Sertel Altun

The Role of Self-Reflection and Peer Review in Curriculum-focused Professional Development for Teachers

Professional development is the backbone for teachers to sustain their professional lives without coming to a stop and they need a considerable amount of solid support in this process. The purpose of this study is to investigate what contributions self-reflection and peer review made on teachers’ professional development within the scope of curriculum-focused professional studies based on Understanding by Design (UbD), an instructional design model. The study represents a threshold about providing a curriculum-focused professional development in higher education EFL teaching within the scope of a professional dialog among teachers. The study was carried out through action research. The participants of the study were 10 EFL teachers working at a state university in Istanbul, Turkey. Within the framework of the study, the teachers received training about UbD, formed groups and made unit designs and implemented them in their classes as part of the action research. As data collection tools, self-reflection and peer review forms were used. The collected data were analyzed through the content analysis. Within the context of the content analysis, the collected forms were read, coded carefully and the emerging themes were identified. The findings of the study indicated that self-reflection and peer review made considerable contributions to the teachers’ professional development throughout the study. With the help of self-reflection and peer review, the teachers had the opportunity to revise their unit designs and implementation process and their awareness raised about their strengths and weaknesses.

A Comprehensive Analysis of the Views of Turkish Teachers on the Process of Intercultural Education

Abstract This study aims to analyse views of 10 teachers at selected private and national high schools in Turkey regarding an international project to develop intercultural sensitivity. Throughout the project, seminars and workshops by academic experts were prepared for the teachers concerning; intercultural awareness, culture and education, student-centred learning methods, learning styles, multiple intelligence theory, empathy, and teacher research. With the guidance of academics, teachers developed lesson plans, applied these to their classes, presented the results at national and international meetings in which they met their colleagues from other countries and wrote articles about the process. While teachers were anxious about working with people from different countries and applying new methods at first, they later realized that achieved fruitful results. Moreover, they stated that intercultural awareness should be incorporated into all classes. They emphasized, however, that to be successful in such projects, teachers need fluency in English and a willingness to try new methods.

Understanding by Design (UbD) in EFL Teaching: The Investigation of Students' Foreign Language Learning Motivation and Views.

In today’s world, where learning a foreign language is highly prioritized, it is an important prerequisite that education has components that are lasting, meaningful, and transferable to everyday life. Moreover, these components would have a positive influence on student motivation. The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ language learning motivation and views about integration of Understanding by Design (UbD) into their lessons. The study was carried out through mixed method research. For the quantitative part, pre-test post-test experimental design was carried out while action research was instrumented for the qualitative part of the study. 10 teachers and 436 students participated the study. Of the 436 students, 225 were in the treatment group and 211 were in the control group. Through the action research, 10 instructors who were trained about UbD, were divided into four groups, each of which designed three different unit plans and implemented them in their classes. As quantitative data collection tool, Motivation/Attitude Scale (MAS), which was developed by Dornyei and adapted to Turkish by Mendi (2009) was used. For the qualitative data of the study, focus group interviews were held with 10 students. The quantitative data was analyzed through the analysis of covariance and independent samples t-test. The qualitative data was analyzed through content analysis. The quantitative results of the study indicated that there was a significant difference in A and B level students’ foreign language learning motivation in favor of the treatment group. The qualitative findings indicated that UbD implementation had a positive impact on students’ foreign language learning motivation and knowledge transfer skills. These findings underline the importance of foreign language motivation and providing students with experiential learning.