Reflections of Turkish Instructors on a Six-Week Online Professional Development Course in the Work-From-Home Era - Abstract - Keywords

Oct 15, 2026

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With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, schooling experienced a rapid shift that affected both instructional practices and teachers’ personal growth. This qualitative case study examines Turkish EFL instructors in higher education who take part in a six-week online CPD course through asynchronous distance learning. Platform posts, reader discussions, assignments, and semi-structured interviews provide the data, highlighting positive effects on interpersonal synergy and content knowledge, while also identifying professional and institutional issues to improve future training.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages20

Reading Time50 min

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Abstract

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What is already known about this topic

What this paper contributes

Implications for theory, practice and/or policy

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Reflections of Turkish Instructors on a Six-Week Online Professional Development Course in the Work-From-Home Era Zülal Ayar Abstract: With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the urge it created at schools across the world, seismic changes in education have not only resulted in a sudden transition in the way of instruction but the way of teachers’ personal growth. Hence, this qualitative case design aims to examine the experiences of Turkish EFL instructors affiliated with foreign language units in higher education context partaking in a six-week professional development course based on asynchronous distance learning. To that end, their posts on the platform, reader discussions, and assignments uploaded onto the system besides individual semi-structured interviews were exploited as data gathering tools. The results speak to the positive impression of online course takers in terms of establishing interpersonal synergy, achieving personal growth, and promoting their content knowledge. Moreover, their posttraining perspectives disclosed the support they sensed the need for professional and institutional issues. Though instructors detected some problems to be addressed in the course, their criticism functioned as suggestions to best shape similar further practices in addition to reforming the current training. Finally, some recommendations have been provided for scholars concentrating on studying within this field to create their future directions. Keywords: CPD, Distance Education, Teacher Development, Teacher Learning, Professional Learning Highlights What is already known about this topic: • When enhanced with academic research or based on teamwork, in-service training has proven to be highly effective. • An insufficient number of case studies were reported on online CPD training among teachers as well as academics. What this paper contributes: • Positive attitudes about online PD courses in terms of fostering collaboration, and support for pedagogical and practical knowledge were revealed. • Some institutional and professional factors that need improvement were pointed out. Implications for theory, practice and/or policy: • The research will stimulate schools of foreign languages to take the correct path to TD. • This study will contribute to ELT and future CPD research by considering EFL instructors’perspectives and approaches toward training the trainers . Introduction Higher education (HE) is a far-reaching field considering the quality of the degree program, qualification of the teaching staff, well-being of academics and learners within well-resourced institutions, and the expectations and requirements of the council. Pre-service teaching has been provided by universities, while in-service training is arranged by the Ministry of Education (MoE), institutions themselves, teacher associations, publishing houses or some high-quality courses. These Professional Development (PD) programs have generally been noted to promote the instructional skills of teachers (Borko, 2004), turning theory into practice in a particular community of practitioners (Schaler & Fusco, 2003) besides stimulating collegiality (Ayar, 2019), and online learning (Baran & Correia, 2014; Gregory & Salmon, 2013) . Despite their prominence and direct support of language education, the inadequacy of some of this training has been explored among teachers from primary and secondary education (Baran & Cagıltay, 2006) and instructors at universities (Ayar, 2019) . Besides, the teaching staff has been reported to experience some drastic problems with PD and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) practices due to their unwillingness, the irrelevancy of the realities in language education in schools to teacher education, and practices lack a theoretical base on English Language Teaching (ELT) . Finally, Gabriel (2004) has stressed their technocratic nature in that those programs represent the standardized applications of classro

FAQs

What is the purpose of the qualitative case design in this study?

It examines the experiences of Turkish EFL instructors affiliated with foreign language units in higher education who participate in a six-week professional development course via asynchronous distance learning.

How did the study collect data from instructors?

It used instructors’ platform posts, reader discussions, and uploaded assignments, along with individual semi-structured interviews as data gathering tools.

What positive outcomes did instructors perceive after training?

Their posttraining perspectives showed support for professional and institutional needs, and results reflect positive impressions regarding interpersonal synergy, personal growth, and promotion of content knowledge.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by Mabel