A comparison of pre-service and in-service english teachers’ teaching competency levels

Abstract

Countries employ different methods in educating teachers according to the status of English and their own educational policies. As a country where English is taught as a foreign language, Turkey has set its own teacher competencies in an attempt to respond to changes in educational moves and to be in harmony with internationally acknowledged standards. This study aims to find out and compare the competency levels of pre-service and in-service English teachers in Turkey in terms of the generic and field-specific teacher competencies set by Turkish Ministry of National Education. 366 pre-service and 84 in-service English teachers participated in this study. Quantitative research method was adopted to reach a large number of participants and to increase the generalizability of the findings. The participants completed a survey including two different self-assessment forms. The results offer striking insights into teacher education in Turkey. The findings show that a high majority of the pre-service participants (N: 338, 92.3%) and most of the in-service participants (N: 54, 64.3%) were uninformed about the related competencies set at national level. There were also some differences between the two groups of participants in terms of the related competencies.