Action Research as a Tool to Enhance Professional Development of Prospective Efl Teachers

Action Research as a Tool to Enhance Professional Development of Prospective Efl Teachers

CABAROGLU, Nese

ABSTRACT In order to learn anything during teacher education, pre-service teachers must have personal concerns about teaching and they must have encountered concrete problems. It has been well established that learning only takes place if the learner has some personal goals (Skemp, 1979). The purpose of this study is to describe a course in a language teacher education programme that uses action research, and to provide evidence of the effects that action research had on pre-service teachers’ learning and practice through reflection, in particular, on the changes in their self-efficacy beliefs. Instead of providing a preset agenda, the prospective teachers are encouraged to study what is important to them in their own school situation for their own purposes. The course is designed in a way so as to help prospective teachers improve their classroom practice, understand of that practice, to contribute to the knowledge base of teaching and learning, and to help them adopt an inquiry based approach to learning and teaching. The classroom-based collaborative action research is adopted. In order to ensure pre-service teachers a more active role in their professional development, participants are provided opportunities for active interpretive processes that help them examine the complex contexts of classrooms and schools. Participants are fourth year students attending a language teacher education programme in Turkey.

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

1908