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Justin Trullinger
Joined: 28 Jan 2005
Posts: 3110
Location: Seoul, South Korea and Myanmar for a bit
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 Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 4:20 pm Post subject: |
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Hi again-
I'll just add a quick thought. It isn't the name of the cert- it's the content.
But as one of my responsibilities includes hiring teachers, the name is one of the best ways I have to check content. With some courses, I know from the name what the course consisted of, and what the trainers are like, in terms of training and experience.
This is true of the major name brands. Also of the locally offered generic courses. (If they're local, I'll get a lot of apps, so I stop by to meet the team.)
But I can't do this with generics in other parts of the world. So it makes me much more hesitant where they're concerned.
But lets be straight here- the cert is not enough. I repeat, the cert is not enough. Word to the Wise mentioned an experience with a CELTA grad who didn't cut it, in his experience. This isn't an uncommon experience. All any of these certs can possibly do is to certify the fact that someone, under pressured, evaluated circumstances, put in the work to hit a minimum required standard. None can guarantee anything about the seriousness they'll put into their job, their long term performance, or anything else.
Regardless what cert they have, in addition to knowing about the cert, you have to do all you can to learn about the individual.
Best,
Justin |
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Chancellor
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 1337
Location: Ji'an, China - if you're willing to send me cigars, I accept donations :)
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| Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 5:18 pm Post subject: Re: What are some legit TEFL organizations? |
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| word_to_the_wise wrote: |
| denise wrote: |
Word to the wise: why are you so threatened by generic courses, and why do you insist on asking people what their credentials are?
d |
Because when you move into management denise, you need to know that what you're getting is as close to the real deal as is realistically possible. |
Which is why you look at the content of a particular course and the qualifications of the course instructors instead of making blanket statements like "CELTA or Trinity or you don't have a real certification." If you can't be bothered to do that much, at least look at the accrediting bodies that accredited the particular course.
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I'm prepared to modify my view that there are alternatives to CELTA and Trinity (SIT possibly) but that they must comply with a minimum of:
i) 120 hours face to face (absolutely not distance/online) |
Considering that even accredited (by government recognized accrediting bodies such as those in the US) universities are doing many of their degree programs (including masters degrees) online or through distance learning, what is your objection here? This is the 21st century: you're going to find more and more education by accredited institutions being done online. If the same material that is taught onsite is being taught by the same school online, what difference does it make? For example, I know of at least one regionally accreditied university in the United States that does some of its degree programs online (though you can pursue those same programs onsite): the only difference is that the online courses for those degrees are done over eight weeks instead of an entire semester; the course content is exactly the same whether online or onsite (meaning the online course is much more intensive). So, what exactly is your objection?
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| ii) A minimum of 6 (ideally 10) TPs with fee-paying students |
Absolutely! I don't think anyone here disagrees with this.
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| iii) External validation by a recognised, credible educational establishment |
The question, though, is "Recognized and credible according to whom?" Any course can say it has been accredited but I'm sure you'll agree with me that not all "accrediting bodies" are alike. For example, who are the Open and Distance Learning Quality Council and the Scottish Quality Management System (SQMS) and what are their qualifications to "accredit" any courses? What kinds of accreditation agencies would you say are qualified to accredit TESL/TEFL courses? You've already dismissed out of hand (in another post) courses accredited by the government of Canada: so, what kinds of accreditation agencies would you say are qualified?
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| When your job is directly affected by the performance of your staff denise, you'll see it all rather differently. I can guarantee that. |
But you know full well that where a person got his training doesn't guarantee that person's job performance (as indicated by the part of your post quoted below). George W. Bush has an MBA from Yale but has never succeeded in business and he most certainly wasn't a very good President.
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| As a footnote, I've posted elsewhere that I don't think it's healthy for the EFL profession to only have two 'brand names', and I've also stated that having CELTA doesn't necessarily mean you're any good. However,they are globally recognised benchmarks which, especially in the case of CELTA, have been around for decades and have been subjected to constant re-appraisal as the nature of EFL changes. |
Globally recognized only because they've been around long enough to where schools have become familiar with their existence. I doubt very much that most of these schools have ever actually taken a look at the content of a CELTA course or the qualifications of those teaching a CELTA course. They're running on name-recognition only. Besides, any school doing a course can claim to be "globally recognized." I would suggest to you that you give up your snobbish elitism and actually look into some of the "generic" courses out there instead of just dismissing them out of hand. If you don't, you're going to find yourself left in the dust by the ever-faster pace of technology, and being unable to hire any teachers because none of them will have attended an onsite course as onsite courses will have ceased to exist (though you and I may both be old and grey before then). |
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Chancellor
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 1337
Location: Ji'an, China - if you're willing to send me cigars, I accept donations :)
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| Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 5:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Justin Trullinger wrote: |
Hi again-
I'll just add a quick thought. It isn't the name of the cert- it's the content. |
A point I've been trying to make.
| Quote: |
But as one of my responsibilities includes hiring teachers, the name is one of the best ways I have to check content. With some courses, I know from the name what the course consisted of, and what the trainers are like, in terms of training and experience.
