The Effect of Professional Development Training on English Language Teachers' Instructional Practices of Productive Skills

Preparing teachers with on-going professional development training can significantly improve the language proficiency and overall academic performance of the students. To this end, the Ministry of Education of Ethiopia has launched a wide-ranging training program to improve teachers' pedagogical and content knowledge. The training package was introduced in the summer of 2024, covering 120 hours. This study examined the effect of this professional development capacity-building training on the English language teachers’ instructional practices of the productive skills—speaking and writing. To understand the effect of this training, we adopted a post-test research design. The study selected 222 secondary school English language teachers through comprehensive sampling during enrolling at Arba Minch University. We administered a self-rating questionnaire at the end of the training to assess changes the training has brought on the confidence and perceived effectiveness of teachers in teaching productive skills. We ran a one-sample t-test and effect size measures to analyze the data. The results indicate that the professional development capacity-building training has significantly improved the English language teachers’ instructional practices of the productive skills. The study recommends further intensive on-going professional development training for teachers as a fundamental policy for improving didactic quality.