Page 179 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

Identifying the Target Needs of Non-Native Subject Teachers

When the number of the participants indicating the necessities is taken into account, the most es-
sential ones seem to be those requiring academic competence and productive skills such as reading the
material of the lesson, reading books and articles, reading web sites, and presenting a subject (lesson) or
presenting a subject in departmental meetings. The findings of these interviews show that subject teach-
ers around the world lack similar competencies and have some common necessities (see Low, Chong,
and Ellis, 2014; Masuum et al., 2012).

Lacks

Lacks means looking at where learners are at present. Although the identification of lacks could be
investigated by looking at learners’ assignments or test scores and asking lecturers who evaluate these
assignments about the weaknesses and strengths of them, the learners are useful source of information
about their lacks. We can have them to do self-evaluation by providing a specific checklist (Nation &
Macalister, 2010). As already explained in the methodology part, the target situation tasks identified by
the HDs, CM and PSs were rephrased and turned into questionnaire items to understand how they were
perceived by the subject teachers attending the course and, thus, to determine the lacks as reported by
the subject teachers. While doing so, to ease the analysis, the target situation tasks were grouped under
two categories: communicative target tasks including speaking and writing skills and comprehension-
based target tasks including reading and listening ones. These two categories and the perceived lacks of
the participants will be presented under separate subheadings below.

Communicative Target Tasks

Table 6 shows those lacks related to speaking as perceived by the subject teachers attending the ESP course.
The participants of the study reported that they needed practice on most of the speaking tasks on the
list except the skill regarding starting the lesson, where almost half of them felt they could cope with this

Table 6. Perceived lacks related to the communicative target tasks: speaking

Communicative Target Tasks Options
I need a lot of I need some I do not need any
practice on this practice on this practice on this
f % f % f %
1- Greeting and checking attendance - - 19 52.8 17 47.2
2- Small talk 9 25 23 63.9 4 11.1
3- Communicating with students 15 41.7 17 47.2 4 11.1
4- Speaking on the phone. 12 33.4 21 58.3 3 8.3
5- Presenting a subject (a lesson) in class 8 22.2 26 72.2 2 5.6
6- Presenting a subject in department meetings 17 47.3 16 44.4 3 8.3
7- Commenting on colleagues presentations 6 16.6 24 66.7 6 16.7
8- Conversing with supervisors 20 55.6 12 33.3 4 11.1
9- Giving feedback to parents 17 47.3 16 44.4 3 8.3
10- Welcoming guests and informing them about the school 18 50 14 38.9 4 11.1

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