Professional Development and the Place of Journals in ELT

Abstract

Professional development is an activity in which language teachers should have ongoing and sustained involvement. There are many ways in which language teachers can pursue professional development, and reading journals is one of these ways. This article reports on a survey of 465 English Language Teaching (ELT) professionals, largely drawn from the Asia-Pacific region, and their engagement in professional development, with a particular focus on journals. Reading a book or journal was the single most commonly reported activity, and overall more than 80% of respondents had read a journal article within the last year. Academic and teaching purposes emerged as the main reasons for this reading. However, those working in the primary and secondary sectors were much less likely to have read a journal article than those in the tertiary sector, and the reasons for this are discussed. These results provide the basis for reflections on the place of journals in ELT professional development today. One reflection is on the value for teachers of journals published by the professional organizations to which they belong.

Keywords

English language teaching professional development academic journals professional journals Asia Pacific access to journals reasons for reading constraints on reading

Becoming a language teacher can be a never-ending journey. It begins when we first enter a classroom as a learner and embark on our ‘apprenticeship of observation’ (Lortie, 1975), our unconscious and largely uncritical development of beliefs and assumptions about the nature of learning and of teaching, and about the role of the learner and of the teacher, acquired through being a learner in a classroom. The journey continues once we commence our pre-service language teacher education, during which the beliefs and assumptions we have already formed may be – but often are not – challenged and changed. Following graduation and beginning to work as a language teacher, the journey continues either formally through in-service teacher education opportunities or informally, possibly through self-initiated activities.

The reasons for ongoing professional development are various. Perhaps the most obvious reason is simply that, as the world is dynamic and ever-changing, teaching cannot afford to be static. New ideas emerge in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and teachers need to be familiar with them (Canagarajah, 2006). New expectations are placed on teachers, such as shifting from general English to English for specific purposes (ESP) teaching (Jiang, 2017; Nguyen, 2017) or adapting to English-medium instruction (Park and Pawan, 2016). New technology develops and its application to language learning and teaching needs to be explored (Macalister, 2017). Familiar materials and activities no longer seem to be as suitable or effective as they once were, and need to be evaluated (Davies, 2006). These situations are among those captured by Wong (2011), who suggests six reasons for engaging in professional development:

To raise awareness of strengths and weaknesses.

To acquire new knowledge.

To solve a particular problem.

To upgrade skills due to changes in society or the field.

To advance one’s career.

To find fulfilment in one’s work to prevent burnout.

If the reasons for continuing professional development are various, the means of doing so are not only various but also many. Wong (2011), for instance, proposes 50 ways to develop professionally, which she groups under the reasons listed above. The benefits of many of these have been argued in the literature. As an example, three ways were discussed by Bailey, Curtis, and Nunan (1998) in an often-cited article; this was an example of self-initiated activities, using journals, videotaping, and teaching portfolios as professional development tools. ‘Successful professional development’, they concluded (1998: 554) ‘must be ongoing, sustained, and self-directed’.

One form of professional development that has only recently received attention is attendance at conferences (Borg, 2015). Drawing on the responses of 66 international conference attendees from seven Gulf states who completed a questionnaire survey and 15 follow-up interviews, Borg identified three recurrent themes:

Enhanced knowledge and use of ELT techniques.

Networking with other ELT professionals.

Enhanced professional confidence.

While recognizing the limitations of the survey, such as the restricted geographical representation, he concluded that ELT professionals who attend international conferences do, indeed, benefit in many ways from their participation. Without wanting to sound flippant, this finding must be reassuring to those who fund and organize such conferences as scores of them take place around the world each year.

If conferences are ‘big business’, then so too is the publication of academic and professional journals. It was the business aspect of academic journal publication that attracted considerable attention in late 2017 thanks to a widely-circulated article that described the economic model as ‘broken’ (Burns, 2017). It is a model in which ‘scholars first produce, then buy back, their own content’, with the institutions in which they work often funding both the production of the research and the buy-back through journal subscriptions. The high and rising cost of subscriptions is a barrier to access for even in well-endowed institutions choices may need to be made about which to purchase. In developing countries, as Burns notes, ‘the situation may be most extreme’.

