DOI:
10.18413/2313-8971-2019-5-2-0-2
Отношение учителей английского языка как иностранного к исследованию совместных действий в средней школе
Aннотация
N.B. Настоящая работа посвящена анализу отношения учителей английского языка как иностранного в старших классах к исследованию совместных действий (ИСД). Исследование носило как качественный, так и количественный характер. Количество контрольных групп основано на методе случайной выборки и составило 20 учителей мужского и женского пола, преподающих в учебно-образовательном учреждении в провинции Исфахан. В качестве метода исследования участникам было предложено заполнить стандартные анкеты Саваскана (2013) и Бирнса (2009). Затем данные были проанализированы с использованием описательной статистики и t-теста с помощью программы SPSS, версия 25. Согласно полученным результатам, основанным на описательной статистике, учителя-мужчины и учителя-женщины положительно относятся к исследованию совместных действий (56,25% ответов были ниже среднего (3), что свидетельствует о более позитивном отношении). Кроме того, по сравнению с учителями-женщинами, учителя-мужчины более позитивно настроены по отношению к исследованию совместных действий (2,70-2,95). Проведение таких исследований в данной области дает возможность сделать правильный выбор методик преподавания в целом, а также совместных научных исследований и их подкатегорий, в частности.
Ключевые слова: исследование совместных действий, отношение, учитель английского языка как иностранного
К сожалению, текст статьи доступен только на Английском
Introduction. Some of the educational researchers have found action research to be an effective professional development means which enhances inquiry, reflection, and problem solving that results in action or change (Casanova, 1989). This is a good method for almost all teachers at different fields. It has been used for years and yet it is being used by most of the scholars too. Many researchers emphasize teachers’ attitudes as a decisive component in ensuring the successful inclusion of students (Dulčić and Bakota, 2008; De Boer et al., 2011). Simply put, the attitudes of teachers can enhance or impede the implementation or inclusion. According to Lord (1997) attitude has three elementary components: (1) The cognitive component, (2) The feeling or affective component and, (3) The actions or behavioral component. Behavioral components consist of the tendency, to act or react to the object in a certain way. Positive or favorable attitude determines the course of life. Behavior is a response which an individual shows to his/ her environment at different times. Behavior can be positive or negative, effective or ineffective, conscious or unconscious, overt or covert, and voluntary or involuntary.
Teachers and principals help each other by working collaboratively; working with colleagues helps teachers and principals in their professional development (Watt, 1985). Although there are many types of research that may be undertaken, action research specifically refers to a disciplined inquiry done by a teacher with the intent that the researcher will change his or her practices in the future (Ferreance, 2000).
The meaning of this word is different at different settings, most researches conducted have shown that attitudes and beliefs are connected to each other, also attitudes and behaviors are linked; moreover, attitudes are essentially divided into likes and dislikes (Siragusa and Dixon, 2008). “A positive or negative emotional relationship with or predisposition toward an object, institution or person” is Le Roux (1994) definition of attitude. “Enduring non-verbal features of social and physical world, and they are acquired through experience and exert a directive influence on behavior.” There is another definition given by Brecker and Wiggins (1991). Based on Chambers and Pettman (1986) demonstrations, feelings and information are the two vital factors in the formation of attitudes, and also understanding’s critical components.
Action research definition based on the google dictionary (2018) is “studies carried out in the course of an activity or occupation, typically in the field of education, to improve the methods and approach of those involved.” What was explored in this research was to learn the attitude of the EFL teachers toward action research. In fact, high school teachers’ attitude is the dark side of any research, and this particular research would shed light on it and will clarify their overall view of this issue.
The research has three objectives, including the exploration of attitudes of high school male EFL teachers towards collaborative action research, investigation of the attitudes of high school female EFL teachers towards collaborative action research and also the examination of the fact that whether there is any significant difference between male and female EFL high school teachers attitudes towards collaborative action research.
The research questions of this study are as follows:
Do high school male EFL teachers have positive attitudes towards collaborative action research?
