The evaluation of English language teacher education program in Turkey according to the views of students, lecturers and english teachers

This study aims to evaluate the English language teacher education program introduced in 2006, according to the views of senior students, lecturers and English teachers. This study also aims to contribute to foreign language teaching studies by evaluating the teacher education program which is considered as one of the significant issue in foreign language teaching. In this study which is designed as descriptive survey model, mixed method was applied. The universe of study comprisesof ELT students enrolled to 4th grade in 2016-2017 academic year, ELT lecturers and English teachers working for Ministry of National Education and with maximum 5 year experience. In this study, as one of the purposive sampling method, stratified purposeful sampling method was used. The study was conducted with 524 senior students in 10 universities, 35 lecturers at this universities and 11 English teachers. The research data was collected with ELT program evaluation questionnaire, English teaching competency scale and semi-structured interview forms developed by the researcher. Descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation) and ANOVA was used for the analysis of quantitative data; content analysis techniques were used for the analysis of qualitative data. For quantitative data analysis, SPSS and for quantitative data NVIVO-11 was applied. The results of the study was given with comparison to the newly developed ELT program, introduced in 2018 by Council of Higher Education. The results of the study were summarized as below: • ELT students thought that the physical components of their universities are adequate in terms of the technological infrastructure of the classrooms and the library facilities. However, the lecturers felt negative about the classrooms and thought that libraries do not have adequate written materials relevant to the field. • Students and the lecturers felt positive about the international programs such as Erasmus and Mevlana, but the lecturers think that the number of the partner universities are limited and there are not as many students coming from abroad as expected • ELT students think that the number and quality of the scholars are adequate; on the contrary, lecturers think that the number of the scholars are not adequate and thus this situation increases their workload. • According to the students, the ELT curriculum is up to date, answer the students' needs and there is a balance between theory and practice. On the other hand, lecturers are of the opinion that the curriculum, content and the linkage between courses needs to be revised. • ELT students think that they are competent at the content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and cultural knowledge. They mostly feel competent at content knowledge. • Lecturers and English teachers propose that the instruction language of the courses in pedagogical knowledge should be English and the courses should be redesigned according to content area. • Lecturers and English teachers think that the ELT program do not provide adequate training in English language proficiency. • English teachers are of the opinion that the ELT program do not provide adequate training for the needs of the local context. • Lecturers and English teachers consider the cultural knowledge courses inadequate in that they do not offer a content that helps students to understand the culture of the target language.