Paper Title
Continuous Professional Development Training for In-Service ESL Teachers In India: Relevance and Challenges

Abstract
The aim of this study is to understand the usefulness and appropriacy of the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programs arranged by the respective government departments or councils to the in-service Undergraduate public institutions’ teachers, in Andhra Pradesh, India. The focus is on how the needs of the teachers to upskill themselves are perceived as common to everyone and how effective such training programs are when the teaching contexts and environments differ from teacher to teacher. While 43.58% of teachers felt that such training programs are very relevant, only 12.8% felt that the content in these training programs is appropriate. On the other hand, 56.42% felt that the CPD programs organized by the concerned department are not very relevant to their teaching needs and conditions and 87.2% felt that the content is not very relevant to their teaching conditions. The results of the study implicate that giving freedom to the teachers to choose the training programs as per their skills and needs would be more meaningful than the training given based on the common needs perceived by the concerned councils/departments. Keywords - Continuous Professional Development, Indian ESL teachers, teacher training relevance, CPD challenges