Analysis of english teachers' perceptions related to strategies studied in a in-service course in Cuenca

Abstract

This study describes the English Public High School Teachers’ perceptions related to strategies studied in an in-service training in Cuenca during the year 2012 by a research group of the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Cuenca. As a follow up, the same research group started a project in 2014 in order to analyze the impact of this training program. This is the framework of the present study. It is based on the exploratory level of researching. The instrument of the research was a personal interview with ten teachers that participated in the in-service course. The software Atlas ti analyzed the interviews. Fourteen hermeneutical codes were identified, grouped into four different families: communicative strategies, significant knowledge, perceptions of needs, and inconsistencies. All of the family codes have something relating to the Task Based Learning Teaching (TBLT), hence the generation of an outcome.Here, “outcome” has the specific meaning of a product of communication of students. An important finding is that most of the teachers remember explicitly nine communicative strategies and half of the teachers are using the outcome as the major aim of their classes. The results show teacher’s positive perceptions regarding the in-service training program, even after two years from when the training ended.