Another, gentler, critique of academic journals was also recently offered by Nation (2018: 138–39) in a reflection on his career.

Research is most valuable when it is applied to practice. Practice is most likely to be effective if it is research based. Unfortunately, with the increasing professionalization of applied linguistics, the practical application of research has to some degree lost status. This is evident in the movement [in journals] to publishing research reports rather than also giving substantial space to articles directly addressing teachers. In my early career, journals directly speaking to teachers outnumbered journals publishing reports of research. Now the balance has strongly gone the other way. This would be fine if it was simply the result of an increase in the number of journals publishing research. Unfortunately, it is also the result of the loss of journals with a strong practical focus, and the refocusing of existing journals.

The reasons for this shift towards research reports may be linked to the introduction of funding models based on research performance. These began with the Research Assessment Exercise in the UK in 1986 and by 2010 had spread to 14 other countries, mostly in Europe but also including New Zealand and Australia (Hicks, 2012). It seems reasonable to suggest that academic publishers have responded to this changing environment. However, in fairness to individual journals, a shift in emphasis does not necessarily equate with an overt neglect of the practical. In 2017, for instance, the RELC Journal introduced a new section, ‘Innovations in Practice’, which features articles with direct practical classroom application, and a sample of the self-descriptions of three well-known ELT journals reveals a commitment to both research and practice, as shown in the following excerpts (emphasis added):

Language Teaching Research … is a venue for studies that demonstrate sound research methods and which report findings that have clear pedagogical implications.

TESOL Quarterly … represents a variety of cross-disciplinary interests, both theoretical and practical, the Quarterly invites manuscripts on a wide range of topics, …

ELT Journal … links the everyday concerns of practitioners with insights gained from relevant academic disciplines such as applied linguistics, education, psychology, and sociology.

It is against this background that the present study was conducted, with the goal of finding out how ELT professionals engaged in professional development, and a particular focus on the role that journals played.

Methodology

Data Generation

A Qualtrics survey was created and piloted with colleagues. After changes to questions and repeat piloting a 17-item survey (see Appendix 1; note the display logic that meant not all questions were asked of all respondents) was circulated to ELT professional networks via contacts in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Japan. All responses were anonymous. Prior to distribution of the survey, the project had received ethics approval from the appropriate university committee. The focus on specific countries reflected the intention to investigate professional development in the Asia-Pacific region, Australasia and South East Asia in particular.

Data Analysis

The survey contained both closed and open-response questions, as well as allowing selection from pre-populated menus. As a result, analysis was both quantitative and qualitative. Analysis began by looking at the entire population of respondents, and in what follows the characteristics of that population and its behaviour in relation to professional development is presented quantitatively in the Findings section, which also includes differences among identified sub-populations. Table 7, in Appendix 2, presents full data for the differences discussed.

It is worth noting that not every respondent answered every question, and in the data summary tables below percentages rather than numbers should be the focus. On occasion percentages may add up to more than 100%; this is the result of rounding decimal places. On other occasions percentages may not total 100%; this is the result of excluding groups with small numbers, such as those working in early childhood education, from the discussion.

The questions that allowed open responses were treated in a qualitative fashion. Categories and themes (Ellis and Barkhuizen, 2005:253–76) were identified in the responses, and these inform the Discussion section in which reasons for behaviour, especially as related to the reading or non-reading of journals, are proposed.

Findings

The Participants

Following email distribution, 465 people responded to the invitation to participate in the online survey, with participants being predominantly English language teachers (63%), working in the tertiary sector (57.8%), with a Master’s degree as the highest qualification (51.2%) and having had more than five years’ teaching experience (56.9%). Over half claimed English as their first language (52.5%) and most participants were drawn from five countries, in order of representation: New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia. More detail about the composition of the participant population is provided in Tables 1 –5.

Table 1.

Main Job of Participants.

	N	%
English language teacher	293	63
Teacher educator	93	20
Other	79	17

Table 2.

Sector Employed In.

	N	%
Early childhood	3	0.7
Primary	46	10.7
Secondary	67	15.6
Tertiary	249	57.8
Other	66	15.3

Table 3.

