Standards for ESL/EFL Teachers of Adults (2008)

Standards for ESL/EFL Teachers of
Adult Learners, published in 2008,
offers performance indicators,
vignettes, and evaluation tools for
instructors. These clearly organized
components will help instructors
identify the qualities and practices to
pursue in their teaching.
The standards in this book address
planning, instructing, and assessing as
the basis for effective teaching. These
three core standards lead to five
additional standards that focus on
both the instructor and the
instruction: identity and context,
language proficiency, learning,
content, and commitment and
professionalism.
The standards can be applied to most
settings with adult ESL or EFL learners
and can benefit educators and
administrators in teacher-training
programs, in educational programs,
and in achieving professional
development both personally and
institution-wide.

Standards for ESL/EFL Teachers of Adults Framework

Domain: Planning
Standard 1:

Teachers plan instruction to promote learning and meet learner goals, and modify plans to assure learner engagement and achievement.

Domain: Instructing
Standard 2:

Teachers create supportive environments that engage all learners in purposeful learning and promote respectful classroom interactions.

Domain: Assessing
Standard 3:

Teachers recognize the importance of and are able to gather and interpret information about learning and performance to promote the continuous intellectual and linguistic development of each learner. Teachers use knowledge of student performance to make decisions about planning and instruction “on the spot” and for the future. Teachers involve learners in determining what will be assessed and provide constructive feedback to learners, based on assessments of their learning.

Domain: Identity and Context
Standard 4:

Teachers understand the importance of who learners are and how their communities, heritages and goals shape learning and expectations of learning. Teachers recognize the importance how context contributes to identity formation and therefore influences learning. Teachers use this knowledge of identity and settings in planning, instructing, and assessing.

Domain: Language Proficiency
Standard 5:

Teachers demonstrate proficiency in social, business/workplace and academic English. Proficiency in speaking, listening, reading and writing means that a teacher is functionally equivalent to a native speaker with some higher education.

Domain: Learning
Standard 6:

Teachers draw on their knowledge of language and adult language learning to understand the processes by which learners acquire a new language in and out of classroom settings. They use this knowledge to support adult language learning.

Domain: Content
Standard 7:

Teachers understand that language learning is most likely to occur when learners are trying to use the language for genuine communicative purposes. Teachers understand that the content of the language courser is the language that learners need in order to listen, to talk about, to read and write about a subject matter or content area. Teachers design their lessons to help learners acquire the language they need to successfully communicate in the subject or content areas they want/need to learn about.

Domain: Commitment and Professionalism
Standard 8:

Teachers continue to grow in their understanding of the relationship of second language teaching and learning to the community of English language teaching professionals, the
broader teaching community, and communities at large, and use these understandings to inform and change themselves and these communities.