Summary

In this literature review, recent studies into CPD worldwide and in Turkey have been presented. It is composed of specific sections elaborating the need for CPD, a discussion on the CPD concept itself with its definition, purpose and characteristics;

current CPD models and their effectiveness, CPD planning and evaluation through the incorporation of the standards and rationale of the European Commission’s frameworks and policies and finally, selected CPD studies are discussed. Much of the existing literature in this literature review places emphasis on the aspects of effective CPD for personal and institutional development or on the models of CPD in achieving higher goals.

It is generally acknowledged that CPD as a critical interest in education is affected by many factors. First of all, organization-related variables such as evaluating the impact of the implementation and incorporation of standards in CPD programmes in the form of frameworks approved by the European Commission (2010) and setting a collaborative school context, administrators’ leading and support are main factors in the achievement and implementation of CPD. Second, teacher related variables such as; teachers’ demographic variables (gender, level of education, years of professional experience) background factors such as; time, money or other resources, reasons for taking part in CPD, acquisition of new knowledge and skills are other significant factors in the achievement of the organizations. Third, it is revealed in the literature that “there has been no definite consensus on understanding the key factors that enhance, or signal to improve the teacher quality because it has become

unclear with many complexities to be encountered and resolved” (Fenstermacher and Richardson, 2005: p.1) and a variety of occasions increase and improve the quality of learning and teaching process. In line with this, Goe, (2007, p.2) states that

“one-size-fits-all definition of improving teacher quality is not appropriate to define a teacher” because teacher practices and subject matter knowledge, organizations’

current CPD policies and ongoing programmes, including formal pre-service university education, in-service professional developments (Villegas-Reimers, 2003) and informal training obtained through on-the-job experience in ELT has been affected by these ongoing improvements especially in the specific context of Turkey.

Finally, due to the globalization of the society, the EFL teachers’ needs of effective CPD have become more appearent in Turkish ELT context. To illustrate this, Celce-Murcia (2001) stated that EFL teachers are often faced with the radical curriculum reforms and renovations in the educational system, which is usual in the world of ELT since change in this field is quite often. To support this, Kırkgöz (2009) also pointed out that the roles of teachers and students in teaching and learning process should be re-defined with a focus on more student-centred approaches. As such, it has been pointed out in the literature that, there is still room for improvement in areas such as; teacher appraisal, identifying the CPD needs of teachers and the overall school development (Nusche et al., 2011) in the world and particularly in Turkish CPD context.

CHAPTER THREE METHOD OF RESEARCH

3 Presentation

This study seeks to investigate the perceptions of participants regarding continuing professional development (CPD) policies and programmes as critical tools to enhance quality and success in English language teaching (ELT); the study will also examine the impact of adapting and implementing the European Commission frameworks such as the Teacher Training and Development Framework (TD-FRAM) and the European Profiling Grid (EPG) on CPD in their organizations in Turkey. In the literature, the vast majority of examples of “mixed methods” appear to be the combination of surveys and interviews (Modell, 2005). This research utilises a multi-method studies approach, using both quantitative and multiple types of qualitative methods; focus groups and interviews. According to (Creswell

& Plano Clark, 2007), “Writers in mixed methods are also careful to distinguish

‘multi-method studies’ in which multiple types of qualitative or quantitative data are collected from ‘mixed methods studies’ that incorporate collecting both qualitative and quantitative data” (p. 273). Therefore, the distinction of these two method is that; mixed method combines qualitative and quantitative methods, while multi-method studies can use two qualitative multi-methods such as; focus group discussions and interviews.

The quantitative data were derived from a questionnaire that was administered in both private and public universities in Ankara, Turkey with the aim of learning how the private and public organizations perceive the incorporation of the Evaluation and Accreditation of Quality in Language Services (EAQUALS) with respect to CPD. The underlying factor in the quantitative data is to use the quasi-causal method to model the data by focusing more on an empirical, quantitative analysis, which reveals the cause-effect relationship. Accordingly, Rubin’s (1974) causal model claims the effects of the cause and permits an estimate of the average “causal effect” of the treatment over a population of subjects (Rutkowski,2016). The current study aims to present some insightful guidelines on evaluating CPD policies and programmes in terms of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) as a tool for enhancing quality and to provide a common basis for creating curriculum guidelines, language syllabuses, textbooks, exams etc. across Europe (Council of Europe, 2001).

In this chapter, a clear elaboration on the design of the study is presented, including both the qualitative and quantitative aspects, and the descriptive and

specific methodological processes are described. Firstly, the research design is described. Next, the research questions for the study are stated, information about the study participants and limitations of the study are presented. Then, the data collection instruments are described. Next, quantitative and qualitative research details, research protocols (I-II see Appendix D and F) are mentioned. In order to have a better understanding of how the research methodology was carried out, a step-by-step explanation of the schemes used is explained in this chapter.