Highest Qualification.

	N	%
Undergraduate	93	22
Masters	216	51.2
PhD	64	15.2
Other	49	11.6

Table 4.

Time in Current Role.

	N	%
Less than 2 years	79	18.4
2 – 5 years	106	24.7
More than 5 years	244	56.9

Table 5.

Country of Current Residence.

Country/Region	N	%
New Zealand	162	40.7
Vietnam	74	18.6
Malaysia	48	12.1
Indonesia	35	8.8
Australia	29	7.3
Europe (including UK)	20	5.0
Rest of Asia	19	4.8
Americas	8	2.0
Rest of world	3	0.7

For those who provided further information about ‘other’ (Table 1), manager and student seemed to be the most common roles. Those who indicated ‘other’ (Table 2) included teachers working privately or in the community sector, and students. Just under half of those who provided further information under ‘other’ (Table 3) indicated a non-degree postgraduate qualification of some sort. Fewer than 10% of respondents were residing outside the targeted Asia-Pacific region, with over 85% residing in South-east Asia and Australasia.

Engagement in Professional Development Activities

Respondents reported engaging in a wide range of professional development activities, with the most frequently reported from a list provided being reading a book or article about language teaching (Table 6). In answering this question, participants were able to select multiple responses from the pre-populated menu. Thus, the percentages in Table 6 serve to rank the activities rather than showing the proportion of respondents engaging in these activities. When asked specifically about having read a journal in the last year, 84% reported having done so. Many different journals were named by respondents and included those from academic publishers (e.g. TESOL Quarterly, ELT Journal, RELC Journal), those published by membership organizations (e.g. TESOLANZ Journal, JALT Journal), and those freely available online (e.g. Reading in a Foreign Language, Language Learning & Technology).

Table 6.

Professional Development Opportunities Engaged In During Last Year.

	N	%
Read a book or article about language teaching	351	20.9
Attended a conference	264	15.8
Attended a professional development course	259	15.5
Presented at a conference	157	9.4
Joined an online ELT discussion group	157	9.4
Participated in an online ELT discussion group	153	9.1
Conducted a professional development course	131	7.8
Submitted an article about language learning or teaching to a journal	112	6.7
Published an article about language learning or teaching	92	5.5
	1676	100.0

The activities listed in Table 6 were not the only ones that respondents reported being engaged in. Prior to being presented with the pre-populated list, participants were asked how they found out about ELT practice and recent ELT research. Responses included a number not explicitly mentioned in the list, such as:

From colleagues, or, as one respondent described it, watercooler gossip.

Through membership of a professional organization such as TESOLANZ, JALT, or IATEFL.

Through social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp.

Through the internet, including MOOCs, webinars, RSS feeds, and emails.

Through formal study.

At the same time, however, and despite the wide range of professional development activities identified, fewer than half the respondents felt they had sufficient access to information about ELT practice and recent research (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Do you feel you have enough access to information about ELT practice and recent research? (%).

Comparison by Sector

As shown in Table 2, respondents were drawn from all sectors of English language education, and a comparison of those working in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors reveals that the tertiary sector has the largest proportion of English L1 speakers (55.1%), of holders of an MA as highest qualification (60.7%), and that almost all report having read a journal in the past year (92.9%). By contrast, those in the primary sector showed the smallest proportion in those three responses, with only 62.2% reporting having read a journal in the past year. However, those in the primary sector appeared to be more satisfied than those in the secondary sector with access to information about ELT practice and recent research, 42.2% as opposed to 26.7% saying it was sufficient. In the tertiary sector over half said access was sufficient.

Respondents in all three sectors had the same top three professional development activities (Table 6), but the ranking differed. In the primary sector, 80% reported having attended a professional development course in the last year and this was the most common activity for respondents in this sector. Reading a book or article about language teaching was the most common activity for those in the secondary and tertiary sectors.