Do high school female EFL teachers have positive attitudes towards collaborative action research?
Is there any significant difference between male and female EFL high school teachers towards collaborative action research?
Definitely, if the EFL teachers have a positive attitude regarding performing the action research methods in class, they would get some clues like knowing the necessary time for changing the traditional methods of teaching. Moreover, it is useful for the matter of testing different methods of teaching in order to pick the best method from among a long list of the existing methods, depending on the condition of the class and the personality of the students, and also the gender of the students and the other related circumstances of the study
Research Background. Learning how to teach is a lifetime process because teachers have to keep up to date with different knowledge and teaching techniques. Therefore, teachers, especially in-service teachers, should have opportunities to continue with this process after they finish college in order to achieve professional development. For instance, a good opportunity to improve their pedagogical skills is CAR, which enables teachers to become active in their learning process. As an example, a study was conducted in Hong Kong, in which the purpose was to explore the impact of the role of teacher-researchers on in-service teachers’ participation in AR (Chow, Chu, Tavares, and Lee, 2015).
Another study conducted in Argentina by a group of English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) teachers (Banegas, Pavese, Velázquez, & Vélez, 2013) at a secondary school, eventually noticed the benefits of CAR. They decided to investigate their own teaching practices through CAR after noticing that when planning individually, their lessons met the demands of students whose level of English was higher than suggested by the official curriculum, which was wrong because students could not always meet the expected outcomes. In the end, the teachers realized that CAR was an opportunity for them to work towards a common goal and it was motivating to create new experiences and knowledge collaboratively. Moreover, peer observation was emphasized since it helped them to become more reflective teachers due to the fact that their perceptions and self-evaluation mechanisms were confirmed or challenged by their colleagues.
It is also important to observe our reality, which was reflected in a study conducted in Chile in 2015, about in-service teachers using CAR as a means of improving their pedagogical practices, which is a novelty in our country. According to the Ministry of Education’s Marco para la Buena Enseñanza, “systematic reflection about one’s own practice is part of a teacher’s professional responsibility” (Nogués and Pellerin, 2015: 49). However, this tradition is neither part of the curriculum nor teaching programs, so unfortunately many teachers face their teaching practices without being introduced to systematic reflection. Consequently, the interviewed teachers stated that, “AR should be part of the pedagogical curriculum, because it is the only way teachers are encouraged to be active, creative, and reflective actors”.
Ipek and Camadan (2012) compared primary and pre-service primary teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes of teaching profession in Turkey. They found out that the first-grade pre-service primary teachers had significantly more positive attitudes toward their profession than the fourth grade pre-service primary and primary teachers. Also, female participants’ attitudes towards teaching profession were higher than those of males.
Oruç (2011) scrutinized attitudes of Turkish trainee teachers toward teaching profession conducting a scale to 80 trainee teachers whose purpose was attending the faculty of education at the Turkey State University and understood that they have a very crystal clear and positive attitude toward their prospective profession.
Tarman (2012) investigated beliefs and perceptions of prospective teachers attending teacher education program at the Eastern US university about teaching as a profession, and indicated that field experience can provide them with the opportunities to change their self-perceptions regarding teaching careers, and to reflect on their understanding of teaching as a profession.
Sharbain (2013) conducted a research in Palestine to see if there is any relationship between the gender of primary English language teachers and their attitudes toward teaching profession delivering a questionnaire to 50 male and 50 female novice teachers. He concluded that female language teachers have a more positive attitude toward their profession compared to their male colleagues.
In a survey of primary school teachers’ conceptions of alternative assessment conducted in New Zealand, (Brown, 2004) understood that teachers accepted that assessment improves teaching and learning and makes schools accountable. However, some studies reported teacher satisfaction and positive attitudes towards alternative assessment (Yu-Ching, 2008; Brumen et al., 2009; Brown et al., 2009; Alkharusi, Aldhafri, Alnabhani and Alkalbani, 2012; Gonzales and Aliponga, 2012; Tangdhanakanond and Wongwanich, 2012), most studies on primary school teachers’ attitudes towards assessment came to the conclusion that the vast majority of the teachers’ attitudes are at an average or low level (Watt, 2005; Yang, 2008; INTO, 2008; Metin, 2011; Ghazali, Yaakub, and Mustam, 2012). The results’ inconsistency is probably related to the fact that in some studies candidates were teachers at primary and secondary school.
