, appraisals, rewards, feedback

f 28 129 89 36

% 9.9 45.7 31.6 12.8

financing for CPD activities, supplemental help, additional funding

f 48 126 77 31

% 17.0 44.7 27.3 11.0

convenient scheduling and/or flexibility

f 30 109 97 46

% 10.6 38.7 34.4 16.3

professional CPD trainers, trainers’ qualifications and experience

f 35 111 85 51

%

12.4 39.4 30.1 18.1

being informed about upcoming programmes or events

f 16 91 114 61

% 5.7 32.3 40.4 21.6

the content of CPD activities according your needs and interests

f 27 108 103 44

% 9.6 38.3 36.5 15. 6

As shown in Table 6 below, it was indicated that almost all the participants believe heavy work load and intense teaching duty causes a great hindrance in their participation in any CPD programme; of the teachers participating in the survey, 129 (45.7%) marked “mostly true” under the mentioned item and 107 (37.9%) of them chose “often true.” To explain further, workload is defined as an individual’s lack of the personal resources needed to fulfil commitments, obligations or requirements (Peterson, 1995). In that case, heavy workload means obligations and requirements coming from the administration unit which causes a lot of stress and negative emotions on on EFL instructors such as; anger, annoyance, fear and sadness to their organizations. For example, when the instructors at SFL are faced with intense pacing and lesson planning they feel themselves under pressure, and the speed of work brings high working hours, that destroys the work- life balance of the EFL instructors in many aspects (Geurtz &Demerouti, 2003). In addition, Table 6 indicates that the item “financing for CPD activities, supplemental help, additional funding,” was identified as “rarely true” 126 (44.7 %) and 48 (17.0%) marked “not true”, under the mentioned item participating in the survey. Therefore, the results also revealed that financing for CPD needs a strategic plan for funding which should be administered through school leaders or policy makers. In order to overcome the problems of additional funding for CPD at universities opportunities need to be increased and more administrative support need to be provided from several resources.

Table 7. Frequency of instructor values in participating in CPD programmesTable 7. Frequency of instructor values in participating in CPD programmes heavy workload at school, intense pacing,

lesson planning

convenient scheduling and/or flexibility f 4 12 88 178

% 1.4 4.3 31.2 63.1

the content of the CPD activities, according teacher needs and interests

f 2 28 96 156

% 0.7 9.9 34.0 55.3

From table 7 above, it’s apparent that, a significantly majority of the respondents thought all the variables were either important or frequently important in offering them a chance to participate in a CPD programme. A close observation of the table equally indicates that, the variables ‘heavy workload at school, intense pacing lesson planning’, 142 (50.4 %) , ‘financing for CPD activities, supplemental help, additional funding’ 131 (46.5 %) and ‘the content of the CPD activities, according teacher needs and interests’ 156 (55.3%) had higher score than others. In that case, the majority of CPD instructors were of the view that, the content of CPD needs to be activated on a regular basis. According to Borg (2015) teachers should be centrally involved in decisions and regarding the content and the process of CPD. To illustrate this, when the EFL instructors find the content of CPD unrealistic according to their needs, they find it repetitive and don’t want to be a part of it. Additionally,

EFL instructors have also concerns about the experience of CPD trainers (42.2%).

Thus, in this study the participants stated that professionally qualified CPD trainers should be employed in SFL departments in Turkey. In this regard, the participants believe that the qualifications of the EFL trainers were questionable.

b.Participation in professional development programmes on the organizational level

Table 8. Frequency of satisfaction with time, money and other resources

b.Participation in professional development programmes on the organizational level Table 8. Frequency of satisfaction with time, money and other resources

My organization… Often Sometimes Rarely Never

… has its own CPD policy, objectives, planning, reflection, analysis, etc.

f 94 117 55 16

% 33.3 41.5 19.5 5.7

… provides sufficient time for teachers to work on CPD.

f 58 124 82 18

% 20.6 44.0 29.1 6.4

… provides sufficient financial resources for teachers to participate in CPD activities.

f 31 85 120 46

% 11.0 30.1 42.6 16.3

… provides sufficient resources for instructors’ CPD activities, support services, providers, trainers or networks.

f 52 116 90 24

% 18.4 41.1 31.9 8.5

In Table 8, the item “my organization has its own CPD policy, objectives, planning, reflection, analysis, etc., was stated as “often” 94 (33.3%). In addition, Table 8 illustrates that “…provides sufficient financial resources for teachers to participate in CPD activities,” of the teachers participating in the survey, 46 (16.3%) marked

“never” under the mentioned item, and 120 (42.6%) chose “rarely.” The results of this part of the study indicate that a larger proportion of teachers in Turkey were not content with the professional development processes in their organizations in general.

According to the results, they are not satisfied either with the quantity or quality of CPD activities available to them in terms of providing sufficient financial resources, convenient scheduling or flexibility of their programmes. In the absence of an official CPD education policy in EFL institutions in Turkey, the CPD development of teachers can not be well- structured. According to the results, there is very little systematic relationship between the universities’ CPD policy and objectives and CPD planning process. The participants in the study also believe that this situation can hinder the performance of teachers and negatively impact student achievement.