QUIZ DURATION: 1 hour 45minutes

1. Thomas (2003, p. 240) is of the view that To be fully professional we must

account for all of what we do, and do it with full awareness of the context.
Elaborate on this view of professional accountability and her arguments for and the
meaning of quality.

According to the article The arguments for and the meaning of quality written by
Helen Thomas, the concept of quality in Education is more complex and need for broad
understanding. the quality of professional accountability can be defined by a few criterions.
For example, set objective are achieved, fitness for purpose, added value and client
satisfaction (Vroeijenstijn 1992). Nevertheless, according to Thomas (2003), based on her
straw poll among practitioners. teachers and managers during her seminar, the quality in
education can be explained in three categories: excellence, improvement, and fitness for
purpose. However, in her article, she is stressing more on the improvement and the fitness of
purpose.

The quality of education is related to improvement. Thomas (2003) notes that the
ensure the quality in education, the improvement must strike immediately as a comfortable
and acceptable interpretation. Improving knowledge, skills, and opportunities in life.
Improvement can also cover on lesson, resources and results

She summarizes that the quality for the professional teachers means being committed
to different interpretation of quality not only to improvement but to standards, fitness for
purpose, and fitness of purpose too. In fulfilling the needs of improving the quality, all the
education practitioners should commit themselves to an ethos in the institution, the sector in
which they work, and in the broader economic and political context

Besides, it is believed that nowadays it is no longer possible to decide as universities

in Britain could do in the past, to teach what we want. Thus, to be fully professional she
added that, we must account for all of what we do, and do it with full awareness of the
context. To be short, the quality of education can be achieved once we understand and do our
responsibilities together and continue to improve in order to seek the excellence
 2. What is fitness for purpose and how is it different from fitness of purpose

Fitness for purpose is important to ensure that the curricula and their delivery are
capable to allow students to achieve the intended aims. For example, in certain
subject, what is being taught in the university is not determined by external reference
point but the department decides what is going to teach and how. In this situation,
what is evaluated is the extent to which the institution does what it says it is doing.

However, there is something more to quality rather than fitness for purpose. The
relevance or appropriateness of what we teach are also part of the quality. In other
words, it is not just fitness for purpose which is important, but fitness of purpose. It is
because, by ensuring that our programmes are fit of purpose is also part of
professional behaviour. Therefore, to improve the quality of our work context, we
must look at the what, and the what for which are the quality is process and product,
and the relevance of the product

3. According to Hyde (2000a, p.272) the power of experiential learning from role
reversal, i.e., for foreign language teachers to experience or re-experience what it is
like to be a foreign language learner, will help to bridge gaps of cultural knowledge
and professional experience between native and non-native teachers. In your view,
how can this promote ELT professionalism among ELT teachers in your work
environment/context?

In my view, in order to promote and ELT professionalism among ELT teachers

especially for foreign language teachers (FLT) to, the element of flexibility should be
emphasized on. It is because, the flexibility will be a bridge to reduce a gap between
intercultural language learning such as language learning awareness, awareness of students
learning preferences and intercultural understanding.

Firstly, being flexible in language learning awareness. Living in so called not an

inconvenience setting to teach English, teachers need to increase the awareness of students'
often unexpressed learning preferences and learning needs (mainly methodological issues).

Secondly, the FLT should explore the local teachers' learning background: their
learning of English, how they were trained, and their educational culture (mainly
educational). For example, an England teacher can visit Teacher Training College or in
Malaysia we call as Institut Perguruan to observe how the teachers were trained to teach
English.

Thirdly, it is important for the FLT to see the language from the outside: teaching their
own language helps trainees to find out how a non-native leams it. As a result, they will be
able to figure out more about their own language, and discover more about teaching, getting
instant educated feedback from their 'students' (linguistic and pedagogical). For instance,
when the teachers from Peninsular Malaysia were posted to Sabah and Sarawak, they are
encouraged to learns about the local language as it will help in building the rapport among
students and teachers an at the same time, enhancing their interest in English learning.
Last but not least, the FLT should also gain in intercultural understanding: participants
in the role-reversal gain a better understanding of key attitudes to language and language
learning, and related (mainly cultural) issues.

