Professional Growth and Enhancement

Facilitator:
Andy Curtis

Stepping Back Without Falling Over

In this workshop, we will look at what each of us means when we think of, talk about and engage in "professional development". We will then consider a range of approaches to professional development with English language teachers within their own particular contexts, by considering some of the contextual constraints on professional development, and ways in which we can address these. In the third part of the workshop, we will look at examples from English language teachers who have engaged in different types of professional development, to see what we can apply to our own contexts.

Bio

Andy Curtis is the Director of the School of English at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. He has published 60 articles and papers, given more than 100 presentations in 20 countries and worked with language teachers and learners in Europe, Asia, North, South and Central America. In 2001, with Kathi Bailey and David Nunan, he published Pursuing Professional Development: The self as source (Thomson/Heinle), and in 2004, with editors Liying Cheng and Yoshinori Watanabe, he will publish Washback in Language Testing: Research contexts and methods (Lawrence Earlbaum).

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Photo by Tony Quirke