Professional competences to teach English at primary schools in Turkey: a Delphi study

ABSTRACT

This research aimed to uncover the teacher competences that are necessary to provide age-appropriate English language teaching to primary school students in Turkey. The Delphi technique was implemented to propose a list of competences created through consensus among a panel of experts that consisted of 15 teachers and 16 teacher educators. The data were collected by administering three questionnaires in three rounds. Central tendency and consensus were measured through median and inter-quartile range, respectively. The findings led to a list of 29 teacher competences which were categorised into five groups: ‘theoretical and practical knowledge’, ‘knowing the young learner’, ‘planning and organising teaching’, ‘managing teaching’, and ‘competence in English’. Implications were made for improving the effectiveness of English language teaching to young learners: these included the design of pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes to equip teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to teach English to young learners.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher competence
• teaching English to young learners
• teaching English as a foreign language
• English language teaching

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr Ece Zehir Topkaya for providing important guidance during the research. He is grateful to Dr İsmail Hakkı Erten, Dr Nurdan Özbek Gürbüz and Dr Belgin Aydın for their help to contact the participants. He owes special thanks to Dr Amanda Yeşilbursa who provided valuable feedback on an earlier version of the article and Dr Jill Cadorath who proofread the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mehmet Sercan Uztosun

Mehmet Sercan Uztosun is assistant professor and teacher educator in English language teaching department at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey. He obtained an EdD in TESOL. He is primarily interested in issues related to teaching speaking as a foreign language, pre-service and in-service teacher education.