Empowering teachers as instructional designers strengthen the link between theory and good practice. The purpose of the research is to explore two teachers' experiences about a professional development (PD) program. The PD includes a one academic year program with the aim of developing teachers' instructional design knowledge and skills using Understanding by Design model as reference. Teachers' instructional designs improved in terms of UbD design principles, and they reported change in their attitudes and teaching practices after the fourth cycle. Continuous discipline-specific feedback and trust bond based on prolonged communication underlined as major elements of PD that facilitated teacher change.

This study aims to explore the experiences of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in teaching productive skills during emergency distance learning (ERT) and the COVID-19 pandemic and their recommendations for teaching productive skills online. Phenomenological inquiry, which is one of the qualitative designs, was employed to conduct the study. It took place in the 2020-2021 academic year in Turkey. Participants of the study consisted of 16 English as a Foreign Language teachers. Convenience sampling was executed to designate the study participants. The main data collection tool was semi-structured interview questions and data was collected via individual interviews, a focus group interview and via form by e-mail. Content analysis was administered in the data analysis process. Study results explored teachers mostly agreed on the fact that online education had its advantages such as easy materials access and online tools and some disadvantages such as lack of interaction, lack of scaffolding, internet access problems and learner-related problems. Also, they stated that it was hard to engage learners during the process, so they used games, authentic materials, videos, discussions and web 2.0 tools to provide engagement. Teachers discovered new online platforms and tools to make their lessons efficient. They mostly suggested changing the assessment style, making participation compulsory and conducting activities that can engage learners in the learning-teaching process. Consequently, it was seen that teaching productive skills in ERT was challenging in terms of student participation; however, teachers found solutions to it and they thought it was not a bad idea to teach productive skills online, especially speaking. Accordingly, hybrid education can be considered in the future in teaching English and teaching productive skills.

This study aims to examine teachers’ and students’ views of learning-teaching on Turkish Language and Literature course. Also, this study aims to determine the prior learning-teaching strategies of teachers and students. It was designed by qualitative research approach, phenomenology design. In the study, there are two participant groups; teachers and students. In sampling for both teachers and students, convenient sampling of purposive sampling type was used. Semi-structured interview questions were used as a data collection tool. Accordingly, content analysis was deemed proper to analyze the data. As a result, teachers’ and students’ views on learning and teaching are compatible with each other in a general framework such as self-study, students’ involvement, active lesson process, teaching the lesson as art and especially the importance of reading habit. However; in the learning-teaching process, teachers’ most strong emphasis was on individual differences, different/active methods implementations during the lesson and; whereas students’ emphasis was on learning strategies such as memorizing, coding, doing research, observing and teachers’ interest in them. It can be seen in the findings that teachers tend to teach the course by enabling learners to participate and students would like to have an active lesson process. Teachers and students share a similar idea on the fact that the Turkish Language and Literature course is an art; so, the learning-teaching process should be formed accordingly. According to the findings teachers’ and students check the understanding by productivity and test results. Conclusively, teachers and students are keen on an active teaching environment; reading habit is one of the most important skill as the course’s attainment, however exam pressure can limit their actions.

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