A sociocultural exploration of EFL lecturers' PD for supporting scholarly writing in Indonesia

Beny Hamdani, Nunung Suryati, Mirjam Anugerahwati and Evynurul Laily Zen
Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia

Professional development (PD) has become increasingly vital for English as a foreign language (EFL) lecturers who teach writing for scholarly publication (TWSP) in Indonesian higher education. While academic publishing has gained growing prominence as a key indicator of institutional and individual success, limited research has examined how PD supports EFL lecturers in developing the pedagogical and scholarly competencies required to teach writing for scholarly publication effectively. Addressing this gap, our study explores Indonesian EFL lecturers' lived experiences of PD in TWSP from a sociocultural perspective. Drawing on Barkhuizen's (2008) narrative inquiry framework, the data were collected through narrative frames and in-depth semi-structured interviews with five purposively selected lecturers. Thematic analysis of the narratives identified six major PD activities: engagement in communities of practice, self-initiated professional participation, collaborative and mentorship-based teaching, reflective practice, collaborative academic writing, and pursuit of doctoral education. The findings also revealed four key impacts of PD: enhancement of professional knowledge and skills, improvement of student learning outcomes, development of reflective teaching practices, and expansion of professional networks. This study contributes to the underexplored area of PD in teaching scholarly writing within Indonesian higher education and provides practical insights for designing targeted, sustainable PD programs that support EFL lecturers' academic and pedagogical advancement in both local and international contexts.
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Authors: Mr Beny Hamdani (corresponding author) is a doctoral student of the Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia. He is the founder of The Beny English College English course and training centre in Probolinggo, Indonesia. His research interests cover teacher training and professional development, teacher education, and teacher identity. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1794-7183 Email: beny.hamdani.2302219@students.um.ac.id Dr Nunung Suryati is a Professor of English Language Teaching (ELT) and currently serves as the Coordinator of the ELT Postgraduate Programs in the Department of English, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia. Her research interests encompass lesson study, literacy pedagogy, coursebook evaluation, classroom interaction, oral corrective feedback, and teacher education. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4672-2952 Email: nunung.suryati.fs@um.ac.id Dr Mirjam Anugerahwati is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Universitas Negeri Malang. Her research interests are cross-cultural understanding, TEFL, character education, and sociolinguistics. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6659-3847 Email: mirjam.anugerahwati.fs@um.ac.id Dr Evynurul Laily Zen is a faculty member of the Department of English, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Negeri Malang, Indonesia. She earned her PhD in English language and linguistics from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2020. Her research interests include multilingual acquisition and education, language maintenance and shift, family language policy (FLP), and multilingual learner corpora. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6428-4215 Email: evynurul.laily.fs@um.ac.id Please cite as: Hamdani, B., Suryati, N., Anugerahwati, M. & Zen, E. L. (2025). A sociocultural exploration of EFL lecturers' PD for supporting scholarly writing in Indonesia. Issues in Educational Research, 36(2), 540-562. http://www.iier.org.au/iier36/hamdani.pdf