Exploring Collaborative Lesson Planning as a Professional Development Tool for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language and Teachers of English for Academic Purposes

Effective professional development (PD) is important to teachers as it is known to improve learner outcomes. However, some tools used professionally to develop teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) and teachers of English for academic purposes (EAP) often lack relevance to a teacher's practice, do not provide the support necessary for teacher change, or are impractical, revealing the need for improved ways for teachers professionally to develop themselves. This research explores Collaborative Lesson Planning (CLP) as an innovative PD tool. CLP is where two teachers plan a lesson together, explaining how they would teach a lesson and why, with each teacher writing down on a lesson plan the ideas they like best for their students. Eight EFL and four EAP teachers were observed trialling CLP twice and reported through questionnaires and interviews their experience. Seven themes were identified through a qualitative thematic analysis. CLP promoted learning and the co-construction of knowledge, as teachers shared their experiences. CLP helped teachers receive dialogic feedback and to reflect autonomously, which sometimes led to changes in beliefs, such as in how to present a lesson. Teachers reported that CLP had impacted their teaching positively by reminding them of, or by helping them generate, better and more motivating teaching activities, which they then were able to time and order to improve planning and subsequent teaching. Notably CLP was also used by teachers successfully to implement new technologies into their teaching, and this improvement in teaching was evidenced by reported student reactions. CLP acted as a powerful personalised form of bottom-up PD that resulted in a lesson plan that provided the necessary scaffolding for teachers to use new or improved activities in their teaching. CLP also significantly helped teachers improve their professional relationships, with teachers enjoying and recommending CLP for PD. CLP also revealed itself to have additional uses including helping teachers use new textbooks or materials in their teaching, developing materials, or for evaluating teaching materials, teacher trainees, or teacher training courses. Based upon this research advice is offered to team leaders of EFL and EAP teachers on how and when to encourage and exploit CLP within their organisations. Teacher trainers are recommended to encourage teachers to exploit CLP and evidence is presented that there seems to be a place for CLP in initial teacher education. This research concludes that CLP is an effective PD tool as it helps teachers learn in a context-specific, collaborative, subject- specific, relevant, and practical way whilst providing support for teacher change. CLP is certainly another tool for EFL and EAP teachers to exploit for PD, or I would argue should replace, or at least be a beneficial first stage of, observation processes for PD. Possible avenues for future research are then considered.