Continuous professional development through interaction and collaborative action research

Though language is a form of interaction, but ironically language teachers do not seem to interact with one another. In fact one of the reasons why professionalism in its true sense lacks in teaching profession is the absence of interaction among teachers and the vacuum in turn caused by this self-withdrawal. Definitely interaction does help to enhance professionalism in a field. The models of professional development viz. craft model, applied science model and reflective model propounded by Michael Wallace are effective ways of promoting interaction. Paradoxically, although teachers spend their lives in the company of others (sometimes a very large company, if we think of the size of certain classes), it is in many ways a lonely profession. This professional isolation is ultimately a barrier to professional development. Collaborative action research can be a helpful means to break down the professional isolation of the teacher and helps in tapping the experience of the wider language teaching community. My attempt in this paper would be to talk about various strategies useful for collaborative action research and interaction which ultimately facilitates continuous professional development of a teacher. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ALSC 2012