Stepping stones to the future of professional development: Supporting in-service teacher professional development by recorded videos

Abstract

Teachers have been dealing with eventual challenges in teaching to meet student expectations, especially since the COVID times, hence more need to update themselves. Although Turkey has made impressive progress in increasing the quality of its universities, more and more targeted professional training for academics is needed. (British Council Turkey, TEPAV, 2015). This workshop aims to share a sample practice in professional development at the preparatory school of a foundation university in Turkey. As providing teachers with more flexibility towards CPD approaches and ways of completing CPD has shown that the pressure of completing it has been reduced and is more accessible for all (Perry, Halliday, & Higginson, 2022), a blended training programme in which sustainability was also embedded has been designed by integrating online and in-person teacher training. This workshop will present the online phase in which English language teachers have been trained by videos that consist of teaching tips, ideas, and tasks as learning evidence to deliver lessons more efficiently and effectively and enhance the quality of teaching. Through the guidance and suggestions given by the video makers to meet the needs of the teachers, the study has been based on Vygotsky’s scaffolding (Wood , D.; Bruner, J., Ross, G., 1976) to a large extent. The videos recorded by the professional development unit coordinator and volunteer teachers have not only helped teachers to feel a part of the training process which is still in progress, but also gave them an equal opportunity to gain and improve training skills.