Teacher Development In A Needs-based CALL Course

Researchers and educators have noted the urgency to empower Chinese EFL teachers with technology to meet the challenge of the English education in the 21st century, and thus teacher development in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) context is receiving increasing attention (Pilus, 1995; Egbert et al, 2002; Chen, 2002; , 2003). This paper investigates the effects of a needs-based CALL course on EFL teacher development in terms of the participants' beliefs and skills, as well as the underlying factors resulting in the development. The purpose is to gain a better understanding of the relationship of this kind of CALL course to EFL teacher development regarding teacher beliefs and teaching skills so as to offer some implications for improving the program design and implementation in the future.This study is conducted in the context of a needs-based CALL course for MA graduate students in the School of Foreign Languages, Suzhou University. To study teacher development in this course, two aspects are chosen as research focus, i.e., teacher beliefs and teaching skills (Richards et al, 1996, p. 242). These two aspects are further divided respectively into beliefs about learning, learners and teachers; and skills related to teaching method, activity, materials and tools. All this forms the research framework of this study.In the study, an interpretative qualitative research method is employed. The qualitative data is obtained mainly from the writer's participant observation, a post-course interview, and the participants' end-of-course reflections. The major findings can be summarized as follows:1. The needs-based CALL course offered support for teacher development, that is, it served well in preparing EFL teachers to integrate computers into their EFL teaching and for their personal development.2. The study indicates that by taking this course, the participants formed new beliefs about learners, learning and teachers. They realized that learners are partners of teachers and knowledge explorers; that learning is an active doing and constructing process instead of a passive knowledge-receiving process; thatteachers have multiple roles to play, such as needs analysts, course developers,facilitators and individual persons as well. Meanwhile, the participants got muchimprovement in their teaching skills related to teaching methods, activities,materials and tools.3. The results also reveal that the instructor support and peer help are themost facilitating factors, while time limit, technical difficulties and cost factor arethe most obstructing ones.In light of the above findings, this paper suggests that the needs-based CALL course has potential in teacher development, especially in teacher beliefs and teaching skills. Meanwhile, the study implies that to promote teacher development in such a CALL context, more attention should be paid to pre-course technical training, teacher beliefs as well as relevant teaching skills to integrate computers into language teaching. What's more, teacher development courses should be designed on the base of participating teachers' needs and their contexts.