• Ron Kevin Chu

  Author

• Cristie Ann Jaca

  Author

Key stakeholders such as the government and the academe observed that despite the
Philippines’ fine performance in terms of English competency, concerns regarding the state of its
competitive advantage were raised. Stakeholders agreed that the country needs to step up its
efforts in enhancing the quality of its English teaching and learning as a vital skill of its
workforce. This initiative can strengthen the Philippines' distinct advantage in this part of the
world. This study was conducted at an ESL school in Cebu City, Philippines where voluntary
teachers participated in answering the Cambridge English’s online development tracker tool.
Results were tabulated and categorized according to the four stages of the Cambridge English
Teaching Framework: Foundation, Developing, Proficient, and Expert for each of the
framework’s five categories: Learning & the Learner; Teaching, Knowledge, & assessment;
Language Ability ; Language Knowledge & Awareness ; and Professional Development &
Values. Follow-up interviews were then conducted in order to explain their results as a means of
validating the data provided. The findings revealed that the professional development of ESL
Filipino teachers are influenced by a variety of factors namely their educational background and
the successful application of their learnings and skills into their teaching practice or lack thereof,
learning from the materials that have been provided by the school as well as taking some
initiative to utilize external resources, collaboration and learning/feedback from other teachers,
doing their own reflection, upholding their personal beliefs of what it means to be a teacher, and
the years of teaching experience they have managed to accumulate including the skills and
experiences some teachers have also managed to accumulate through their respective assigned
job responsibilities in addition to their teaching practices. It was concluded that a comprehensive
and systematic continuous professional development (CPD) program could be devised so as to
ensure that ESL Filipino teachers are to be thoroughly and continuously guided to maximize the
enhancement and sustainability of their professional development levels.

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