This is true of the major name brands. Also of the locally offered generic courses. (If they're local, I'll get a lot of apps, so I stop by to meet the team.) |
I disagree with you here only because a course may have content with which you're familiar but that doesn't mean a particular person who took the course necessarily did more than barely pass.
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| But I can't do this with generics in other parts of the world. So it makes me much more hesitant where they're concerned. |
But you can check the content of those courses and look into the qualifications of the course instructors: it just takes a bit more work and you aren't necessarily in a position to personally go visit the school and talk face-to-face with those running the course. Hence the value of accrediting bodies (assuming the accrediting body itself is valid).
| Quote: |
| But lets be straight here- the cert is not enough. I repeat, the cert is not enough. Word to the Wise mentioned an experience with a CELTA grad who didn't cut it, in his experience. This isn't an uncommon experience. All any of these certs can possibly do is to certify the fact that someone, under pressured, evaluated circumstances, put in the work to hit a minimum required standard. None can guarantee anything about the seriousness they'll put into their job, their long term performance, or anything else. |
Agreed. Certification is merely a starting point.
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| Regardless what cert they have, in addition to knowing about the cert, you have to do all you can to learn about the individual. |
This is true of any prospective employer. |
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Chancellor
Joined: 31 Oct 2005
Posts: 1337
Location: Ji'an, China - if you're willing to send me cigars, I accept donations :)
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| Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 5:38 pm Post subject: |
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| dreadnought v.2 wrote: |
| Chancellor wrote: |
My objection is to this sort of elitism that some people seem to have. I compared this discussion to the debate between brand name and generic. To use another analogy, I see this as something akin to saying "If you didn't go to Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, or Yale then you don't have a real college degree."
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I'm not sure that's the best analogy in the world. Very few people believe that if you didn't go to any of those colleges then you don't have a real degree for the simple reason that there are accreditation standards for universities and colleges that everyone knows and understands. |
The analogy is entirely appropriate. Word-to-the-wise is essentially taking the view that only CELTA and Trinity are acceptable and that's like saying only Oxford, Harvard or Yale are acceptable. We're talking about TEFL certification courses.
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| Perhaps a more suitable analogy would be to say that people who have gone to an unaccredited university or college or who got their qualification through a diploma mill don't have a real degree, and there might be some truth in that. That's how I see the difference between Trinity, CELTA, SIT and the mass of generic, unaccredited TESOL courses out there. I wouldn't hire someone for a job who has a college degree from a diploma mill because I have no guarantee that they really earned it and demonstrated the basic knowledge required to pass the exams. Similarly, I wouldn't hire a teacher who has gone through a generic TESOL course because I don't know exactly what they've done and what standards they were held to. |
Your analogy is not valid because we're not talking about accredited vs. not accredited, we're talking about brand name vs. generic. Your statement presumes that if it's a generic school then it must be unaccredited. If you're too lazy to look into the course that a person took - or at least look at what bodies accredited the course, then maybe you shouldn't be in a position to hire teachers.
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| The thing about the brand name courses is that it's actually possible to fail them, so you know anyone who's passed it has met some basic teaching standards. And secondly, because they are externally assessed, you know that regardless of where they took it, the courses followed a similar syllabus and the teachers were held to roughly the same standards. For an employer who might be looking at dozens of applications for a job, that kind of information is extremely useful. |
It's also possible to fail many of the generic courses. Don't presume to think that only CELTA and Trinity are externally assessed and don't presume to think that just because an external body assessed it that the course is accredited. You really have to look at which bodies assessed and accredited a particular course. Word-to-the-wise dismissed out of hand a course (250 hours of course content, 10 hours of teaching observation and 10 hours of teaching real ESL students) accredited by the government of Canada. One must conclude that he thinks that being accredited by the government of Canada is not a valid accreditation. So, let me ask you what I asked him: What accrediting bodies do you consider valid? |
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