Presenter deadline extended to 20 January 2023
When: 17 and 18 March 2023
Where: MAS Thulhiriya
Background
The Sri Lankan English Language Teacher Educator Conference grew out of our work with teacher educators, both pre and in -service, in the state sector in Sri Lanka. The Improving Teacher Education in Sri Lanka (iTESL) Project has been running since 2017. Materials were developed based on the needs of both sectors. Teacher educator courses were delivered to over 100 teacher educators in the National Colleges of Education and mentoring and ELT methodology courses were delivered to over 200 in-service advisors and senior teachers. A Community of Practice (COP) was initiated to assist these teacher educators to share best practices and to give them a forum to collaborate. One of the events that the COP were keen to run was a conference in Sri Lanka specifically for English language teacher educators. Although there have been many conferences run by the Sri Lankan English Language Teachers Association (SLELTA) for English teachers, there has never been one for English teacher educators. Our first SLELTEC ran in March 2020 the week before the pandemic closed the country down. Since 2020 the iTESL project changed paths and the focus has been on online delivery of teacher training and on developing and assessing speaking and listening skills in the classroom. The 2023 SLELTEC will reflect this change in emphasis in its themes. The conference is the ideal venue for showcasing and sharing the work of both local pre and in-service teacher educators and for providing a platform to showcase and share the work of other non-project teacher educators both in the country and in the region. This conference is jointly hosted by the Ministry of Education and the British Council.