The opinions of the high school language teachers towards the professional development activities

The aim of this study was to examine the opinions of the high school foreign language teachers towards giving importance to the professional development activities and to the frequency of the application of the professional development activities according to different variables and to determine reasons that hinder their professional development at the state schools in districts of Urla, Güzelbahçe, Narlıdere in Izmir province. The population of this study consists of 105 high school language teachers working at the 14 state schools in the academic year of 2015-2016 located in district of Urla, Güzelbahçe, Narlıdere in Izmir province. The research sample was not used as the questionnaire was applied to all teachers in the population of the research. Almost all of the questionnaires were assessed. Data were obtained with "English Language Teacher Professional Development Questionnaire", developed by Muyan (2013). In the analysis of research data, t-test, one way variance analysis (ANOVA) and Tukey significance test was used along with descriptive statistics. The findings revealed that although the teachers agreed with most of the concepts that reflect the importance of professional development, they did not make use of the activities as much as they gave importance. In addition, there were significant differences between paying attention to the professional development activities and making use of them in terms of gender, tenure, teaching language.