Take Control of your Professional Development

Sarah Mercer is Professor of Foreign Language Teaching at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research interests include all aspects of the psychology surrounding the foreign language learning experience. She is the author, co-author, and co-editor of several books in this area including, Exploring Psychology for Language Teachers (2015, with Marion Williams and Stephen Ryan), Teacher Wellbeing (2020, with Tammy Gregersen), and Engaging Language Learners in Contemporary Classrooms (2020, with Zoltán Dörnyei). She has published over 150 book chapters and journal articles and has served as Principal Investigator on several funded research projects. In 2018, she was awarded the Robert C. Gardner Award for excellence in second language research by the International Association of Language and Social Psychology (IALSP). Sarah is the author of this paper.

Chris Farrell is Head of Training and Development with Centre of English Studies. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of EAQUALS and he chairs the English UK Teacher Development Advisory Group. He is a guest lecturer at University College Dublin, and has written and delivered online courses for NILE and Trinity College London. Chris is a consultant on this paper.

Donald Freeman is Professor of Education at the School of Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He works on designing and studying equitable access to professional learning opportunities for teachers in a variety of circumstances. He led the Learning4Teaching Project, a decade-long, multi-country study of ELT public-sector teachers’ professional development experiences, and served as senior consultant on ELTeach, an online professional development program for national teachers. He has written widely on language teacher learning and teacher education, including most recently Educating Second Language Teachers (2016) and Rethinking Teacher Professional Development (Routledge, forthcoming 2023). Donald is a consultant on this paper.