Professional Learning for Languages Educators: Relating Contemporary Professional Learning Foci to Teachers' Evaluations of the 21st AFMLTA International Languages Conference 2017

Abstract

A proliferation of recent research around effective professional learning for educators repeatedly focuses on several key themes: the importance of communities of practice and collaboration in professional learning, the linking of teachers’ self-efficacy and motivation with professional learning, targeted professional learning goals ‘backward mapped’ to classroom practice and pedagogy, and relevant career-stage professional learning. In this paper the researchers relate these key foci to the outcomes of the evaluation of the 21st AFMLTA International Languages Conference held on the Gold Coast in July 2017. Over 300 delegates from around Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the UK and the US attended the conference. AFMLTA biennial conference evaluation data has been systematically collected since the 2011 conference held in Darwin, with subsequent conferences held in Canberra (2013) and Melbourne (2015), and most recently the Gold Coast (2017), providing increasing longitudinal data for comparison and analysis. The conferences continue to receive very positive feedback, which can be related to its role in providing opportunities to address the key themes identified in the literature considered here: providing a community of practice for teachers of languages; promoting self-efficacy and motivation through participation in collegial networking and engagement with leading research and practice in the field; gaining theoretically-informed practice inspiration and ideas to map into their own practice; and engaging in sessions and collaborative discussions suitable to their career-stage. Conference evaluations and regular review of relevant literature inform ongoing strategic planning and decisions on professional learning provision for languages educators by the AFMLTA, which extends to the biennial conferences, face-to-face professional learning programs on targeted content, webinars recorded for both synchronous and asynchronous engagement, and presentations and workshops in state and territory and language-specific association professional learning events.