An Analysis Of Libyan EFL Secondary School Teachers Opinions Of Professional Teacher Training - Term Paper Example

However, since the beginning of the millennium, the Libyan government has been making efforts to develop its educational system to international levels. In line with this objective, the Libyan government has since reintroduced EFL as an educational subject. However, several teachers have faced various difficulties in this respect. For instance, many of the teachers who had been teaching EFL before it was struck off the syllabus have often been allowed to take scholarships overseas (either for just short courses or complete degree programs) to refresh their knowledge and competencies.

But then new teachers have also been trained. For instance, after reinstituting EFL into the Libyan curriculum, the Committee of Higher Education (that has been renamed the Ministry of Higher Education in the post-Gadhafi era) “arranged a massive scholarship program abroad to allow more than 80,000 teachers and students to get MAs and PhDs from different western countries, such as the UK and USA, from 1999” (Orafi & Borg, 2008, p.247). In the end, two generations of EFL teachers have emerged: the old generation and the new generation.

Between these two groups, a conflict has ensued. For example, many of the old generation EFL teachers have stuck with their old methodologies in relation to instructions and teaching materials. These were largely built on Libyan culture. On the other hand, the new generations prefer newer methods, most notably preferring the newer English textbooks that “integrated the cultural aspects of the English language that require the application of new teaching methodologies” (Gadour, 2006, p.11); that is, instructions and materials.

Another issue has to do with the nature of the curriculum. As it were, observes Orafi (2009), the new EFL curriculum for students expressed through a series of course books called English for Libya. These textbooks are structured more or less the same way at all levels and for all specializations: “each unit has sections dedicated to reading, vocabulary and grammar, functional language use listening, speaking and writing” (p.245). 

Indeed, this is a much wider scope compared to the last curriculum, which did not address functional use of language, listening and speaking. Besides, most teachers ignored speaking and listening sections. According to Orafi (2009), this is as a result of the lack of facilities within the school, as well as poor teacher preparation to teach these sections because they assumed that the students will acquire these (speaking and listening) skills automatically. But Sawani (2009) disputes this notion slightly, arguing that the EFL curriculum at the University level does not follow any particular framework.

In every university, he says, the head of department is the one responsible for preparing general English materials to be use in various disciplines. The English department also creates course outlines for the teachers. In turn, the teachers are free to choose their preferred curriculum. In other words, nationally, the curriculum lacks standardization, even in different classes under the same department. It is important to distinguish this situation from a situation of curriculum customization based on the contemporary concept of ‘student-centered approach’.

To resolve this problem of inconsistency, the government has seen the design of a number of programs for training school-level teachers of EFL (Orafi, 2009). This involves the use of popular curricula and materials (like the ones used in Oxford and Headway), including the use of ICT. In this respect, based on theory of social constructivism (Communities of Practice, CoP) this study investigates the ranger of attitudes and opinions of secondary school EFL teachers in Libya on the range of teaching programs (theory and practice) on the basis of the educational, cultural and political context in which they find themselves.

Particularly, this study focuses on the opinions of the secondary EFL teachers on the use of ICT in their training programs. In this respect, this study involves phenomenographical investigations, which help to explore the conceptual thoughts of these teachers, as well as related experiences of the use of ICT as an aspect of the communicative learner-centered approach (CLCA), which was introduced into the Libyan context of EFL teachers’ training program in 2000 (Orafi & Borg, 2008; Orafi, 2009).

‘Conceptions’ as used here refers to what Marton (1981, cited in Sawani, 2009) defined as the “the different ways in which people experience or conceptualize any aspect of the world around them” (p.188). a. Rationale for Study As already noted, a communicative-oriented learner-centered approach (CLCA) to the English curriculum was introduced in Libyan secondary schools in 2000. Consequently, there has been a shift in the instructional approaches used by EFL teachers; that is, a shift that has seen the new learner-centered approach replace the traditional teacher-centered approach (Orafi & Borg, 2008).

According to Orafi (2009), this new curriculum was mainly introduced to develop the oral communication skills of the students. As a result, as briefly noted in the introduction, new English textbooks pose different communication activities and learning tasks primarily designed to be performed through pair and group work, role-play, problem-solving and language games. To implement these activities, that is help students truly engage and participate actively in the activities, teachers are mainly expected to adopt the role of facilitator (Phillips et al., 2008). Yet, even years after the introduction of the CLCA, local research and observation reveals that many EFL teachers in the country still use the old teacher-centered approach.

This largely accounts for the fact that many Libyan students complete secondary school education with undeveloped listening and speaking skills that might help them in their secondary school education (Orafi & Borg, 2008; Orafi, 2009; Sawani, 2009). This study is, therefore, based on a sympathetic attitude for Libyan secondary school EFL teachers working hard under specific situational context with hard conditions. b.