Page 172 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

Identifying the Target Needs of Non-Native Subject Teachers

NA can be considered as an umbrella term since it “has become increasingly sophisticated” over the
years (Bashturkmen, 2010, p. 17) and several other approaches have been included to it such as target-
situation analysis, present-situation analysis, situation analysis, means analysis, strategy analysis and
etc. (Jordan, 1997), all of which offer clear descriptions and systematic procedures to conduct a needs
analysis (see Basturkmen, 2010; Dudley-Evans & St John, 1998; Hutchinson & Waters, 1987; Munby
1978). Since this study has taken up Hutchinson and Waters’ framework of NA as the basic departure
point to investigate the research questions posed at the beginning of the study, some more information
will be given on their approach here.
Hutchinson and Waters (1987) believe that learners should take active participation in the process
of NA since learning is a “process of negotiation between individuals and society” (Jordan, 1997, p.
25). Therefore, NA should not just focus on what is to be learnt, i.e. the content (knowledge, skills, and
understanding) but also on the activity through which it is to be learnt (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987, p.
92). With this underlying philosophy, thus, Hutchinson and Waters group needs into two categories as
target needs and learning needs. The former refers to the expected abilities; tasks and activities learners
will carry out in the target situation while the latter deals with the efforts necessary to learn them. They
further divide target needs into three sub categories: necessities, lacks, and wants. By necessities they
mean what learners should know to meet the target situation requirements. Lacks is the gap between the
present state of the learners and what they need to know, do in the target situation while wants represent
learners’ individual desires, expectations from the language learning process. Despite the fact that not
all of these wants are likely to be addressed in the course design and development, the wants of majority
can be negotiated and responded. As can be seen, NA provides the initial data upon which the design
and development of any kind of ESP course/program becomes possible and by means of on-going NA,
objectives, teaching techniques, materials, assessment procedures can be revised and modified.
Although there is a fast growing body of research on NA, the scarcity of studies on the needs of subject
teachers using English as the MoI is noteworthy given the increasing number of countries experimenting
with this new educational model. Thus, there is a need for studies to understand what pre and in-service
teachers around the world feel they need to know, understand and do in order to teach their subjects ef-
fectively. Therefore, this study may have the potential of making a modest contribution to the existing
literature on NA and the training of subject teachers to use English as the MoI.

The Present Study: Program Specifics and the Significance of the Study

This program started three years ago with 20 subject teachers as course attendees when an educational
institution that offers education to students from pre-school to undergraduate level needed subject teach-
ers from various fields to teach their related subjects in primary, secondary and high schools in English.
The vice general director of the educational institution explained how and why they started this specific
program in the initial interview. He stated:

Every establishment looks for people whom they can work with well. In previous years, we witnessed
that some of the teachers we hired could not keep up with our educational system. Even experienced
ones had some difficulties for a number of reasons. Therefore, we looked into those likely reasons and
we came up with the idea of organizing a course involving teacher development (general pedagogy and

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