The training, (Re) Defining Institutional Effectiveness: Agility & Adaptability – Academic Management Competency Framework was designed to provide an understanding of strategies for identifying staff needs and developing professional development programs in Turkish Higher Education institutions by Selen Şirin Dülger, Serkan Aras and Sultan Zeydan from Özyeğin University School of Languages, an Eaquals accredited member with the support of Eaquals and Macmillan Education.

The training included a mixture of face-to-face and online sessions, interactive discussions, and hands-on activities. The first meeting was held online on November 25. The face-to-face sessions were held in İstanbul on December 1 and 2, 2023. 33 participants from 29 Higher Education institutions around Turkey and Cyprus attended the training. The participants included teacher trainers, directors, coordinators, and teachers.

On the first day of the training, the participants had a chance to establish an understanding of effective professional development and explored and reflected on techniques for identifying staff needs. The face-to-face sessions started with Eaquals Executive Director Lou McLaughlin’s session on December 1 and she informed the participants about Eaquals and AMCF in her session. The participants also focused on setting up an observation culture in their institutions through a session delivered by Nergis Uyan, the director of School of Languages.  Throughout two days, the trainers focused on how to conduct lesson observations, provide effective feedback, develop and deliver in-house sessions, and coach and mentor teachers. The training was finalized with the participants reflecting on all the sessions and coming up with an institutional action plan considering their professional development needs.

 

The feedback collected from the participants was very positive and encouraging. They reported that they found the training beneficial and effective as they were provided with various ideas and practices with regards to professional development that they could implement in their own institutions.

Below is some of the feedback from the participants:

The training was really effective, and I will be able to use a lot of ideas to help establish PDU office in my institution. I have received fundamental insights into organising this unit in a systematic way and this training was given in the right time.

There was something about this training event that I really would like to share with you. I loved the balance between hands on activities and lectures. In recent training events almost all training sessions are based on “what do you think, what does this group thing” conversations. It was good to apply theory into practice.

‘The training was very useful for me personally because it was the first serious step in my career toward teacher training. I learned lots of points and added up to my knowledge. Some points were made clear to me. I’d like to express my gratitude to Lou, Nergis, Selen, Sultan, and Serkan who all enlightened me in various ways.’

‘I would like to thank you for this effective training. I found the opportunity to review the PD system in my institution and I’ll bring the ideas to improve our implementations in my bag.’

We express our heartfelt thanks to Eaquals and Macmillan Education for their invaluable support and collaboration.