Teacher Education
Mehri Jalali
Abstract
Quality of teaching plays an important role in students’ achievement which is the main goal of education. So far, teacher education has witnessed widespread reforms to improve this quality with no clear evidence to uphold the claim that experienced teachers are more competent than beginning teachers. ...
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Quality of teaching plays an important role in students’ achievement which is the main goal of education. So far, teacher education has witnessed widespread reforms to improve this quality with no clear evidence to uphold the claim that experienced teachers are more competent than beginning teachers. This study attempted to investigate whether years of teaching experience can make any significant difference in EFL teachers’ quality of teaching. For this purpose, classroom interactions of 90 teachers who were teaching English to 7th-grade students were observed by using Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Findings showed better teaching quality in terms of instructional and emotional support for beginning teachers (0-3 years of teaching experience), but this dimension declined for transitioning (4-5) and experienced teachers (more than 5 years) with no evidence of a significant difference between them. The only superiority of experienced teachers was having better classroom management compared to other teachers with beginning teachers in the lowest position. These findings suggest that directed professional development programs and evidence-based learning can be beneficial for all teachers regardless of their years of teaching experience.
Applied Linguistics
Mehri Jalali
Abstract
Although the importance of intercultural competence (IC) training has been increasingly recognized in recent scholarly reviews, home-based approaches invite further investigation in this paradigm. This study aims to make a contribution by exposing a domestic context to assess IC development through using ...
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Although the importance of intercultural competence (IC) training has been increasingly recognized in recent scholarly reviews, home-based approaches invite further investigation in this paradigm. This study aims to make a contribution by exposing a domestic context to assess IC development through using qualitative and quantitative methods. To do so, sixty two undergraduate EFL student-teachers were guided to conduct two either on-line or face to face reflective ethnographic interviews over a sixteen-week course of cross-cultural communication. The quantitative findings obtained from the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) questionnaire showed significant increase in participants’ Perceived Orientation (PO) and Developmental Orientation (DO) after the course. Qualitative findings also revealed significant growth, provoking some new perceptions, and emphasizing the student-teachers’ positive responses to both IDI assessment and the intercultural interactions. The exploratory analysis of the participants’ reports on the ethnographic interviews resulted in seven emerged themes which conceptually matched the traditional IC model. Therefore, the study shows that using reflective ethnographic interviews in a mixed methods design is helpful in developing and assessing student-teachers’ IC.