Are you asking what foreigners do for professional development or what licensed-in-Japan teachers do?
for the former, I am unsure but I think the answer is **JALT**.
For the latter, the system changed this year. Until this year, they had to pay to take continuing ed offered at universities during breaks in semesters. The teachers hated it because they had to pay for classes that were required to have assignments and grading that have little impact on them. The government is rethinking how to do this.
Not sure about teachers in the local system but for international schools is pretty standard. If there’s a PD you want to attend, generally your school sends you and pays for it.
It’s my first year here so I’ve not gone to any yet but my colleague says usually they’re in the major cities like Tokyo/Osaka and the school pays for hotel, transportation, PD and it’s still considered a work day. Pretty similar to what we had back home (Aus). Depending on your department you might also go for conferences; I’m part of the careers team and they said they’ve attended fairs and conferences overseas to build relationships with universities and other intl schools.
Most eikaiwa and ALTs do nothing, because they don’t take teaching seriously and they aren’t required to do anything by the companies they work for. They also wouldn’t get credit for it, or paid for it, even if they did – which is a real shame.
Licensed teachers, university instructors, ALTs and eikaiwa teachers who do take teaching seriously usually are usually a member of one or more organizations, such as Japan Association for Language Teachers (JALT) or the Japan Association for College Teachers (JACET), or some other. There are workshops and conferences, as well as FB group for each individual special interest group (SIG). Most universities give the instructors a research budget, and I would imagine some schools also will pay for licensed teachers and ALTs to attend, but I have never once heard of an eikaiwa who would pay for professional development, so they likely pay for it themselves. Actually, each year at the JALT conference I meet a number of teachers from different contexts who mention that they had to pay by themselves to go.
If you want to know how to join, what kind of presentations there are, or dates of conferences, you can find out more about these organizations and others by using this nifty tool called “Google”. Good luck.
At the university level it depends on how much the school has and, for the lower schools, your position in the department. Outside the little English world almost everything is in Japanese. English may be used sometimes when the topic is specific and there isn’t really any Japanese (yet) or when a famous foreign guest is there. As a tenured facility member you are expected to be competent in Japanese. ^(reading more than public speaking)
Go to mandatories meetings and try not to sleep
Complete guest showed up to be rude about ALTs? Wow. It must be literally any time of the day, any day of the week. Another organisation to check out is ETJ
In my experience-
Eikaiwa- no real PD. There might be training in company policy, or new company materials, but that’s it.
Business English- same as above.
University (contract)- encouraged to attend JALT conferences et al (and claim cost from research budget), JALT membership was paid for by one or two universities. There have also been semi-regular training/workshops at some universities I’ve worked at.
This is very much a “your milage may very situation” but I found a one-week training workshop for TESOL teachers a few summers ago. Orginally my BoE wanted me to take nenkyu, but after going back and forth I convinced them that letting me attend it would be miles better then just having me sit in the staff room all day. I still had to pay out of pocket to attend, but at least in in the end they let me go without taking nenkyu, which was nice.
I think there’s one called ETJ? I can’t remember exactly. Continuing education isn’t much of a thing in general I think. I was talking about it with my boss and she said the Japanese teachers in public schools don’t really do that sort of thing. They should of course. Especially the Japanese English teachers. Their English is terrible for the most part.
JALT, JACET, ETJ, smaller ones exist too. I know JALT local chapters (local to certain areas of Japan) usually have a few lectures/workshops a year. The Special Interest Groups (SIGS) usually do annual or biannual events/conferences. JALT has 2 large conferences a year, PanSIG which is put on by the SIGs and JALT National which is arranged by the JALT officers.
Many people do go to these, mostly university teachers. Though you have to know what to expect going in. Some presentations are very research-based and some are more practical.
I often go to the JALT events as a presenter for resume building. This year though I’m going as part of a PD requirement for my doctorate.
I’ve never gotten compensation from these as I don’t have a conference or research budget. Though as a SIG officer I do get some compensation for our SIGs conference. Hotel and dinner.
When I was an ALT the school board put on PD events every few months. They’d often ask the ALTs to come for the English parts. These were nice but not really PD, more of teambuilding. These were during working hours.
Think most are covered. If you become a ken or city with a special license you get professional development normally a day week early on. Its your normal run of the mill education stuff. Some of it English teacher related, some of it general.