Comparison by Occupation

Language teachers contributed around three times more respondents than teacher educators (Table 1), and the differences between the two groups were not unexpected. Teacher educators were more likely to be working in the tertiary sector (70.1%), less likely to have a Masters as a highest degree but more likely to hold a PhD (36.1%), and more likely to be satisfied with access to information (57.1%) and to have read a journal article in the past year (95.1%). Reading a book or journal article about language teaching was the top ranked professional development activity for both groups, and both included conference attendance among the top three activities. However, while attending a professional development course was second-ranked for teachers, it was conducting one that ranked third for teacher educators.

Comparison by Region

Respondents from five countries in the Asia-Pacific region contributed the bulk of responses to the survey, and these countries can conveniently be separated into two groupings, with Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam in one, New Zealand and Australia in the other. This separation can be justified in various ways – as a division between countries where native and non-native varieties of English are spoken, or between inner and outer/expanding circle countries (Kachru, 1985), or even between BANA and TESEP contexts (Holliday, 1994). Of course, any such distinctions are going to be inexact; there will be L1 speakers of English working in Vietnam, for instance, and L2 speakers working in New Zealand. They do, however, offer a basis for comparison and sizeable differences were revealed.

Those working in New Zealand and Australia were more likely to be employed in the tertiary sector (62.3%), to have an MA as a highest qualification (51%), and to be L1 speakers (86.8%). A majority (52.3%) also reported being satisfied with access to information. While employment in the tertiary sector also accounted for the largest single set of responses from Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, the second largest sector was the primary at 19.2%. A smaller proportion held an MA as highest qualification (44.7%) and, unsurprisingly, 89.5% identified as L2 speakers of English. Satisfaction with access to information was markedly lower (32.9%) but, unexpectedly, a slightly higher proportion of respondents reported having read a journal in the past year (83.3% compared with New Zealand and Australia’s 82.8%). This is not, however, a significant difference. In both regional groups reading a book or article was the most common professional development activity, but attending a conference was slightly more commonly experienced than attending a professional development course in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam than in New Zealand and Australia.

Comparison by First Language

First and second language speakers of English were fairly equally represented among respondents, but the two groups had different profiles. Those with English as L1 were more likely to be working in the tertiary sector (60.8%) and to have an MA (54.8%), and much more likely to be satisfied with access to information (52.6%). While tertiary sector employment still accounted for the majority of responses from those with English as L2, they were more likely to be working in the primary sector (15%). Also, despite being less satisfied with access to information, respondents in this group were more likely to have read a journal article in the past year (85.6%) than their L1 counterparts. The findings for professional development activities engaged in was the same as for the regional groupings, with having read a book or article the most commonly reported.

Discussion

The picture that emerges from the previous section is of an ELT profession that is actively engaged in a diverse range of professional development activities, but that is not always satisfied with their access to relevant information. The Findings suggest that those working in the tertiary sector are most satisfied, and that L1 speakers of English and those employed in New Zealand and Australia are more likely to be working in that sector than L2 speakers and those employed elsewhere. That those working in the tertiary sector reported greater satisfaction with access is not, perhaps, surprising for tertiary institutions are typically better resourced than primary and secondary schools for taking out journal subscriptions, building research libraries, and providing support for certain types of professional development opportunities, such as conference hosting and attending. At the same time, however, these differences may only serve to perpetuate the type of power imbalances within the ELT profession that Holliday (1994) sought to draw attention to.

In this section, reasons for the behaviour described in the Findings section are discussed, drawing on the qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions in the survey. It begins by discussing those who reported reading journals, then shifts to those who felt they did not have sufficient access to information, and to those who reported not having read a journal article in the past year. The section concludes with some thoughts about the place of journals in professional development in ELT.

The Readers

The great majority of respondents (84%) reported having read a journal or journal article in the past year, and these were asked why they had done so. Analysis of these responses revealed five themes which will now be discussed, beginning with the most commonly mentioned.

Reading for Academic Purposes

Academic purposes here cover a range of research activities. People reported reading journals because of study they were undertaking, from undergraduate to PhD, as well as to inform articles or conference papers they were preparing and courses they were planning to teach. The prevalence of this type of response no doubt reflected the large number of respondents working in the tertiary sector (Table 2) and the inclusion of teacher educators and students (Table 1).

