INSTITUTE OF EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES
PhD PROGRAM IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION
PhD Thesis Defense
ABSTRACT
EFFECTS OF SELF-MONITORING STRATEGY ON PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
by
Sedat BECEREN
Date & Time: Thursday, June 7th 2018, 12.00
Place: Faculty of Education, Room 530
All interested are cordially invited.
The overall purpose of the study is to investigate the potential effects of training and implementing video analysis on pre-service teachers’ professional development as a self-monitoring strategy in an ELT pre-service teacher education context in Turkey. More specifically, the study seeks to observe any promising changes in pre-service teachers’ reflectivity levels and their performance regarding lesson planning, selection and use of language teaching resources, teachers’ language use in the classroom and managing the teaching and learning process.
In this sense, a convergent parallel design in which the effect of this strategy was assessed with a control group was employed to address the purpose of this study. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered concurrently, and the results were collated to provide a stronger baseline. The study was carried out in an ELT department in Turkey with thirty senior ELT pre-service teachers who were selected by the random sampling strategy. Fifteen of them were assigned to the study group and the other fifteen were assigned to the control group. Having been trained on the use of video analysis as a self-monitoring strategy for a semester, participants in the study group employed this strategy in their teaching practice course while the control group followed the routine requirements of the teaching practice course. Data collection was performed in the following academic semester employing quantitative and qualitative research instruments. For collection of quantitative data, the profile of the reflective thinking attributes instrument developed by Taggart and Wilson (1998) and The Teaching Knowledge Test (Cambridge ESOL) were employed as a pre-test and post-test design for both groups. Video recordings of school lessons, video-stimulated recall sessions, and written reflections were used to collect the qualitative data from participants in the study group. Analysis of the quantitative data was made using IBM SPSS Statistics 21 programme and the qualitative data were analysed by the software MAXQDA 12.
Results regarding a shift in the reflectivity levels indicated that the participants in the study group improved their reflectivity level more than the control group. Qualitative findings of the study supported the quantitative findings as there was a hierarchical improvement in pre-service teachers’ reflectivity level throughout the study. The study concludes that the majority of the participants reached the highest level of reflectivity. Results regarding teacher knowledge growth as a consequence of the self-monitoring strategy implementation revealed that focused video analysis as a self-monitoring strategy is a highly effective tool for enhancing teachers’ knowledge growth, particularly regarding planning and preparing a lesson, its flow, selection and use of language teaching resources and materials, teachers’ language use in the classroom and classroom management. In other words, the use of video as a self-monitoring strategy can be considered as a powerful tool to support the professional development of pre-service teachers. The study provides several implications for teacher educators, university supervisors and particularly for teacher education programmes whose aim is to prepare pre-service teachers for the real teaching profession by training them using professional development tools.
Key Words: Video self-monitoring, reflection, reflectivity level, teaching practice, teacher knowledge, pre-service teachers, professional development.