Investigating the EFL Preservice Teachers’ Professional Development in Virtual Exchange: Benefits, Challenges, and Pedagogical Implications

Date

2022-12-12

Author

Kaçar, Işıl Günseli

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Investigating the EFL Preservice Teachers’ Professional Development in Virtual Exchange: Benefits, Challenges, and Pedagogical ImplicationsAbstract:Virtual Exchange (VE) refers to student engagement in online intercultural collaborativeinteraction with international partners under the supervision of their instructors. There hasbeen a growing interest in VE recently. Although the extant literature has focused on learners’benefits and challenges, particularly on the development of their intercultural, digital, andcommunicative skills, the impact of VE on EFL pre-service teachers’ professionaldevelopment has been underexplored. Hence, the aim of this qualitative multiple case studywas to explore the impact of VE on the professional development of Turkish EFL pre-serviceteachers at a state university. Four VEs were examined in this study. The data were analyzedvia content analysis. The findings revealed that VE projects contributed to EFL pre-serviceteachers’ professional development in different ways while posing certain challenges. Theyregarded their VE involvement as an invaluable professional learning experience in terms ofgaining multiple perspectives into student-centered, innovative, collaborative, and interactivepedagogical approaches and practices, enhanced intercultural competencies and critical digitalliteracy skills. Finally, participants raised their awareness towards the importance of beingpart of an international network of teachers. They also mentioned certain challenges regardingsustaining motivation and online intercultural interaction and conflict resolution. The studyhad implications on task design and pedagogical mentoring in VE. Despite the limited samplesize and the short duration of the VE projects, the study might provide a road map for teachereducators who are new to VE and those who would like to design and conduct VEs.Keywords: Virtual exchange; EFL pre-service teachers; intercultural competence,professional development; critical digital literacy skills; pedagogical mentoring.

Subject Keywords

Virtual exchange, EFL pre-service teachers, Intercultural competence, professional development, critical digital literacy skills, pedagogical mentoring

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/107690

Collections

Department of Foreign Language Education, Conference / Seminar