Korea TESOL Journal, Vol. 14, No.

Jack C. Richards’ 50 Tips for Teacher Development

Jack C. Richards
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017
Pages: 120 (ISBN 978 1 108 40836 3)

Reviewed by Stewart Gray

INTRODUCTION
Jack C. Richards’ 50 Tips for Teacher Development is a recent
offering from one of the English education industry’s most prominent
veterans, Jack C. Richards. Anyone unfamiliar with Professor Richards
need only refer to the image on the back cover of this slim, new book
– a photograph of the author training teachers in Indonesia in 1973! –
to get a sense of the extent of his experience. In 50 Tips, one title of
several in the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series,
Richards brings his experience to bear on a topic of pressing significance
in our industry today: the professional development of language teachers.

BOOK SUMMARY
The book opens with a brief statement of purpose. The author
affirms the importance of ongoing professional development (PD) for
teachers in the ever-developing language education industry and points
out that his 50 suggested activities can be used by teachers for this
purpose. He remarks that some of the activities can be used by
individual teachers (“particularly those who a relatively new to language
teaching” [p. viii]), while others depend on peer collaboration and
institutional cooperation.
After this, the book proceeds uninterrupted through the titular 50 tips

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for PD. The structure of the presentation of the tips is constant. Each and
every tip occupies two pages. Every two-page tip begins with a short
title (e.g., Tip 22 – “Try doing something differently” [p. 49]), which is
immediately followed by a sentence of purpose that rephrases and
clarifies the title (e.g., “to reflect on teaching by changing the way we
usually do things” [p. 49]). This is then followed by a paragraph in
which the author further expounds on the significance of the tip in
question (e.g., “Much of our teaching is often based on fixed routines...”
[p. 49]). Then, for the remaining page and a half or so, the author
provides a series of numbered (1, 2, 3...) activities that carefully guide
a reader through the implementation of the tip. These numbered activities
are written in plain, easy-to-follow language, and for any given tip may

 provide questions to ask when reflecting on or observing something;

 provide statements to spark discussion with others;
 offer detailed instructions for engaging in some activity, such as
having a teachers’ group meeting (p. 46) or keeping a reflective
journal (pp. 17–18);
 offer examples of the sorts of things the reader might like to write or
say while engaged in the activity (these examples serve to clarify the
sorts of reflection/discussion the author intends for the reader to do);
and/or
 outline some relevant point of theory, such as the different types of
teacher questions (p. 36).

Then finally, for many but not all of the 50 tips, the author provides a
short list of citations and resources for the reader to look up if they
should wish to take their reading further.
While all 50 tips are presented in a common format, there is a
startling degree of variation in their focus and content. The author has
grouped the 50 tips together under a dozen chapter headings according
to the area of teacher PD that they relate to. Understandably, the first
such area covered in the book involves reflecting on and setting goals
for one’s own PD. Thereafter, the areas covered range widely, from
self-observation, to professional knowledge expansion, to research skills
development, to creating an “institutional professional development
culture,” and more still. As so many disparate areas are covered, the
array of particular PD activities for which tips are provided is staggering.
In this single book, a reader can find two pages on analyzing the

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learning needs of students (Tip 12), two pages on presenting at academic

conferences (Tip 46), and two pages on being creative in one’s teaching
practice (Tip 35). And that is to name just three tips – there are 47 more
besides!

EVALUATION
At this point in the review, I must make a confession. Before I had
actually read this book, I did not anticipate thinking very highly of it.
The idea of a paperback book of tips for teachers seemed to me a rather
weak concept in this day and age. After all, speaking as a teacher, if I
wanted “tips,” I could Google them, and doubtlessly find a plethora of
ideas at my convenience. However, having read the book, I will say that
I was wrong to presume as I did – I have found this small book to be
highly informative and accessible, such that it compares favorably in my
mind even to the vast resources of the Internet.
The thing that makes this book so valuable is the sheer density of
it. As mentioned previously, the range of tips on offer is enormous, and
it would be understandable if such varied tips, each filling only two
pages (or in some cases, slightly less!), were individually rather shallow.
Particularly, you might well think that somewhat vague-sounding tips
such as “Be creative” (Tip 35) could not be well treated in two pages.
Yet somehow, the author has managed to do justice to that tip, and
others like it. Drawing on his extensive experience and the wider
academic literature of our field, he has produced and presented a
selection of concise, well-crafted tips that manage to be accessible and
practical without sacrificing the sort of detail and theoretical grounding
that give them substance.
As I give this praise, I have in mind the following particular
qualities of this book: (a) the author’s use of clear, instructive language,
(b) the inclusion of many high-quality prompts and examples, (c) the
inclusion in each tip of just enough theory, and of course (d) the
admirable concision of offering all this up in two pages or less. To take
the very first tip (“Plan goals for professional development” [pp. 2–3])
as an example, one of the author’s activities is designed to encourage
readers to imagine an ideal future self. In this activity, the author first
outlines in a short, clearly written paragraph the importance of having

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an ideal future self-image for motivation. In this paragraph, he employs

one item of jargon (“motivational self-system”), such that an interested
reader might go and search about this term to find out more, while an
uninterested reader can read on without being stopped dead by heavy
theoretical exposition. The author then prompts the reader to “Take some
time to think about” their own ideal future self and provides a short list
of useful examples as a prompt for this thinking (e.g. “Running a small
language school...”). After this list, just to keep things open (thus
balancing support with openness), the author briefly reminds the reader
that they can “visualize (their) own” ideal if none of his suggestions fit.
With this activity duly completed, he follows up perfectly with another
in which the reader is prompted to consider how the ideal image they
just considered might be achieved by particular PD activities.
There is an appropriateness and an elegance to this activity that I
feel is indicative of the author’s level of experience. I am left thinking
that a teacher at any stage of their career would be able to follow the
flow of such activities, and that insight would likely result from doing
so. Perhaps it would be a teacher’s first time to consider an ideal future
self, or perhaps that would be something they had thought of before, but
not recently. In either case, a teacher might benefit from the opportunity
to consider their goals. Furthermore, such activities could be done
individually or could be used as the basis for a productive teachers’ PD
group meeting. Finally and significantly, the sheer brevity of this (and
every) tip means that it is not especially time-consuming to read. A busy
teacher could read through a tip on their break time, and this is no small
benefit, considering how destructive an unending sense of busyness can
be to ongoing PD.
So, for teachers new and veteran, and for those responsible for the
PD of other teachers, I recommend this book. It is packed with valuable
ideas, so numerous and varied that it is hard to imagine a teacher so
experienced that they would be unable to find something to inspire them.
That said, the book is no mere list of tips – it is a wonderfully concise,
step-by-step guide that a teacher could really use to further their PD.
And though one might search all over the Internet for “teacher
professional development tips,” one would be unlikely to find such a
comprehensive, tightly structured, and actively supportive resource as
this book.

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THE REVIEWER
Stewart Gray is an English teacher at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. He
completed his MA–TESOL at Dankook University and is a PhD student at the
University of Leeds. He is a facilitator of KOTESOL’s Reflective Practice SIG.
His academic interests include reflective practice, critical pedagogies, and
language and identity. Email: ec_391@hotmail.com

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