11 comments
Are you asking what foreigners do for professional development or what licensed-in-Japan teachers do?
for the former, I am unsure but I think the answer is **JALT**.
For the latter, the system changed this year. Until this year, they had to pay to take continuing ed offered at universities during breaks in semesters. The teachers hated it because they had to pay for classes that were required to have assignments and grading that have little impact on them. The government is rethinking how to do this.
Not sure about teachers in the local system but for international schools is pretty standard. If there’s a PD you want to attend, generally your school sends you and pays for it.
It’s my first year here so I’ve not gone to any yet but my colleague says usually they’re in the major cities like Tokyo/Osaka and the school pays for hotel, transportation, PD and it’s still considered a work day. Pretty similar to what we had back home (Aus). Depending on your department you might also go for conferences; I’m part of the careers team and they said they’ve attended fairs and conferences overseas to build relationships with universities and other intl schools.
Most eikaiwa and ALTs do nothing, because they don’t take teaching seriously and they aren’t required to do anything by the companies they work for. They also wouldn’t get credit for it, or paid for it, even if they did – which is a real shame.
Licensed teachers, university instructors, ALTs and eikaiwa teachers who do take teaching seriously usually are usually a member of one or more organizations, such as Japan Association for Language Teachers (JALT) or the Japan Association for College Teachers (JACET), or some other. There are workshops and conferences, as well as FB group for each individual special interest group (SIG). Most universities give the instructors a research budget, and I would imagine some schools also will pay for licensed teachers and ALTs to attend, but I have never once heard of an eikaiwa who would pay for professional development, so they likely pay for it themselves. Actually, each year at the JALT conference I meet a number of teachers from different contexts who mention that they had to pay by themselves to go.
If you want to know how to join, what kind of presentations there are, or dates of conferences, you can find out more about these organizations and others by using this nifty tool called “Google”. Good luck.
At the university level it depends on how much the school has and, for the lower schools, your position in the department. Outside the little English world almost everything is in Japanese. English may be used sometimes when the topic is specific and there isn’t really any Japanese (yet) or when a famous foreign guest is there. As a tenured facility member you are expected to be competent in Japanese. ^(reading more than public speaking)
Go to mandatories meetings and try not to sleep
Complete guest showed up to be rude about ALTs? Wow. It must be literally any time of the day, any day of the week. Another organisation to check out is ETJ
In my experience-
Eikaiwa- no real PD. There might be training in company policy, or new company materials, but that’s it.
Business English- same as above.
University (contract)- encouraged to attend JALT conferences et al (and claim cost from research budget), JALT membership was paid for by one or two universities. There have also been semi-regular training/workshops at some universities I’ve worked at.
This is very much a “your milage may very situation” but I found a one-week training workshop for TESOL teachers a few summers ago. Orginally my BoE wanted me to take nenkyu, but after going back and forth I convinced them that letting me attend it would be miles better then just having me sit in the staff room all day. I still had to pay out of pocket to attend, but at least in in the end they let me go without taking nenkyu, which was nice.
I think there’s one called ETJ? I can’t remember exactly. Continuing education isn’t much of a thing in general I think. I was talking about it with my boss and she said the Japanese teachers in public schools don’t really do that sort of thing. They should of course. Especially the Japanese English teachers. Their English is terrible for the most part.
JALT, JACET, ETJ, smaller ones exist too. I know JALT local chapters (local to certain areas of Japan) usually have a few lectures/workshops a year. The Special Interest Groups (SIGS) usually do annual or biannual events/conferences. JALT has 2 large conferences a year, PanSIG which is put on by the SIGs and JALT National which is arranged by the JALT officers.
Many people do go to these, mostly university teachers. Though you have to know what to expect going in. Some presentations are very research-based and some are more practical.
I often go to the JALT events as a presenter for resume building. This year though I’m going as part of a PD requirement for my doctorate.
I’ve never gotten compensation from these as I don’t have a conference or research budget. Though as a SIG officer I do get some compensation for our SIGs conference. Hotel and dinner.
When I was an ALT the school board put on PD events every few months. They’d often ask the ALTs to come for the English parts. These were nice but not really PD, more of teambuilding. These were during working hours.
Think most are covered. If you become a ken or city with a special license you get professional development normally a day week early on. Its your normal run of the mill education stuff. Some of it English teacher related, some of it general.