English as a Foreign Language teachers' perspectives on inservice education in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to describe and explain English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perspectives of teacher inservice education in Taiwan. Three research questions were addressed in this study: (1) What are Taiwanese EFL teachers' attitudes toward general inservice education? (2) What are EFL teachers' perceptions toward the current inservice education for EFL teachers in Taiwan? (3) What factors influence EFL teachers' perceptions toward the current inservice education for EFL teachers in Taiwan? Ethnographic interview was used as the major inquiry technique for this study. Thirteen EFL teachers participated in this study. Two open-ended interviews were conducted with each of the thirteen participants.;The major findings of this study were: (1) The participants recognized inservice education as a very important and necessary process in the education of EFL teachers. They were willing to participate in inservice education to enhance their professional knowledge and improve their teaching in order to become better teachers. (2) All thirteen participants expressed that they were not satisfied with the current EFL teacher inservice education in Taiwan. Four major viewpoints repeatedly brought up by the participants in regard to the current inservice education for EFL teachers in Taiwan were identified. They are: (a) Inservice training opportunities for EFL teachers are limited. (b) Many inservice training courses are not useful or applicable to actual teaching situations. (c) Teachers' involvement in the planning and evaluation of inservice training programs is very limited. (d) Several constraints, such as administration or policy, discourage teachers from participating in inservice education. (3) Three major factors appeared to negatively influenced participants' perceptions toward the current EFL teacher inservice education in Taiwan. These factors are: entrance examinations, the government's overall effort for EFL teacher inservice education, and school administrators and principals' lack of support for inservice education. (4) Those participants who either received their master's degrees in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) from universities in the United States or had participated in study-abroad inservice training programs tended to be more dissatisfied with the current inservice education for EFL teachers in Taiwan.