Client analysis in teacher education: What some Canadian and South African teachers identify as their professional needs

The client analysis conducted in this study explores the professional development needs of11 language teachers, five in South Africa and six in Canada. The study employs a questionnaire and interviews to discover how each teacher's back-ground and context affects his or her perceived professional development needs. Interviews show that teacher educators cannot necessarily predict teachers' professional development needs based on their backgrounds and contexts alone. A variety of inputs from recipients over an extended time is desirable and would yield more accurate predictability of an individual's professional development needs. This would result in teacher education programs that more accurately meet a teacher's real needs. L'analyse effectuee dans Ie cadre de la presente etude visait aexplorer les besoins en perfectionnement professionnel de 11 enseignants de langue dont cinq en Afrique du Sud et six au Canada. Un questionnaire et des entrevues ont revele a quel point les antecedents des enseignants et leur contexte affectent leur percep-tion de leurs besoins en perfectionnement professionnel. Les entrevues on