Iranian EFL Teachers' Attitudes towards the Effectiveness of ELT Conferences

Abstract

This study was an attempt to evaluate the attitude of Iranian conference participants regarding the effect of ELT conferences on their professional development and teaching practices. To this end, an appropriate questionnaire was administered to 192 conference participants selected through convenience sampling. The collected data was statistically analyzed, and the obtained results revealed that the participants believed that ELT conferences in Iran have positive effects on the participants' professional development and teaching practices in terms of familiarity with the existing trends in the ELT, motivation for conducting further studies and application of conference materials in their teaching. The results also showed that the participants noted a number of drawbacks in such events, including the low quality of papers and presentations, attendance just for the sake of getting a certificate, and theoretical rather than practical orientation, which might be the cause of demotivation for teachers to attend upcoming conferences. To remove these drawbacks, the participants offered some suggestions such as providing guidelines for presentations and double-blind review papers, holding more workshops, internationalizing the conferences, and attracting more keynote speakers and foreign presenters.

The Rise of Webinars as Professional Development Modality: Investigating the Opinions of Teacher Educators of English

“…To Mitchell (2013), the purpose of PD is to meet the needs of globalization and the standards of the education system. (Mohammadkarimi et al, 2021) mentions the reflective role of continuing professional development and adds "PD often involves examining different dimensions of one's practice as a basis for reflective review".…”

“…Given that teachers' professionaly growth is essential conferences, seminars, and webinars are considered to be an essential part of this growth. Mohammadkarimi et al, (2021) suggest that inservice PD activities are crucial as they help English teachers to implement novel techniques and approaches in their classrooms. Researchers stated that although all other types of PD such as workshops, action research, and peer observation have been studied by plenty of researchers, online conference attendance and its impact on teachers` professional development have been surprisingly under researched (Moore et al, 2016;Mohammadkarimi et al, 2021;Borg 2015;José Sá et al, 2019).…”

“…Mohammadkarimi et al, (2021) suggest that inservice PD activities are crucial as they help English teachers to implement novel techniques and approaches in their classrooms. Researchers stated that although all other types of PD such as workshops, action research, and peer observation have been studied by plenty of researchers, online conference attendance and its impact on teachers` professional development have been surprisingly under researched (Moore et al, 2016;Mohammadkarimi et al, 2021;Borg 2015;José Sá et al, 2019). Borg (2015) examined the opinions of 66 teachers and educational administrators on the impacts of attending L2 teaching conferences.…”

“…Admittedly, the studies documented so far indicate the positive impact of even short-term conferences on expanding teachers' knowledge, improving teaching skills of the teacher, teacher's developing good networking with other professionals. Within this frame, (Aubrey & Coombe, 2010;Mohammadkarimi et al, 2021) present the reasons for attending conferences, and the effect of these conferences on teachers' development they found that teachers favor conferences to establish a networking community of the same professionals and remain up-to-date. Büyükyavuz (2016) also investigated the 83 ELT professionals' purpose for attending conferences and found that the Turkish ELT professionals want to expand their knowledge, and obtain new information related to their profession.…”

“…Moore et al, (2016), cited in Mohammadkarimi et al, (2021) examined the extent of interactivity and satisfaction of 1696 participants from 109 countries in the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language conference and found that online conferences are beneficial for teacher's professional development, suggest further studies on online conferences and specifically an appropriate pedagogical method for a huge number of participants in such conferences need to be investigated. Mohammadkarimi et al, (2021) conducted a study with 192 participants and found that attendees believe that webinars on ELT in Iran have positive effects on professional development as they become aware of the new trends in the ELT. The findings also revealed that the participants complained about low-quality presentations based on theoretical knowledge rather than practice, and the attendees join these events only to receive a certificate.…”