Page 187 - Innovative Professional Development Methods and Strategies for STEM Education

Identifying the Target Needs of Non-Native Subject Teachers

Secondly, the subject teachers reported to need more input and practice regarding those general
skills and tasks in learning English since they were observed to rarely identify professional skills and
tasks they will have to perform in English as their needs. This might be due to the fact that almost all of
these teachers were beginners when they started the program. Therefore, they might not have attained
the proficiency level where they would be more concerned about the professional use of English. This
can have three implications for this teacher training program. First, the goals of the course (learning
outcomes) could be narrowed down to be more manageable and reachable. This might reduce the nega-
tive perceptions of the course attendees regarding their lacks. Second, subject teachers could be taken to
school observations as early as the first term of the course, which may help them realize the long-term
goals of the language course. Third, an in-service teacher training component can be added to the pro-
gram, where the graduates of the course continue their training as they teach their subjects in English.
Lastly, the subject teachers reported satisfaction over the general English language course compo-
nents but did not make any comments on the ESP course component. The existence of criticisms and
suggestions from both stakeholders (course manager/designer and subject teachers) imply that a more
specifically tailored language course in terms of both content and practice should be launched.
The conclusions and implications stated above have direct practical relevance and serve mutually
for course designers, program staff and subject teachers taking the course. Any attempt to revise and
restructure the existing program will definitely call for future needs analyses.
Further research may also explore the learning needs of course attendees as proposed by Hutchinson
and Waters (1987) since this study solely focused on target needs. Yet, what learners bring into the learn-
ing context should also be investigated to better understand what language learning strategies work best,
which study skills prove to be effective in an intensive course such as this one.
Since this study concluded that the subject teachers were in need of developing professional skills
and knowledge regarding teaching their subjects in English, follow-up studies of former course attend-
ees may surely provide more information about the course design not only for this program but also for
in-service training programs.

Limitations of the Study

This present study has some limitations. To start with, it should be noted that this study was a case study
where a specific program with specific goals and program structure was investigated. Therefore, the
study does not claim that the findings of this study are generalizable across different contexts. Secondly,
semi-structured and unstructured interviews were used to identify the necessities of the subject teachers.
It is possible that only a partial picture of the target situation tasks was elicited through these interviews.
Therefore, in future studies the inclusion of observations of subject teachers using English as the MoI
in real school settings could help to triangulate the data to have a more complete description of target
situation tasks. Thirdly, a self-report questionnaire was used to collect data from the course attendees to
determine their lacks and wants based on the data of the initial interviews with different stakeholders.
The closed-ended items in the questionnaire might have limited the possible range of responses although
the questionnaire included open-ended questions. Therefore, any other future study may include face to
face interviews with the participants in order to get more in-depth information about their lacks, wants
and overall evaluation of the course.

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