The Islamic University- Gaza Deanery of Higher Education Faculty of ...

outcomes for teachers and for their students as well. Such successful results obtained throughthe study highlighted main key features of effective inservice training programmes as contentfocus, active learning, collaboration and coherence.Confirming the previous positive results, Ye He et al., (2009) evaluated the impact of atraining programme designed by US Department of Education on teachers' and their ESLlearners' achievements. The programme was designed to address the language andachievement gap between ESL learners (learners living in USA and whose native language isnot English) and non-ESL learners (native Americans) by providing a comprehensiveinservice training programme to their teachers in two school Zone in South Carolina in USA.Two school Zones with 22 teachers and their 235 ESL learners were chosen as a sample.Data were collected through pre-post ESL knowledge Inventory and Feedback, with Likertscale items and open ended questionnaire distributed before and after the programme. Inaddition, an English language proficiency test was also used to measure learners overallimprovements. Analysis of the gathered data showed that 86% of the participants ranked theprogramme so positive, 14% cited some negative aspects involved as too much information,lack of practical strategies. Concerning ESL learners‟ outcomes, test results proved thatstudents‟ scores were higher in 2008 than in 2007. Commenting on such positive findings, theresearcher emphasized that research-based, needs-oriented, collaboratively designed inservicetraining programmes can provide teachers with useful strategies and resources. In this wayteachers can move beyond "Just good teaching" (2009:8)The final study in this category was carried out by Buysse et al., (2009) to evaluate atraining programme targeting ESL learners‟ early language and literacy skills throughupdating their teachers' knowledge, skills and practices. The study adopted an experimentaldesign with overall number of participants of 55 teachers along with their 193 studentsdivided in 26 teachers with 92 students in the experimental group and 29 teachers with their- 78 -