AR is a tradition used in qualitative research especially in the educational field. As defined by Shanks, Miller and Rosendale (2012), “Action research is a form of research where teachers learn to improve their practices while improving the understanding of their practice” (p. CAR encourages teachers to work in a cooperative way in fact, “The value of having teachers connect, talk about their own classroom experiences, and grow together professionally has gained ground over the last two decades” (Nogués and Pellerin, 2015: 49). Therefore, as Güngör (2016) stated, teachers are supposed to be open-minded to accept other own viewpoints. Hence, teachers would be able to recognize their strengths and consequently, by sharing experiences with their peers, they can improve their weaknesses. Therefore, teachers who are willing to collaborate with their colleagues are capable of recognizing the weak side of teaching and then finding solutions. As Bryant (1995) states, “CAR is also very democratic in that it encourages a great degree of talk and interaction between colleagues, inviting active collaboration in a joint attempt to improve teaching.
Based on the reviews of the previous studies, it is possible to notice that as they are focused on the teacher, there is no explicit reference to the aspect of their teaching that was intended to improve, or if there was an impact on students’ learning. Because of this, and as previously tackled in the introduction, this study will address one particular aspect of language learning, which is speaking through the lens of AR.
Methodology. The Design of the Study. The current study is investigating the attitudes of Iranian high school EFL teachers towards collaborative action research. This research is based on a qualitative approach and a survey design.
Participants. The study involved two main groups of participants, that is male and female high school teachers. As for the latter group, at the beginning, from among all EFL teachers in Isfahan, 20 teachers were selected based on the convenience sampling method, no matter how old they were (however there existed a fixed age range for the officially-employed teachers, 10 for female and 10 for male teachers) or in which city they were born, the only important matter was that they were supposed to be EFL teachers officially employed at the educational training system.
Instruments. The instrument of this study was a questionnaire of attitudes for gathering information about participants’ attitude. It was borrowed from Savaskan (2013) and Byrnes (2009). As it was a standard test, the researcher did not measure the reliability of the questionnaire by Cronbach’s alpha.
To investigate the research questions posed in the present study, a teacher questionnaire was used as a research tool for gathering information about participants’ attitude. It was borrowed from Savaskan (2013) and Byrnes (2009).
The questionnaire (considerable in Appendix A) included three items. The first included the questions regarding a difficulty and non-difficulty status of action research which includes 11 items. The context is related to the teachers’ usage of different technological devices in class and also their viewpoint toward the problems of action research investigation. The level of difficulty was illustrated by a scale from 1-5, i.e. 1 has the least difficulty and 5 has the most difficulty.
The second item of this questionnaire was about teachers’ perception of action research to know its effect more on learning and learning process, also it was about teaching process and enhancing teaching quality. It comprised of 5 statements and 5 scales, including strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree.
The last items included some questions which needed the answers to be written by the teachers as the research was qualitative. They needed the teachers’ professional carrier and also the way they consider the shortcomings of the class and also their anticipation of the probable effects of collaborative action research.
All the questionnaires’ items were based on a 5- point Likert scale with the values ranging from 1 to 5 (strongly agree to strongly disagree) to ensure sufficient variations among the item scores.
Procedures. At the very beginning, the Savaskan (2013) and Byrnes (2009) questionnaire was given to the respondents who were high school EFL teachers (however, it should be mentioned that some of them were simultaneously teaching different courses at English institutes). Then, they were told that they had enough time to answer all the questions (however 15-20 minutes were determined for every respondent to answer) in the questionnaire, and they were told that their answers would stay confidential. They were also given some information about the action research and also its nature to be informed about this method of teaching and its details. Finally, the researcher collected the filled questionnaires for later analysis.