Some responses suggested that the academic purpose was the sole catalyst for reading, that such reading was not practised before – ‘Read it for my Master’s thesis … never before that’. It would be tempting, but perhaps over-optimistic, to think a habit of reading might be established through this experience. After all, as Borg and Sanchez (2015: 6) noted:

It is clear that teachers’ own backgrounds and the contexts in which language teachers work around the world are often not conducive to teacher research and indeed to professional development more generally.

Reading for Teaching Purposes

The majority of participants reported being English language teachers (Table 1) and the second most common form of response related to teaching. In categorizing these responses, an attempt was made to distinguish between those related to language teaching as opposed to academic coursework teaching, but this was not always possible from the wording of the responses. Responses such as ‘To help my pupils’ were, however, reasonably clear.

Reading for Interest

A number of responses used words such as ‘topic’ or ‘content’ and words such as ’interest’ and ‘interesting’. It was not possible to determine where the interest lay; it may have been driven by an issue in teaching, or by research, or by personal interest. Occasionally a respondent would mention the title and/or the abstract as having generated interest in reading an article, most fully expressed by ‘Jazzy title linking to my current concerns and also depends on the abstract’.

Reading for No Obvious Reason

While the first three themes suggest readers actively seeking out information and choosing to read, the fourth theme captures those who seem to be serendipitous readers. They appear to have picked up a journal and read an article because the journal happened to come their way. As one respondent put it: ‘It was lying on the table in the staff kitchen’. Many professional organizations publish a journal which is provided to members gratis, and this does seem to have triggered the reading for a number of respondents. This is an interesting insight, and may be of particular relevance to organizations considering shifting from print-based to web-based publication of a journal. The existence of a physical artefact rather than the availability of similar material online was important for these readers. This may be especially important when access is an issue, as will be discussed below.

Reading for Personal Reasons

This was the most minor of the five themes, and may perhaps be regarded as a sub-theme of reading for no obvious reason. It is included separately, however, because it seemed that knowing the author, either personally or by reputation, provided the sole reason for reading for almost all those who mentioned it. Examples of such reasons are:

It was an old colleague of mine who wrote it, so was curious about their research and perspective.

My book review was in it!

Summary

The five themes discussed above have stronger resonance with the six reasons for undertaking professional development suggested by Wong (2011) than with the themes identified by Borg (2015) as benefits from attending conferences, which may suggest that conferences and journals play a different role in professional development. Four of Wong’s reasons appear to be most relevant to the journal readers in this study, and they are:

To acquire new knowledge: this applies to all those actively seeking out information and choosing to read.

To solve a particular problem: this seems particularly the case for those reading for teaching purposes.

To upgrade skills due to changes in society or the field: this seems to have been the case for at least some of those reading for both academic and teaching purposes.

To advance one’s career: this seems particularly so for those reading for academic purposes.

As for those reading for no obvious or for personal reasons, it may be a stretch to claim that their reading was a form of professional development.

The discussion now turns to those who expressed dissatisfaction with their access to information generally, and then to the non-journal-readers.

Access to Information

Those who felt they did not have sufficient access to information about ELT practice and recent research (Figure 1) were asked to expand on their response, and four broad reasons were identified. It is worth noting that these refer to professional development in general; journal-specific responses will be considered below, although journals also receive mention here.

The single most common response had to do with elements of access. One element had to do with access to information online, usually to journals, either because their institution had limited or no subscriptions in place or because they were expected to pay themselves or because of limited access to the internet generally. Such responses were along these lines.

Some journals are not accessible in Vietnam or not all Vietnamese teachers can pay to access some prestigious journals.

Journal articles too expensive for anyone not in the university system.

The number of pay walls, we cannot afford journals in Latin America.

A second, less-mentioned, element of access related to real world situations, particularly the limited availability of a community to connect to, whether in the workplace or at events such as conferences. As examples of these responses consider the following:

there are limited organizations and people to network with and learn from without having to travel a lot.

I have a lot of questions about my teaching practice but no full-time foreign English teachers to discuss them with.

