EFL STATE SCHOOL TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS ON IN-SERVICE TEACHER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS IN THE TURKISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

We are in a period in which education process is in various evolutions around the world. Recently, many countries are dealing with significant and worth having educational reforms, as in Turkey. As a result of globalization, the need of foreign language speaking emerged in most of the fields of the business world and in the daily lives of people, which caused Turkey to consider foreign language education more important. Regarding the education in Turkey, each government is within a persistent struggle for a more excellent education system starting from the early ages to the university. The Turkish Ministry of Education considers English more important and it carries out several reforms such as revising English curriculum, encouraging schools to carry out language projects with the schools in Europe and empowering teachers through various in-service development programs. The aims of this study are to figure out the EFL state school teachers’ perceptions on in-service teacher development programs, to determine the factors that force the EFL state school teachers to attend in-service development programs and to reveal the fields that need to be improved. The participants of the study were 100 EFL teachers working in state schools. The data was gathered through using a questionnaire. The gathered data was analyzed by using mean scores and standard deviation. The analysis of the obtained data has revealed that EFL state school teachers believe in-service development activities have beneficial contributions for their organizational and individual improvements. Furthermore, it has been seen that ?scientific, technological and social developments” is the primary grounded factor that causes EFL state school teachers to get in-service development programs.