Upcoming CPD Opportunities: Summer 2025

 Upcoming CPD Opportunities: Summer 2025


In this part of the world, we’re finishing off one set of courses (exam time!) and either looking forward to a loooong summer break from the classroom (be honest, public sector) or preparing for summer courses (private sector). Whatever your commitments over the next three months, if you are interested in squeezing in a bit of self-directed CPD have a look at this latest instalment in the summaries of professional development opportunities in ELT from June to July. As ever, this will be updated regularly, so if I’ve missed something, do let me know in the comments.



TITLE: Macmillan Back-to-school event

PRESENTERS: Allison Posey & Laura Broadbent

DATES & TIMES: Wednesday 27th August 2025 – 11:00, 16:00 & 2130 (GMT)

LANGUAGE: English

ORGANISED BY: Macmillan

TYPE OF EVENT: Free Webinar

SUMMARY

Hello dear teachers,

We don't know how you're going to feel about this, but the new school year is just around the corner! We have an event to help you bounce back fresh, motivated and with some brand new ideas for your teacher toolkit on Wednesday 27th August!

There will be two 30-minute talks:

Allison Posey: Designing Truly Inclusive Classroom Spaces

Laura Broadbent: Digital Must-haves in a Classroom of 2025

Here's what else you can expect:

- A Virtual Goodie Bag made exclusively for this event, including Russell's 5 principles in a printable and shareable format.

- A Certificate of Attendance, evidencing the time you have committed to becoming the great teacher that you are!

Registration/Info 


TITLE: Write Right for Everyone with AI

PRESENTERS: Katherine Reilly

DATES & TIMES: Thursday, 28th August, 2025 09:15 (GMT)

LANGUAGE: English

ORGANISED BY: IATEFL MaWSIG

TYPE OF EVENT: Free Webinar

SUMMARY

What happens when inclusive thinking meets smart technology? This session explores how AI can support ELT materials writers in crafting content that truly connects with today’s diverse classrooms. We’ll examine practical ways to adapt texts, personalize tasks, and reflect real learner experiences, all while promoting creativity, fostering engagement, and inspiring both teachers and students alike.

Registration/Info 


TITLE: English for Employability: Teaching Skills for the Future Workplace

PRESENTER:  Colm Downes

DATES & TIMES: Thursday, 28th August 15:00 – 16:30 (JKT/BKK time; 10:00 CET)

LANGUAGE: English

ORGANISED BY: British Council

TYPE OF EVENT: Free Webinar

SUMMARY

I often hear teachers ask: "How can we prepare our students for the real world, not just the exam room?"This is exactly what I’ll be exploring in my upcoming webinar with EnglishScore:

English for Employability – Teaching Skills for the Future Workforce

In this session, I’ll share how English language teachers can go beyond language proficiency and help their learners build essential workplace and life skills such as negotiation skills and intercultural competence.

In the webinar I'll explore:

  Practical lesson ideas that connect English with workplace skills

  How to build confidence, adaptability, and collaboration in our learners

  Ways AI can support teachers in assessing and developing professional communication skills

The 90 min session will finish with a 30 min live Q&A – a chance to share ideas and experiences.

Registration/Info
 

TITLE: Wellbeing as a collective responsibility: Reframing support for language teachers

PRESENTERS: Christina Gkonou

DATES & TIMES: Saturday, 30th August, 2025 10:00 (GMT)

LANGUAGE: English

ORGANISED BY: IATEFL TTedSIG

TYPE OF EVENT: Free Webinar

SUMMARY

In recent years, the emotional wellbeing of both students and teachers has become a growing concern in education. Yet, we still lack a clear understanding of how the specific pressures faced by English language teachers affect their wellbeing – and how teachers can be supported meaningfully in both the short and long term. This talk explores key dimensions of teacher wellbeing, drawing on recent research and practical insights to propose how wellbeing strategies can be sustainably integrated into teacher education, daily practice, and wider institutional frameworks.

Supporting teacher wellbeing is not solely a personal responsibility. It is a collective and systemic endeavour that involves teacher educators, school leaders, and policy makers working together to create environments where teachers can thrive. By raising awareness and embedding long-term support structures, we not only prevent stress and burnout, but also enable teachers across diverse backgrounds and levels of experience to teach with confidence, empathy, and resilience. The session advocates for a shift in thinking: from treating wellbeing as an individual afterthought to making it a central, ongoing priority in teacher development and school culture.

Registration/Info


TITLE: Second Language Learning and Migrants: agency, affordances and identity positions

PRESENTERS: Naeema Hann

DATES & TIMES: Saturday, 30th August 2025 – 12:00 (GMT)

LANGUAGE: English

ORGANISED BY: IATEFL ESOLSIG & NATECLA

TYPE OF EVENT: Free Webinar

SUMMARY

This event is in collaboration with NATECLA (National Association for Teaching English and other Community Languages to Adults)

Discourses in media, and to an extent in research, assign a deficit identity to migrants especially in terms of skills in the language of their host country. Second Language Acquisition research has traditionally identified language users as learners, particularly in migrant contexts. This positioning may not acknowledge their agency and the affordances (Little & Erickson 2015).

This session explores an alternative view of migrant identity and the role it plays in migrants’ success in acquiring the language of their host country, based on data from a longitudinal study with twenty-eight ESOL learners in Yorkshire. Brainstorm and ranking, questionnaires and interviews were used to gather student and tutor perceptions of factors affecting progress over a period of eighteen months. Data from this study presents evidence of migrants’ agency and the affordances they create for language learning opportunities through language use. The data also suggests identity positions presented by respondents richer than the Ideal L2 Self presented by Dörnyei (2009).

Respondents positioned themselves as individuals highly motivated to learn English, evident from high levels of investment in their learning, with a vision of an Intercultural Ideal L2 Self (IIL2S) (Hann 2012) which included speaking English successfully. While the possibility of an L2 self within a global identity has been presented theoretically (Ryan 2006), this paper presents empirical evidence of the role of the Ideal L2 Self in ESOL learners’ progress with speaking skills. The implications of this positive view of identity are explored for language learning and teaching. Among the questions addressed are:

1. Can an IIL2S self be fostered in ESOL learners so that it contributes to learning? If so, what role does instruction play in the process?

2. What is the relationship between an IIL2S and metacognitive strategies, also shown to be a significant factor in the data?

Registration/Info 



TITLE: Revisiting BELF and where we are now

PRESENTER: Virginia López Grisolía

DATES & TIMES: Sunday, 31st August 2025, 15:00 (GMT)

LANGUAGE: English

ORGANISED BY: IATEFL BESIG

TYPE OF EVENT: Free Webinar

SUMMARY

In this webinar, we will revisit the concept of English as a Business Lingua Franca. As the world's business landscape continues to evolve, we will explore some of BELF recent research and what the implications are for trainers and clients alike.

By revisiting the principles of BELF and examining its current applications, we aim to:

- Enhance our understanding of the role of English in global business communication

- Identify strategies for effective BELF use in diverse business contexts

Registration/Info 


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