Standards Writing

Facilitators:
Mary Lou McCloskey & Zeinab El-Naggar

Home-Owned, Home-Grown Standards for Teachers

The presenters will describe a project designed according to principles of sustainability of change to develop performance standards for teachers of EFL to school-age learners. Project philosophy, processes of building consensus and national ownership by including and involving faculty and ministry stakeholders in developing and implementing standards, and standards document are shared.

Bios

Mary Lou McCloskey, 2002-2003 TESOL President, is Director of Teacher Education and Curriculum Development for Educo in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and an adjunct professor at Georgia State University. She received her PhD in educational leadership from Georgia State University, following her Master's Degree in early childhood education at Syracuse University and her BS in Philosophy at Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York. Active as a staff development specialist, consultant, writer, curriculum developer, and researcher in the area of English for school-age speakers of other languages, she has worked with teachers, teacher educators, and departments and ministries of education on five continents and in 31 of the United States. She was awarded the 1999 Moss Chair of Excellence in English at the University of Memphis, the TESOL D. Scott Enright Service Award, and the Georgia TESOL Professional Service Award. She is co-author of two programs for learners of English to be published in 2003: Visions (Heinle) and On Our Way to English (Rigby), has also authored Voices in Literature; Making Connections; and Teaching Language, Literature and Culture along with many chapters and articles. Dr. McCloskey served on the TESOL Task Force to develop TESOL/NCTE Teacher Standards and the Task Force on AIDS and Health Education. She worked with Egyptian Educators to develop EFL Pre-Service Teacher Standards for that country. She considers her most important credential, however, her teaching experience with students from many cultural and linguistic backgrounds in levels from preschool through university.

Zeinab El-Naggar is professor of ELT methodology and director of the Center for Developing English Language Teaching ( CDELT ) at Ain Shams Faculty of Education, Cairo, Egypt. She holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Los Angeles, USA. Since her graduation from Cairo University, she's been involved in the English teaching profession: as a teacher trainer, materials developer, and curriculum consultant to the Egyptian Ministry of Education. She is currently working on developing national standards for teachers, besides heading the content standards committee. She has just co-authored the first standards-based English language textbook for Egyptian primary one students.

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Photo by Tony Quirke