College of Education and Human Development

Academic team from Mason to work with Tajikistan school leaders

Shortly after returning home from an October 2022 visit to Uzbekistan as part of a project to enhance the English language teaching skills of educators in that country, a faculty team from Mason’s School of Education in the College of Education and Human Development received word that they had been approved for a grant in support of an identical project, this time involving school leaders and teachers in Tajikistan. Dr. Joan K. Shin, Director of Mason’s Global Online Teacher Education Center, is principal investigator of this new initiative titled “Tajikistan Secondary School English Teachers Professional Development Program.” The project is sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan and will be administered by the American Councils for International Education.

Modeled after the ongoing English Speaking Nation Program initiative in Uzbekistan for which Mason researchers have created professional development and training materials, the objective of the Tajikistan project is to improve the fluency of educators in English so that they become comfortable using English to provide instruction in their classrooms. The project in Tajikistan will provide professional development to 440 teacher leaders who will cascade those resources to 4,000 English teachers throughout the county.

The programs in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are two of the many U.S. Department of State projects that provide outreach to English language teachers and teacher leaders around the world through this cascading model. The Mason team at GOTEC has received grant funding to produce several online professional development courses that have assisted English teachers in more than 100 countries. One of these is the “Teaching English to Young Learners (TEYL)” global online course which is being offered to 400 teachers during the 2022-2023 academic year. This online course introduces educators in the international community to the most current methods and evidence-based approaches to teaching English as a foreign language to young learners, ages 3 to 10. To learn about other online professional development courses available to teachers around the world through Mason’s GOTEC, please click here.