EFL Teachers Reflective Practice: Peer Group Versus Supervisor Feedback

Teachers need to learn how to go beyond engagement in classroom management and be involved in reflective practice. They need to reflect on their practice, either individually or in groups. Being observed by peers or the supervisor as it is for educational purposes rather than assessment can help them develop professionally. The present study was an attempt to examine the effect of peer coaching against that supervisor coaching, which is the more traditional method in teacher training, on teachers’ efficacy as well as their students’ reading comprehension skill. In addition, teachers’ beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about the type of instructions they received were examined. Thirty-six English language teachers and 99 students participated in the present study. The teachers’ mean age was 28.56 with an average experience of 4.37 years. The pupils’ age ranged from 15 to 24 (M = 18.61, SD = 3.17) and they were all studying English as a foreign language at Melal English Language Institute in Karaj, Iran. The main materials used were the video recordings of teachers’ teaching practice, a teacher observation and evaluation form, and a list of open-ended questions developed for the purpose of doing a semistructured interview. The results showed that the peer coaching group could outperform the control group in their total score as well as three out of five components examined in the teacher observation and evaluation form. However, regarding the change in leaners’ reading comprehension skill, no significant difference was found among the three groups of students whose teachers had received peer coaching, supervisor coaching, and no instruction at all (control group). The results of the interviews revealed that teachers in the peer coaching had a more diverse range of opinion regarding the usefulness of the instruction they went through. On the other hand, the teachers in the supervision group had found the instruction quite useful. Resistance to change on the part of the teachers and not being able to reach a collective decision due to the absence of an authority were among the main drawbacks mentioned by teachers in the peer coaching group. The findings of the present study indicate that although peer coaching can help teachers develop professionally, it might be found to be very difficult to administer due to the subtleties involved

کلیدواژه ها:

Reflective practice ، Crirical thinking ، Peer group ، Superwisor feedback