Listening to Colombian Teachers’ Voices :Perceived competences for ELT practitioners

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of the first stage of a larger project geared towards the construction of a framework of competencies and skills for Colombian ELT practitioners that would provide teachers with guidelines and direction on their professional performance. In this first stage, we explored perceptions and beliefs that a group of Colombian ELT teachers has towards the ideal competencies for the performance of their job. We examined these perceptions through exploratory, mixed-method research using quantitative and qualitative data of a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews through the grounded theory approach. The results suggest that participants acknowledge competencies as a part of their professional development, but the value assigned to each of them varies according to the teachers and their contexts. We conclude that teaching calls for an array of competencies at different levels and that some competencies, namely educational policy awareness and self-regulation, are disregarded by this specific group of Colombian English Teachers. There is a need for a point of reference that can guide professional development and teacher education so that teachers have more clarity of what they have or need to improve on.