EFL Teachers’ Collaborative Continuing Professional Development (CCPD): A Theoretical Review

Teacher collaborations can contribute to student achievement, while also enhance teachers knowledge and experience. Several studies have attempted to investigate the effectiveness of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs, but there remains a gap in knowledge regarding Collaborative Continuing Professional Development (CCPD) from the perspectives of EFL teachers. The article reviews studies that focus on the collaborative continuing professional development of teachers in a number of issues as current debates in the field. The review is framed by theories within the constructivist paradigm. From this perspective, knowledge is perceived as the construction of meaning and understanding within social interaction. Teacher professional development is defined as teachers’ learning: how they learn to learn and how they apply their knowledge in practice to support pupils’ learning. Due to the rate of educational and social change that makes pre-service trainings an inadequate basis for long term professional competence, collaborative continuous professional development is vital for teachers’ updating and upgrading. Collaborative continuous professional development programs designs must be based on effective needs analysis that derives from the teachers’ instructional, pedagogical and content knowledge. This article is a literature review from professional development to collaborative continuous professional development programs.