The second most common category of response had to do with available time. It was not just a case of being ‘Too busy teaching’ but also of being ‘Too busy with school clerical work to read a journal’.

For some respondents not knowing where to seek out information explained their sense of having insufficient access. As one person wrote, ‘not sure what’s reputable’. In a related vein, one respondent who initiated personal communication with me after completing the survey indicated that even finding out about funded professional development opportunities (for further study) was not always easy.

The fourth and final reason offered was doubt about the quality or currency of the research they could access. ‘Often the research is too old or out of date’ captures the tone of these responses, although one at least was reasonably harsh: ‘Quality of local research is often terrible. There is a lot of wheel reinvention or relabelling’.

The Non-readers

Those who indicated that they had not read a journal or journal article in the last year were asked what would encourage them to read, and the largest number of responses were, unsurprisingly, that having the time to read was what they needed. As one particularly eloquent respondent wrote: ‘Having time to do it. Primary teachers teach. There is no down time in which to read’.

Five additional factors that would encourage journal reading were also identified, and these were, in order of mention:

Relevance to their work.

Having access to journals.

Having a need to read journals, such as for academic purposes.

Being recommended.

Being practical, or, in the words of one respondent, ‘Less academic chat; more practical suggestions’.

There is, unsurprisingly, a degree of overlap between the reasons offered by those who felt they did not have sufficient access to information about ELT practice and recent research, and those who had not read a journal article in the past year. The most obvious difference is that having the time to read was more commonly mentioned by the non-reading group than by those who did not feel they have sufficient access to information. This is probably explained by the fact that seeing access as an obstacle did not preclude the ability to have some access, including to print copies of journals, and therefore of having read an article during the past year.

It is also worth noting that there may be a link between the length of the research articles usually found in journals and concerns about having time. As one respondent explained: ‘short articles are very useful – as time poor due to working full-time’.

Summary

While journals remain an important source of information for the majority of ELT professionals, the question of access (raised by Burns, 2017) is certainly an issue for many. For journals, as opposed to other forms of professional development, the cost of access was the concern. Institutions and individuals do not have the means to provide or gain access to the information they want. This is likely to be particularly the case in developing countries.

There is also some support for the idea floated by Nation (2018), that (some) journals have shifted from a practical to a research focus. While this is clearly a benefit for some ELT professionals, those reading for academic purposes, it does not benefit others, notably teachers, who identify lack of relevance and practical application as reasons why they have not read a journal article in the past year. Furthermore, even though journals may retain a practical element in their mission statement the fact that they are subscription journals limits their accessibility for teachers, the primary audience for such content. For teachers, it may well be, it is the journals produced by professional organizations that provide them with a link to recent research and ideas.

This leads, then, to some concluding thoughts about journals and professional development.

* The primary current use of journals is for academic purposes; research and study are, of course, worthy activities, but in terms of professional development this may be undertaken, following Wong’s (2011) reasons, principally for advancing one’s own career.

* The recurrent challenge of how to communicate research to practice remains; as noted earlier, ‘Research is most valuable when it is applied to practice’ (Nation, 2018: 138). With the shift in journals away from a practical focus, and the closing of teacher-focussed journals such as Guidelines (formerly published by RELC, Singapore) it becomes harder for teachers to be informed.

* For teachers, there remains value in journals published by professional organizations, particularly perhaps hard copy journals. This is encouraging news for these journals’ editors; these are not the journals that typically feature in the journal ranking lists that excite academia, but they provide teachers with access to research and ideas about effective practice that they would otherwise lack. Back issues of journals are often available to non-members through organizations’ websites.

* For many working outside the tertiary sector, and those in developing countries, truly open access journals such as Reading in a Foreign Language http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/, Language Education in Asia http://www.leia.org/, and Journal of Extensive Reading http://jalt-publications.org/content/index.php/jer deserve to be better-known, widely promoted, and universally supported.

* Doubts about the quality or currency of the research they could access was a concern expressed by respondents and promoting the reading of open access journals such as those just mentioned does raise that concern again. Readers do need to be informed about how to differentiate between journals that are likely to publish quality content and those that are not. Factors to consider in such an evaluation would include the composition of the editorial board, whether or not the journal has a peer review process, and whether the journal is pay-to-publish or not.