As the samples were selected based on the convenience sampling method, the teachers were different in terms of the additional course materials that schools or students asked them to teach. In addition to using the standard book, they were asked to teach other additional and complimentary books to make the students ready for the university entrance exam. After collecting all the questionnaires from the teachers, the researcher analyzed them using SPSS Software, Version 25. Descriptive statistics was employed to answer the research questions. As a result, one sample t-test was implemented.
Results. The first research question addressed was whether high school male EFL teachers have positive attitudes towards collaborative action research. To answer this question, at first, both groups’ scores on 16 items were fed to SPSS (version 25.0). Then the frequency and the percentage of each item were calculated and provided in a separate table. Then the mean of each item was calculated, and finally the mean scores of male and female teachers were calculated and compared with the average (3).
As it is considerable in the Table 1, total number of the participants is 20 that half of them are male and half are female. The percentages are also considerable too that each forms 50 percent of the samples.
Table 2 contains nine items, 56.25%, (questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, and 11 of item 1. Questions 1, 2, 3 of item 2) out of 16 were under average (3). Seven items, 43.75%, (questions 5, 6, 7, 9 of item 1. Questions 4 and 5 of item 2) and 16 were on average and more than average. Obviously, based on the results, because most of the teachers find collaborative action research easy to do, they have a positive attitude toward collaborative action research.
As for the answer to the second research question which analyses male and female’s attitude toward collaborative action research, the mean values of both items were taken. The scores are as follows:
The first item: no difficulty (1), low level of difficulty (2), moderate level of difficulty (3), high level of difficulty (4), an extreme level of difficulty (5).
Normally, the average is 3. If the mean is under 3, the attitude would be positive and if the mean score would be over 3, the attitude of the respondents would be negative.
The second item: strongly agree (1), agree (2), neither agree, nor disagree (3), disagree (4), strongly disagree (5).
Normally, the average is 3. If the mean score is under 3, the attitude would be positive and if the mean score would be over 3, the attitude of the respondents would be negative.
Table 4.2 contains nine items, 56.25%, (questions 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, and 11 of item 1. Questions 1, 2, 3 of item 2) out of 16 were under average (3). Seven items, 43.75%, (questions 5, 6, 7, 9 of item 1. Questions 4 and 5 of item 2) and 16 were on average and more than average. Obviously, based on the results, because most of the teachers find collaborative action research easy to do, they have a positive attitude toward collaborative action research.
Results of the Third Research Question. The third research question addresses the difference between male and female EFL high school teachers towards collaborative action research. The following analysis has been done to answer this question. Table 3 depicts the mean score of all questions and both items for female teachers. The average mean score of the female teachers is 2.70.
Table 4 depicts the mean score of all questions and both items for female teachers. The average mean score of the female teachers is 2.95.
As it is seen in tables 4.3 and 4.4, number 2, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 were male and number 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 were female. In a separate data viewer, the mean score of the male and female respondents was calculated. The average mean score of the female respondents was 2.95 and the average mean score of the male respondents was 2.70. As the average is 3, both results show female and male teachers’ positive attitude toward collaborative action research. Consequently, by comparing the average mean score of these two groups (2.70˂2.95), it can be concluded that in comparison with the female high school teachers, male teachers have a more positive attitude toward collaborating action research. Therefore, there is a significant difference between female and male EFL high school teachers towards collaborative action research.
Discussion and conclusion. The current study was set to explore high school EFL teachers’ attitude towards collaborative action research. Below a discussion of findings is provided.
The first research hypothesis focuses on junior high school male EFL teachers with a positive attitude towards action research. After analyzing the data in SPSS Software and gaining the results and consequently comparing the average mean score of these two groups (2.70˂2.95), it can be concluded that in comparison with the female high school teachers, male teachers have a more positive attitude toward collaborating action research. Therefore, there is a significant difference between female and male EFL high school teachers towards collaborative action research. The findings of the descriptive statistics have revealed that high school male EFL teachers have positive attitude towards collaborative action research. 56.25% of the answers were under average (3). 43.75% of the responses were over average. Therefore, based on the results, because most of the teachers found collaborative action research easy to do, they both have a positive attitude toward collaborative action research.
