This post is basically an extended comment on Clare Fielder’s interesting post, Taking Control of your Teaching Career with the European Profiling Grid.
There is a lot to like about it in that it is systematic – sort of like the CEFR. It also tends to assume that you are intending to spend time near classrooms if not remaining in teaching; DoS-type progression is in it but so is the path of expert practitioner.
There are some flaws in it: it doesn’t really apply exactly to small department contexts. It also stops fairly abruptly; not blowing my own trumpet (well, maybe a bit) but if you’re at the far end already, where do you go next? I don’t intend to leave the classroom to be a Big ELT manager or materials designer for a big publisher, so then what?
These are fairly minor criticisms though, seeing as a lot of TEFLers have a shelf life of about 3-5 years. It would still be an interesting read for anybody who has a few years under their belt but if you’ve worked across contexts, what else is there to do without changing countries or companies for the sake of change?
Taking Control of your Development
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Hi! Thanks for your comments! I agree with your points, actually! Though, I do think that even teachers with lots of experience teaching might benefit from being reminded to reach out to less-experienced colleagues, or get involved more in course design, or volunteering for other responsibilities, etc – so it may still does encourage a broaden range of developmental areas. And anyone who thinks they covering all of these areas pretty well, well hats off, and it would seem to me that this is a good way to continue to be happy as a teacher for a long time to come! 🙂
Thanks for your comment, Clare.
It is good as a reminder, I think. Perhaps it would also be good to tie it to pay scales; I’m not sure if it would’ve good to replicate the terrible paper chase that is performance management in English state schools but some kind of notion of being paid more for greater responsibility would be a welcome development in ELT.