Limitations of this Study

The use of a pre-populated menu for professional development activities (Table 6) may have limited the picture of which activities ELT professionals engage in, even though this menu was trialled during the piloting stage. However, the fact that respondents were able to write about professional development activities they had engaged in before seeing the menu, and before the survey focussed more narrowly on journals, did mean that information about the breadth of activity was generated before specific options were provided. What this survey cannot cast light on, however, is where any of the activities mentioned in open responses would have ranked against those that were explicitly provided.

Another possible issue with the survey itself may lie in the wording of one question. The fact that ‘access’ was used in the prompt (Question 10, see Appendix 1) and access of various forms emerged as the primary reason why respondents felt they had insufficient information (Figure 1) may not be accidental. This did not emerge as problematic during the piloting but, on reflection, that may be because piloting was carried out in a tertiary environment where access was not a concern.

However, while these points are worth mentioning, they do not appear to raise any questions about the overall validity of the responses provided.

Conclusion

ELT professionals practise many forms of professional development, with three activities being dominant: reading a book or article about language teaching, attending a conference, and attending a professional development course. These were common regardless of sector, region, or first language, and only for teacher educators was there a small difference, with conducting rather than attending a professional development course being one of the top three.

That reading a book or article was consistently highly-ranked, and that in the whole population more than four out of five respondents reported having read a journal article in the preceding 12 months, is good news for publishers and all those involved in journal publication. It suggests that journals continue to serve a useful purpose for the ELT profession. They are read for academic purposes, for teaching purposes, and out of interest. At the same time, however, journal reading is not consistent across all education sectors, and is less engaged in by those in the primary and secondary sectors than in tertiary. If one of the roles of journals is to create a link between research and practice, this should be a concern for those who believe in professional development as an ‘ongoing, sustained, and self-directed’ activity (Bailey et al., 1998: 554), and for those who believe that research-informed teaching delivers better learning outcomes for students. It is to be hoped, therefore, that positive changes will result from current conversations about improving access and about linking research to practice in ELT so that more in the field can benefit from the publication of journals.

Footnotes

Appendix 1: The Survey

This short survey is about English language teachers and their professional development. This research has been approved by the Human Ethics Committee, Victoria University of Wellington [#25233].

All responses will be anonymous; I will never know who you are. By completing the survey you give consent for your participation and your responses will be incorporated into the aggregated findings. These findings may be used in a journal article or a conference presentation at some later stage.

Thank you for your help with this project.

________________________________________________________________

Appendix 2

Table 7.

Responses (%) x region x sector x occupation x language.

	Region		Sector			Occupation		Language
	New Zealand & Australia	Vietnam, Indonesia & Malaysia	Primary	Secondary	Tertiaryy	Teacherr	Teacher educator	English as L1	Other as L1
N	191	155	45	67	249	293	93	222	200
Primary	5.8	19.2	-	-	-	13.1	6.9	7.2	15
Secondary	16.2	18	-	-	-	19.5	6.9	15.3	15.5
Tertiary	62.3	46.15	-	-	-	55.7	70.1	60.8	55
Teacher	61.8	71.6	82.2	82.1	63.3	-	-	63.1	69.0
Teacher educator	16.8	18.7	13.3	9.0	24.6	-	-	18.0	23.0
MA as highest	51.0	44.7	21.7	46.15	60.7	52.4	46.5	54.8	47.5
English L1	86.8	10.5	34.8	52.3	55.1	50.4	46.5	-	-
Access – Yes	53.2	32.9	42.2	26.7	51.1	40.5	57.1	52.8	36.4
Access - No	23.1	38.5	31.1	40.6	27	33.0	22.6	25.7	34.8
Access – Not Sure	23.7	28.7	26.7	29.7	21.9	26.5	20.2	21.6	28.9
Read – Yes	82.8	83.3	62.2	79.4	92.9	79.8	95.1	82.6	85.6
Read – No	17.2	16.7	37.8	20.6	7.1	20.2	4.9	17.4	14.4

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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