Yabancı/İkinci Dil Olarak Türkçe Öğretmenlerinin Algılanan Mesleki Gelişim İhtiyaçlarının Değerlendirmesi

Abstract

The study aimed to investigate the professional development practices, needs and obstacles that teachers of Turkish as a foreign language perceive as the reasons for preventing their participation in development activities and to examine whether there is a difference between the professional development needs of teachers with different educational backgrounds. The study also aimed to figure out how a professional development activity prepared in line with the teachers’ needs affected their perceptions of professional development. For this purpose, professional development needs, practices, perceived obstacles and professional development preferences of teachers were first investigated through a questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered to a total of 160 participants. Then, 15 teachers were interviewed in focus groups randomly selected from Turkish teaching centers (TÖMER) in Ankara. After these interviews, a seminar was prepared in line with the professional development needs of the volunteer participants to understand how a professional development activity, which was prepared according to the needs of the teachers affected their perceptions of professional development activities. The population of the study was teachers working in Turkish language centers and institutes around Turkey. As a research method, the explanatory sequential mixed method was used. In the analysis of the data, descriptive and prescriptive statistical analyses were conducted and content analysis was used in the analysis of the interviews. According to the results, teachers mostly participated in professional development activities such as “sharing information with colleagues”, “reading articles and magazines related to the field”. The skills that teachers need to develop both in the assessment and the teaching are speaking and writing skills. Professional development needs of the teachers vary according to age, occupational experience, the department they graduated from and the latest graduation degree. One other result obtained in the research was that teachers' perceptions towards professional development are generally positive.