As part of my ongoing series on how to rank TEFL courses, I did a few hours of research into how the various lists of the best national and international universities are put together. There are plenty of things which are irrelevant to TEFL (e.g. graduate employment rates, as most people could get a TEFL job of some sort with no training at all) or which would be an unrealistically large undertaking to put together (e.g. ranking courses by number of citations of articles by its staff), but there are also quite a few factors that could theoretically be used to grade TEFL courses too, e.g.
– Reputation with employers (and maybe recruiters)
– Reputation with academics
– A standardised questionnaire on student (meaning trainee) satisfaction
– Employers ranking their satisfaction with their employees and stating their qualifications
– Number of publications by staff (especially or only in certain well respected places, e.g. ELTJ), in total and/ or per member of staff
– Courses attracting students (meaning trainees) from countries other than the one they are based in
– Staff/ student ratios
– Earnings of graduates (maybe one year, three years and five years after graduating)
– Entry qualifications
Things which are not relevant for universities but might be similarly useful for ranking TEFL courses include:
– Qualifications and experience of staff (in teaching generally and in teacher training specifically)
– Staff involved in higher level training, e.g. also part-time university staff
– Research published on the topic of those courses
– Specific mention in job ads
– Number of on-site inspections by outside accrediting bodies
– A selection of points which could be given for various kinds of accreditation
– Involvement in things that are given awards such as ELTONs and that award for graded readers whose name I can never remember
– Talks at a selected number of high-profile events, e.g. IATEFL and TESOL
– Previous jobs of trainers (e.g. being a trainer on another course or a manager, rather than just a teacher – could perhaps be judged by number of staff under them or number of trainees)
– Number of courses run and trainees trained by each trainer and by head trainer
– Connections to the top ranked blogs, e.g. the top ones on Onestopblogs (which would exclude TEFLtastic nowadays, boo hoo…)
– Number of centres
– Number of graduates per year
– Number of graduates in its history
– Number of people who have taken that qualification who go on to take further qualifications such as MAs
– Number of people who take that qualification and later work for an agreed list of top level employers, e.g. universities
– Length of employment contract and other benefits of the jobs of graduates of each course
They would be weighted and combined in some way to make the main list, but as with the university rankings, it might then be possible to set up the data so it can be broken down in ways like this:
– By qualifications for teaching kids/ adults/ both
– By online/ face to face/ blended
– By region
– By price
– By number of centres
In future posts on the topic I’ll look at how this can be simplified and done bit by bit. This would, I believe, really make something like this possible. If you want input into how it’s done, have your say!
TEFLtastic 
Alex, just have to say that I’m really glad someone in the ELT blogging world takes such a healthy interest in TEFL qualifications. I typically spend several hours a week turning away applicants for teaching jobs who don’t meet the minimum professional standards of qualification here in Australia. Usually these people are new graduates or fairly experienced but unqualified teachers returning from overseas who have just ploughed several thousand dollars of savings into a course for nothing… and I get to tell them that they’re not actually able to work here after all. Happy times.
Note that (having read with some amusement the recent ****fight with Mr Veldhuisen) I have no objections to organisations running non-Cambridge/Trinity teaching courses provided that they honestly represent themselves in their marketing material and don’t mislead or rip people off. In some contexts some of these courses may even be more useful or appropriate than a Trinity TESOL or CELTA. However, in a multicultural ESOL classroom here in Oz at least they’re usually not.
Interesting that you’re examining a ranking system. In my mind English Teaching quals usually fall into three particular groups:
-Independently monitored, internationally recognised quals with 100+ hours of input and a decent amount of assessed teaching practice. Courses that more prestigious schools will happily accept.
-ELT teaching courses with limited usefulness, that are not independently monitored, may not be as long or intensive as other courses, etc. but which are honestly marketed and run by financially stable organisations.
-Shonky training providers, online courses with no prac, courses without appropriately experienced and qualified trainers and all the other sharks that nibble at the fringes of the ELT world.
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Comparing 4-week TEFL course centres to a university!
Are you serious?
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Billy
Read the post again, will you? Is that what it says??
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How can you use criteria applicable to ranking universities to ranking 4-week TEFL courses?
In my opinion the main objective of a TEFL course is to equip the trainees with practical skills. Why would the number of papers published and other such irrelevant nonsensical criteria by staff be an indicator of excellence?
I can’t see any consideration for teaching practices which are a fundamental part of all TEFL courses.
You seem to focus on numbers (how many…?), but this isn’t a reflection of excellence.
Universities, in general, don’t teach practical skills.
Only members of the CELTA, which has a lot of locations, mafia and a connection to a university would take this seriously. However, I think the result(s) were determined before the blog was written anyway.
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As I wrote, only some of the university criteria are even applicable to TEFL courses, and other similar criteria are probably more important. For example, publications would be given a lot less weighting when judging TEFL course trainers. I don’t think it is completely irrelevant though. TEFL trainers are supposed to be the very cream of our profession – if they aren’t going to publish, who is? It could certainly include articles of practical teaching ideas as well as research, though.
I do have to wonder if everything you say is directly related to your own course. Annoyed at the idea of not being able to mention IATEFL membership because your own site makes/ made a big fuss about it, by any chance? Want to say that publications aren’t important because none of your trainers publish anything perhaps?
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So, you don’t think teaching practices are important or relevant.
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I really truly don’t understand what you mean. Do you mean the number of hours of observed teaching practice? Or do you mean testing the teaching abilities of people coming off the various courses? The latter would be covered by my Iron TEFLer idea and/ or having a survey of employers’ satisfaction with their teachers with various qualifications.
As I said, I am very open to other things to put on the list.
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location, appropriateness and range of ages/levels
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Is that what you meant by “practices”?? And how would one rank such things???
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Well done, Alex.
As I mentioned on the other thread, I think this is a very good idea and it’s certainly worthwhile exploring. There are a few indices that rank world universities, and while there may be some disagreement as to which is in the top 10 or not, there does seem to be a general consensus about the top, middle and lower groups – something which I think would benefit the TEFL industry. I’m not sure what you have in mind in terms simplifying things, but you may want to consider something like having 4-5 bands that correspond to the overall scores. Maybe they could be classified into categories such as gold, silver, bronze and lead.
Food for thought.
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