Effective professional development strategies of English language teachers

AbstractThis paper aims at explaining what ‘professional development’ means in ELT teachers’ perspectives and which professional development strategies they prefer using in their teaching career. As to the methodology, the researcher prepared a questionnaire including three open- ended questions responded by 50 language teachers. The results were analyzed through descriptive statistics. The findings showed that the majority of ELT teachers are aware of the necessity of the term ‘professional development’; however, only %30 of the participants give importance to their on-going professional development by using mainly such strategies as participatory practitioner research, professional development portfolios, study groups, and so on