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What do those with experience of delivering and/or receiving ELT INSET feel arethe ways in which it can be made to work as well as possible?The setting chosen for attempting to generate answers to this question was thestate school, basic education sector of the Philippines national education system.This type of situation was selected, as indicated earlier, because it was regardedas representative of the kind of location in which the majority of ELT is practised(cf. Holliday, 1994), in terms of i) geographical location (outside the AnglophoneWest), ii) type of institution (government-funded) and iii) educational level (primaryand secondary). In this way it was hoped that the relevance of the study would bemaximised. The choice of the Philippines in particular as a location of this kind wasbecause of the researchers’ extensive prior involvement with a number of INSETand research projects there (see, e.g., Waters & Vilches, 2008).Four Department of Education (DepEd) administrative Divisions within thePhilippines – two metropolitan and two provincial – were selected for datagathering.This mixture was chosen in order to attempt to take into account theway in which experiences and perspectives can typically differ within a nationalcontext in terms of these two types of locale (O’Sullivan, 2004).The research participants in all of these sites comprised a cross-section ofpersonnel with experience of receiving and/or providing ELT INSET – viz.,elementary and secondary English teachers, ELT trainers, school Principals, headsof department, and so on – and were identified by DepEd according to criteriaprovided by the researchers.Data were generated in approximately equal quantities across the four locationsby a mixture of qualitative as well as quantitatively-oriented methods, in order toattempt to multiply and triangulate perspectives, as follows:By semi-structured interviews with:■■■■■■■■■■■■4 x Elementary School English teachers4 x Secondary School English teachers6 x ELT Trainers4 x Elementary School Principals4 x Secondary School ELT Heads of Department4 x DepEd headquarters personnel with particular responsibility for INSETprovisionBy focus group meetings with:■■4 groups of Elementary and Secondary school English teachers■■ 5 groups of ELT trainersBest Practice INSET | 317