To summarize, the education practitioners like teachers and future teachers will get
benefit from the opportunity to reflect on the experience of being language learners, which
should be varied and consistently developed

4. In their needs analysis framework for implementing ELT innovations, Waters and
Vilches (2001) stressed the point that teacher learning entailed meeting foundation-
building needs and potential-realizing needs. Explain how these two concepts of
professional needs can help enhance the professionalism of teachers.

As we know, the initial development of an ELT innovation involves a large-

scale curricular reform. Therefore, the innovation of implementation needs can be
thought of as forming themselves into several hierarchically-arranged levels. The
 basic level is familiarization, followed by socialization, then application and the last
which is the topmost level is integration.

In integration, the scope should be given for the innovation to become the
personal property of the users for example, in a textbook project, this could be done
by linking teachers s attempt to get the best out of the new materials on an everyday
basis to their schools and their own professional development programs, supported
and supervised directly by the host educational system.

Nevertheless, establishing a basis on which further understanding and

development therefore be called foundation-building need. Needs at the third and
fourth levels on the other hand, be mainly to do with establishing ownership, at first in
relatively generic manner, and then in a more personal way, of the significant features
of the innovation. These needs are concerned with capitalizing on the potential for
further understanding and development created by the satisfaction of needs in the first
main stratum or called potential-realizing needs.

5. The SFDA model proposed by Waters and Vilches (2000b) was found to have led to
higher professional self-esteem for ELT teachers in the Phillippines.

School based

a. Briefly explain their use of the metaphors Seminar Island, Sea of Teacher Learning
and School Land under the SFDA system.
SFDA stands for School-Based Follow-up Development Activity. It is a
system for helping PELT trainees to carry out a programme of further learning in
their schools, after the PELT seminar, so that they can properly apply the ideas from
theseminar in their normal work situations.
In the PELT project, this component is known as the School-Based Follow Up
Development (SFDA) (Waters and Vilches 2000). Under this system, teachers first
of all attend a two-week course in which the teaching methods the Project is
concerned with are introduced, evaluated, and tried out. However, this is not to
prepare teachers for the SFDA, which follows.
The SFDA programme consists of the execution of teaching development
action plans prepared by the teachers during the training course. The focus of the
plans is on area s of teaching studied in the course which the teachers want to
 attempt to apply in their home teaching situations. On return to their school, the
teachers execute their plans, in consultation with their school ELT managers.For
example, Head of Department.
In this way, the project makes allowance for two levels of teacher learning:
one aimed at meeting foundation-building needs, the other geared towards
potential-realizing needs. The two levels are also closely integrated, with the latter
building closely on the former.
b. Provide an example of how the SFDA system has helped teachers to develop a
greater awareness of their own capabilities and an increased feeling of professional
self-worth.

The focus of the SFDA is always on an aspect of one of the main PELT teacher
training seminar topics which the trainee has decided to try out in her/his teaching
situation. In this case, the focus was Using Problem-solving Activities in Teaching
Grammar The Action Plan itself consists of four main stages: Preparation,
implementation, review and lastly follow-up.

In the Preparation stage, the trainee first discussed her plan with her school
authorities, obtaining their agreement with and support for the work. She then
developed tailor-made, triangulated data-gathering instruments (a Learners Views
Questionnaire, an Observers Questionnaire and a Teachers Log). These
instruments were used to gather base-line data about one of her classes, with
respect to the area of teaching in question - in other words, to get a picture of what
the learners in that class thought of the existing teaching methods, what kind of
teaching techniques the trainee was using, how the trainee herself felt about the
teaching, and so on. Then, as the last task in this stage, and in the light of the
findings of the base-line data, the trainee prepared an experimental lesson, i.e.
one aimed at introducing a new idea from the seminar, in this case the use of
problem-solving activities for teaching grammar.
In the Implementation stage, the trainee tried out the experimental lesson with
the same class, and, using the same instruments as in the Preparation stage,
gathered impact data - that is, data concerning the views of the learners about the
new teaching methods, the kinds of teaching techniques now being used by the
trainee, how the trainee felt about the teaching, and so on.
In the Review stage, she first compared the baseline and impact data, analysed
the differences, drew conclusions about the effectiveness or otherwise of the new
teaching methods, and, finally, prepared a report on the outcomes.
 Finally, in the Follow-up stage, because the results of the Review showed that
a) the trainee was using the new teaching procedures and that b) the students, the
observer, and the trainee all thought the new techniques were generally more
effective than the previous ones, the trainee arranged for a colleague to undertake a
further SFDA, this time with a class at a different level.