Exploring EFL Teachers’ Online Professional Development through Dialogic Interaction during Post-Teaching Feedback Sessions

Proceedings of The 4th World Conference on Teaching and Education

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Exploring EFL Teachers’ Online Professional Development through Dialogic Interaction during Post-Teaching Feedback Sessions

Zohreh Gooniband Shooshtari, Niloufar Daneshkhah

ABSTRACT: 

As a result of Covid-19 pandemic, E-learning has now become the most important trend in education. However, online and distance teaching has added to the difficulties of EFL teaching and learning. In fact, E-teaching has become a challenge not only for novice teachers, but also for experienced ones. In this study, the effect of EFL teachers’ dialogic interactions during online post-teaching feedback sessions on their online professional development (OPD) is investigated. The participants included five novice and three experienced EFL teachers who worked in a private language school in Ahvaz, Iran, and were required to use Big Blue Button (BBB) as the teaching platform. The dialogic interaction of the participants during the online post-teaching feedback sessions was recorded and examined. After 10 sessions of careful observation of teachers’ oral feedbacks, and analysis of teachers’ reflective journals, the most significant themes of dialogic interactions affecting teachers’ OPD were found and categorized. The results showed that novice teachers considered scaffolded practice, close sense of alignment and collaborative problem solving as the important factors affecting their OPD. Experienced teachers, however, cited enhanced sense of visibility and mutual accountability along with improved computer literacy as the indications of promoted OPD. Active participation in a collaborative feedback session was shown to have significant effects on teachers’ OPD, irrespective of their level of experience. Teacher education programs, teacher educators and teachers’ communities of practice can benefit from the positive effects of dialogic interaction to promote OPD and overcome unforeseen and unexpected difficulties of E-teaching and E-learning.

keywords: OPD, Dialogic Interaction, Feedback Session, Experienced, Novice.