Teachers Professional Development

language teaching has changed rapidly in the last twenty years, but in Vietnam the teaching of English has been far from satisfactory. For quite a long time there have not been any contacts with the teaching and learning of English outside Vietnam, and only recently some groups of teachers have been sent to abroad to study. Thanks to the aid of some international organizations and countries, the teaching of English has improved, but chiefly at universities and colleges where English is taught by groups of foreigner lectures. At schools, the situation remains unchanged. This is because of different reasons including unsuitable textbooks, inadequate teaching and learning facilities, but one of the most important factors is unqualified teaching

So far, many scholars have attempted to define teacher professional development in terms of a high-quality, meaningful and effective teacher enhancement. According to Bolam (1993) teacher professional development refers to “any professional development activities engaged in by teachers which enhance their knowledge and skills and enable them to consider their attitudes and approaches to the education of children, with a view to improve the quality of the teaching and learning process.” From the view of teachers’ commitment, Glatthorn (1995) asserts that teacher professional development is what a teacher attains as a result of obtaining experience and exploring his or her teaching systematically. Looking at external factors, Horsley (1996) defines teacher professional development as “opportunities offered to educators to develop knowledge, skills, approaches and dispositions to improve their effectiveness in their classrooms and

Teachers themselves are considered in terms of their cognition, their awareness of their education and their commitment to their teaching and development, etc; students are also an important factor to their teachers’ career development as students’ challenging questions and special needs will pose a great impact on teacher future teaching; colleagues and peers also influence teacher career advancement much because teachers better their profession in a learning communities; participating in collaboration, discussing and exchanging information help teachers enhance their