Professional development for language teachers : what do transborder teachers bring back to the classroom?

As learning is co-constructed by students and teachers in the classroom, teachers’ continuous development is a crucial issue in enhancing students’ learning. However, opportunities for further training/education for teachers are considerably limited. Japan, as the focus of this study, is no different from other nations in this respect. The current study aims to fill this gap and addresses the development of English teachers who completed an MA Applied Linguistics/TESOL/ELT in UK higher education and returned to Japan to continue as teachers—‘transborder teachers’ (Kamhi-Stein, 2009). This longitudinal, qualitative multiple case study focuses on five Japanese transborder teachers. A series of in-depth interviews was conducted over a period of nearly two years in order to explore these teachers’ developmental trajectories, and for the teachers’ reflection, a videotaped lesson or a student questionnaire was incorporated. Approximately 38 hours of interview data were analysed using the author’s ‘Model of Teacher Development,’ a modified version of Guskey’s ‘Model of Teacher Change’ (2002). The findings reveal that the participating teachers felt a huge impact of learning and life experience in the multilingual/multicultural UK: reformulating their sociolinguistic perspectives, shaping their provisional new beliefs and acquiring theoretical knowledge. Although the teachers’ developmental trajectories were complex and non-linear, the study captured the distinctive features of their development: e.g. that their theoretical knowledge firmly underpinned their practices and their provisional new beliefs evolved into their solid new beliefs with successful lesson transformation. The results also confirm that these teachers’ pursuit of the MA substantially transformed them, which can determine their future development and affect the rest of their teaching careers. It is hoped that this study will contribute to further enrichment of MA programmes currently offered in the UK and in-service training/education programmes being provided in Japan and the rest of the world.