EFL Teachers’ Perceptions and Beliefs About a Professional Development Programme at an English Language Institute at a Saudi Arabian University
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This research study, based on qualitative research design, reports on the findings from native and non-native university English language teachers’ perceptions and beliefs with regards to a professional development programme they attended in their teaching context where they work at an English language institute (ELI) that is part of a Saudi university. The sample consisted of five male English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers who were involved in teaching intensive EFL courses at a Preparatory Year Programme (PYP). In this study, semi-structured interviews were utilized as the data collection method. Analysis of the data revealed that all teachers had a wide understanding of some essential issues related to professional development. Most of these teachers supported adopting the obligation policy of teacher involvement in the professional development programme. On the other hand, several participants voiced few concerns towards the available activities that are marked by being irresponsive to their needs, inadequate for the teaching context and unhelpful for them to reflect on their teaching practice. Also, the data highlighted the absence of the teachers’ role in the implemented professional development programme. The findings, however, indicated that the participants found the group discussion useful and enriching to their learning experiences. Furthermore, the data findings pinpointed that the teachers provided some useful suggestions for future improvement in the study context. Their suggestions tackled the trainer’s competence, needs analysis and the involvement of teachers in setting the agenda of their professional development programs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".