The results of the present research are also in line with some other studies. For example, a survey conducted by Agcam and Babanoglu (2015) was aimed at investigating EFL teachers’ attitude toward teaching profession. The participants were 20 male and female EFL teachers who taught English at different language institutes of higher education in Turkey. In their research, the attitude scale was introduced to EFL teachers working at state primary schools, secondary schools. Their results indicated that the majority of the participants have positive attitudes toward their job despite problems they encounter while performing it. At last, their study reported and discussed research findings comprehensively, and offered a few pedagogical implications and suggestions for further directions. Considering that foreign language teachers’ attitudes toward their occupation largely influence their professional performance, their study aims to scrutinize whether attitude of EFL teachers toward teaching profession significantly differs across the level of educational institutions where they are working. From some aspects, the results of this study were in line with the results of the present research.
Sharbain (2013) conducted a research in Palestine to see whether there is a relationship between gender of primary English language teachers and their attitudes toward teaching profession by giving a questionnaire to 50 male and 50 female novice teachers. Then, the results have shown that female language teachers have a more positive attitude toward their profession than their male colleagues which are compatible with the results of the present research.
In other words, teachers’ beliefs and ideas regarding different methods of teaching is of great value and help researcher to know which teaching method best fits the students and the class atmosphere. It is also useful to make sure that the mentioned teaching methods were not imposed to the teacher to use at the class, and were consciously selected.
The third research question considers if there is any significant difference between male and female EFL high school teachers towards collaborative action research. The mean score of the male and female respondents was fed to SPSS. Then the average mean score of the female respondents was calculated as 2.95 and the average mean score of the male teachers is 2.70. As the average is 3, both demonstrate that female and male teachers’ have a positive attitude toward collaborative action research. Obviously, by comparing the average mean score of these two groups (2.70˂2.95), it can be concluded that in comparison with the female high school teachers, male teachers have a more positive attitude toward collaborating action research. Consequently, it can be said that there is a significant difference between female and male EFL high school teachers’ attitude towards collaborative action research.
The study carried out by Shaukat et al. (2014) was aimed at assessing the attitudes of 201 randomly selected postgraduate students of teacher education programs from public and private universities in Pakistan. The hypothesis was that students hold positive attitudes toward different aspects of research. This scale consisted of 32 items including 5 constructs. The data were collected by a self-administered approach. Samples of the study were three programs (B.S. honors/ M.A. education, (N = 63), M.Phil / MS education (N = 114), and PhD education (N = 24). The data were analyzed by using t-test and ANOVA. The results indicated that the males had significantly positive attitudes towards research than the females, which is in line with the results of the present study that male teachers with a minor difference hold a positive attitude toward collaborative action research.
The present study was designed to determine high school EFL teachers’ attitude towards collaborative action research. The results of this investigation provided support for the hypothesis that, firstly, both male and female high school teachers have a positive attitude toward collaborative action research (56.25% of the answers were under average (3). Secondly, in comparison with the female teachers, male teachers have a more positive attitude toward collaborative action research (2.70˂2.95). Obviously, the results of this study can be of help for teachers to use the appropriate teaching approaches in the class-room in order to improve their students’ learning.
Based on the findings of the current research and other related research, the following recommendations might be taken into account to enhance the quality of teaching. Being aware of the teachers’ attitudes is a bridge for exploring both teacher’s and students’ satisfaction and also language acquisition. Additionally, it provides an opportunity to make the right choice of teaching techniques in general, and collaborative action research and its subcategories in particular.
As the nature of this method is systematic, it is definitely applicable on different occasions. Therefore, the collaborative framework of the action research process has led to theory-based evidence-supported systematic changes in these specific pedagogies. As a result, action research is an appropriate paradigm for improving everyday classroom practice and improving the students’ performance at their courses (Young and et al., 2010).
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