SCHOLARSHIP

We offer two different scholarships that give the opportunity for our winners to attend our Pre-Conference Event and the annual IATEFL Conference!

TDSIG Michael Berman Scholarship

This scholarship funded by the IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group, is in memory of Michael Berman, an ELT writer, presenter and storyteller, who regularly contributed his stories and teaching ideas to TDSIG Newsletter until his premature death in 2013. It is for a teacher to attend the IATEFL Annual Conference and to have the opportunity to be published in the TDSIG Newsletter and its other online platforms. It will be awarded to someone who is interested in exploring her / his own development and is able to write about this engagingly so that others can share in and benefit from these insights. You have to be a member of IATEFL TDSIG to apply for this scholarship but you do not have to give a conference presentation.

Michael Berman’s published work includes The Power of Metaphor by Crown House, The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, as well as Shamanic Journeys through the Caucasus and Shamanic Journeys Shamanic Stories by O-Books. Journeys outside Time can be obtained from Pendraig Publishing, and Tales of Power from Lear Books, A Bridge to the Other Side: Death in the Folk Tradition and Georgia through Earth, Fire, Air and Water were published by Moon Books in 2012, and Sacred Mountains by Mandrake in 2013. ELT publications include A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom, In a Faraway Land (a resource book for teachers on storytelling), On Business and for Pleasure (a self-study workbook), and English Language Teaching Matters, written with Mojca Belak and Wayne Rimmer.

What does the scholarship winner receive?

The award consists of:

registration for the TDSIG Pre-Conference Event
registration for the IATEFL Annual Conference
GBP 1000.00 for conference-related expenses

Do I qualify?

To qualify you must:

be a paid IATEFL individual member, with TDSIG as your primary SIG
be questioning about your teaching and willing to learn
be good at articulating your thoughts
agree, if you win the scholarship,
- to be interviewed in advance of the conference to introduce yourself and your teaching context and at or after the conference to describe your experience and takeaways as a participant
- to contribute content to be used on our social media platforms and website
- to produce a written reflective piece after the conference, in which you should focus on how your experiences at the conference have furthered your development
All three pieces may be used by TDSIG for various uses in promotional material.

How can I apply?

To be considered you must submit (in English):

A short piece of about 400 – 500 words, where you should clearly include

a brief description of your teaching context
an engaging narrative telling us about a time when you had either a challenging, an unexpected, or a terrible lesson. What happened? How did you manage that situation? What did you learn from it? What would your advice be for another teacher regarding a lesson like this?

The deadline for 2025 applications is Wednesday 19 June 2024.

The winners will be informed by IATEFL Head Office. Please do NOT contact the IATEFL office or TDSIG about scholarship decisions; the Scholarship Working Party (SWP) will send everyone the results as soon as they are available.

If you would like to submit an application to win a scholarship, head to iatefl.org/scholarships today to get started.

Who won the 2024 Michael Berman scholarship?

Meet Maryam Mirshahnasab, winner of our Michael Berman award:

Mery is an English teacher from Iran now based in Manchester. Her commitment to education is evident with over a decade dedicated to ELT and IELTS instruction. She stood out as a top student during her bachelor’s degree in English Translation, achieving an exceptional rank of 19.14 out of 20 among 99 students. This pursuit of excellence led
her to Shahid Beheshti, a high-ranking university in Iran, where she deepened herlinguistic insights with a Master’s in Linguistics.

Mery then joined Rahpouyandegan, a leading English institute in Mashhad, her hometown, where she helped numerous students achieve their targeted IELTS band scores between 6 and 8. In response to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mery founded LingoBee, an online English academy. Driven by a keen desire to advance technology integration in education, she charted her path to the University of Manchester, where she further deepened her expertise by completing her second Master’s, specializing in TESOL with a Technology pathway. She is now at the forefront of exploring how Virtual Reality can redefine IELTS Speaking performance and enhance student affective and cognitive engagement.

Thank you for your application, ‌Maryam! See you in Brighton!

Who has won the scholarship before?

2023 Michael Berman scholarship winner Taiza Lombardi with TDSIG Joint Coordinators Cecilia Lemos and James Taylor at IATEFL.

Please check out some of our past winners:

TDSIG Early Career Teacher Scholarship

Teacher development can come fast and steep in the first years of our professional careers. This scholarship, funded by the IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group, acknowledges this teacher development slope, experienced by a recent graduate of a pre-service teacher training program and who is now early in their career. We aim to reward the dedication towards and effort on teaching training program coursework as well as the passion and zeal exhibited in how theory was applied practically in the classroom, and for their own and their peers’ professional development within the field of ELT.

The award consists of:

IATEFL TDSIG Membership (as full individual IATEFL membership or additional SIG)
registration for the TDSIG Pre-Conference Event
registration for the IATEFL Annual Conference
1000.00GBP towards conference-related expenses

To qualify you must:

Have recently graduated from a pre-service teacher training program that is accredited by a respected and recognized accreditation body, as viewed by the IATEFL TDSIG scholarship committee
Have fewer than 2 years teaching experience
Be a first-time IATEFL Conference attendee (not an Associate conference)
Agree to do these things:
- to be interviewed in advance of the conference to introduce yourself and your teaching/studying context, as well as at and after it to describe your experiences and takeaways as a participant
- to create content for our social media and website about your experiences as a new teacher – challenges, successes and ongoing areas of interest or curiosity
- to produce a written reflective piece after the conference, in which you should focus on how your experiences at the conference have furthered your development – and how you intend on sharing this learning opportunity with your peers in your local teaching context.

To be considered you must submit (in English):

A description in writing (about 250-300 words) of a critical incident in your teaching and how you reacted to it (e.g. what did you do/change as a result of this experience?)
A description (about 250-300 words) of how your teacher training program equipped you (or did not) to deal with incidents of this type
A written reference from a teacher trainer that demonstrates your efforts put into your training program and that you are passionate about your future career in PDF format on school letterhead.

The deadline for 2025 applications is Wednesday 91 June 2024.

If you would like to submit an application to win a scholarship, head to iatefl.org/scholarships today to get started.

Who won the 2024 scholarship?

Meet Didar Moldazhanov, winner of our TDSIG ECT (Early Career Teacher) award:

Didar Moldazhanov is a dedicated researcher-teaching fellow. With a passion for fostering resilience and social justice in language education, he’s conducted impactful studies on multilingualism and AI in Kazakhstan. Didar aims to enhance inclusivity by exploring multilingual
and multicultural approaches in language course-books. His commitment to advancing education is truly inspiring.

Thank you for your application, Didar! See you in Brighton!

Who has won the scholarship before?

Here is Maria Victoria in her own words:

I’m an ESL teacher, born in Argentina, living in a small town of the Buenos Aires province. I graduated as an ESL teacher in 2019 at Instituto Superior de Formación Docente N°129 where I studied for four years.

I’m interested in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) since it allows me to work with other subject-area and topics through Project-based Learning.

I’m passionate about the importance of empowering students by transversally applying Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) to most of my lessons.

I’m currently teaching at State-run Secondary Schools, in a workshop for adults organized by the local government, as well as at Private School of English ‘William Shakespeare‘.

When I’m not planning lessons or teaching, I love to spend quality time with my siblings and cats. I enjoy reading old books and painting watercolours. Attending webinars at weekends is my favourite way of keeping up with teaching strategies and topics and learning from other teachers around the world.

I would like to get a Bachelor’s degree in Education with an orientation towards Foreign Language Teaching.