The Northern Association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (NATESOL) is a Manchester-based teacher’s association that has been supporting the professional development of English Language Teachers since 1984. They hold several events throughout the year, including an annual conference. This year’s conference, will be be held on Saturday 20th June 2015 at Salford City College, and if you happen to be around the NorthWest of England at the time, I very strongly recommend attending.

The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Continuous and continuing: Professional Development through Teaching, Learning and Research’. To quote the conference organisers:

Professional development should be at the heart of every teacher’s practice, but it can have many different stimuli. Teaching itself can be a developmental process if we experiment with new ideas and reflect carefully on the outcomes. Sharing teaching ideas with our colleagues and others can also help us reshape our thinking. Secondly, our own learning experiences can be extremely fruitful, whether they are on formal courses specifically related to language teaching, at shorter sessions or conferences such as those offered by teaching associations like NATESOL, or through being learners ourselves, of another language or indeed of any subject. Finally, we can develop our knowledge and skills through research. If that is conducted in the classroom, the experiences of our own learners can be catalysts for our development. If it is through larger research projects, we can make a more wide-ranging contribution to the development of professional policy and practice.

Papers are invited on any aspect of professional or teacher development. Prospective presenters are asked to complete a proposal form, and return it to Mike Beaumont (michael.beaumont@zen.co.uk), copied to Keith Gould (k.gould@salford.ac.uk). The deadline for proposals is Friday 15 May 2015.

Featured image by Dungodung (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons