Synchronous (Onsite) Teacher Education / Professional Development Research Report/Paper (25 mins Onsite)
Cancelled EFL Teacher Development in Rural Armenia: A Collaborative Project
This paper explores the educational benefits of an EFL teacher development program provided at the American University of Armenia (AUA) in Yerevan, Armenia. The program was created as a result of the collaboration between the master’s program in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the AUA and the Children of Armenia Fund, a foundation which seeks to empower rural Armenia by also improving the quality of teaching and learning in rural schools. The program included 9 units of course work and a teaching practicum which the 17 in-service teachers completed in their own classrooms while observed by the faculty. Through a qualitative analysis of surveys, teaching reflections and focus interviews, this case study showcases the teachers’ perceptions of their learning experiences and discusses them in relation to the program learning outcomes. We offer implications for building collaborations to transform language education in rural and far-flung schools.
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Dunja Radojković is an assistant professor in the MATEFL program at the American University of Armenia. She has earned her Ph.D. from the interdisciplinary Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) program at the University of Arizona, United States, and her BA and MA degrees from the English Language and Literature program at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. She has taught English at the Center for English as a Second Language (CESL) at the University of Arizona and held a position as a Global Professor in the awarded Foundations Writing Program at the University of Arizona, teaching remotely at the micro campus at Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, Xi'an, China. Currently, she is teaching three MATEFL courses: second language acquisition theories, pedagogical grammar and thesis writing and serving as a Capstone advisor. Her research interests include interculturality in second language teacher education, positioning theory, and critical discourse analysis.