EFL teachers’ engagement in reflective practice via team teaching for professional development

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate Turkish EFL teachers’ engagement in reflective practices that were identified as reflection-on-action, reflection-in-action, and reflection-for-action via their team teaching experiences for professional development purposes. In this respect, the study explored the experiences of five local English teachers who volunteered to team teach as a professional development activity in the course of four months at their institutions. The data were collected via two different instruments: reflective journals and interviews. All the qualitative data collected from reflective journals and interview transcriptions were analysed according to Boyatzis’ (1998) thematic analysis. After the printed copies were examined to define the codes and then colour-code the themes that emerged, the NVivo software programme was utilised to reread and recategorise the codes and themes, which were finally listed under the concepts of reflection-on, in, and foraction reflective types. The findings of the study revealed that through team teaching participants engaged in a) reflection-on-action by investigating their teacher identities and the dynamics of their teaching; b) reflection-in-action by exploring teaching practices, beliefs, and self; and c) reflection-for-action by probing ways to move towards a professional growth. Considering these results, this study supports the existing literature in that a) providing a collaborative and shared teaching experience adds a meaningful and productive dimension to reflective practice that ultimately entails a critical analysis of understandings and practices in teaching; and b) team teaching could serve its purpose best when it is undertaken as a voluntary, flexible, and periodical reflective professional development activity.