Teaching Professionals’ Opinions and Views on Experiences of Attending Academic Conference

Abstract

The academic conferences are the right place to meet the researchers
working in the same area. This is the right place to learn how to present a
research work to an audience who can help them by giving comments and
asking questions. This research aimed 1) to investigate teaching
professionals’ perspectives about effectiveness of attending conferences on
professional development and 2) to examine post-conference feelings for
Myanmar university teachers who attend international conferences. In the
recent study, a total of 266 teaching professionals' opinions about the
impact of conferences on their professional development were

investigated. Instruments of this research used to collect the data consisted
of questionnaires and interviews. The descriptive statistics used to analyze
the data was percentage. The results of this study revealed that the majority
of the participating professionals developed positive feelings after

attending conferences. Overall, the evidence presented here was positive,
highlighting a range of benefits that delegates report as a result of
conferences. As for the post-conference feelings and the activities the
participants are involved, more than half of the participants feel 'confident'
as they return home relatively with more knowledgeable after conferences.
The majority of the respondents stated that they feel motivated to go to
conferences and feel more confident.