A Turkish EFL teacher's change processes through an OPD program: a case study

Abstract

In this paper we present an analysis of the change processes of a Turkish EFL teacher who participated in an Online Professional Development (OPD) program that included online lesson study procedure and webinars. The aim of the study was to uncover the short term and long term changes of this teacher through the use of Clarke and Hollingsworth's (2002) Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG). As part of the OPD program this teacher attended six webinars about language teaching methodology and the use of technology in language teaching. In a period of 13 weeks she also became part of online lesson study procedure with three other teachers. To this end they met online once a week to do lesson planning for a research lesson and to later discuss about the effectiveness of that lesson by viewing its video recording. In this case study the data collection tools comprised a background questionnaire interviews group meeting extracts pre-and post-observations lesson plans prepared by the group video recordings of the research lessons and group meetings. The findings showed that various short term changes were initiated by different domains including personal domain the lesson study discussions and webinars in the external domain with various pathways of change. More long-lasting changes on the other hand came about when she integrated her learning from the webinars into her classroom teaching and reflected on the student outcomes of these new practices which promoted changes in her earlier beliefs and attitudes towards some aspects of teaching. It was also revealed that the changes in her cognition and teaching behavior were related to her increased knowledge and skills about incorporating web 2.0 tools into language classes.