[quote=“tomthorne”]
This pretty much mirrors my thoughts, although I still share the concern of ironlady that the entire TESOL industry could be starting from the wrong place. Making people better at teaching the wrong way. Fantastic driving skills but on the wrong side of the road, kind of thing 
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Going a little bit off topic - if we ignore TPRS and assume that the communicative approach is still the right way to teach, then I would say that the best TESOL teaching cv would show someone who has taken a CELTA a couple of years after teaching and was therefore able to appreciate it more. They then took a DELTA a few more years down the line. The other important point would be the schools they have previously worked at (we all know the good schools and those more likely to be questionable) and the usual list of additional responsibilites. It would be highly unlikely that you’d recruit a bad one with a cv like that - but they are out there 
. As you point out, the odds of getting a bad one are much higher for a teacher who doesn’t have this on his or her cv.
@ heimoshu: Thank you! [/quote]
I’d argue that I’d still prefer someone with a CELTA even if the communicative approach isn’t the best one. When I did mine about 20 years ago 
we were given a brief overview of the current theories about effective teaching methodology. Although the communicative approach was the one that we practised, I didn’t get the impression that it was the be all and end all of teaching, only that it was thought to be the best one at the time. So I’d say that it’s more likely that a teacher with a CELTA has an understanding that there are different theories of teaching practice that have gone in and out of fashion, that it’s an area of constant research, and that teachers have a duty to keep up to speed with the research and keep thinking about what’s actually working in their classrooms.
I’ve met too many teachers who think that they can teach the way that they were taught 30 years ago and that what was good enough for them is good enough for their students. Too many teachers who start each lesson with ‘turn to page x in the coursebook’ or ‘let’s do this worksheet on the past simple’. Such teachers are generally unqualified and have little humility when you try to explain to them that there may be a different way of doing things. They come out with statements like ‘I do what my students expect. They wouldn’t come back if I made them do group work’ or ‘they’re here for the grammar, they aren’t interested in anything else’ and so on. At the risk of making an over-generalised statement, I’d say that it’s mostly the unqualified teachers who are the most content with their practice with the least cause to be. (I’m speaking about a lot of subject areas, here, not just English language teaching - I observe a lot of crusty PhDs teaching academic subjects.)
Also, when I did my CELTA we were given a lot of very simple teaching tips such as not to give someone a piece of writing and then start talking to them about it (because they will read the text rather than listen to you), or if you have an information gap activity, sit your students back to back so that they can’t see their partner’s information, otherwise they’ll just read it rather than talk to each other. Even without a CELTA, training events give that opportunity to learn ideas from people who have lots more experience than you. I’ve been to sessions with Mario Rinvolucri and other names in the field and learned certain ways of doing things more effectively, such as how to get people to be quiet when you’ve got a large group all talking together.
I’d say a teacher with a qualification is more likely to be open to learning new ways of doing things and having some humility about their practice. If an unqualfied teacher is doing nothing other than teaching their classes - so if they aren’t being observed and receiving feedback and if they aren’t observing other teachers, nor doing any training - then by what measure are they assessing their work? Without having been taught anything about teaching they can only self-assess, and of course they’re going to think they’re pretty good!
(Having said all that I knew someone once who was very proud of their DELTA and thought she was superior to the rest of us. Then one day I heard her remark how she’d prepared a fantastic lesson but her students just didn’t appreciate it. :loco: )
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. As you point out, the odds of getting a bad one are much higher for a teacher who doesn’t have this on his or her cv.