Date

2016

Author

Bekereci, Melike

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This study explores how EFL student teachers of an undergraduate dual diploma program describe their professional identities after spending a year in their partner university in the United States, and after experiencing international and local practice teaching contexts. As a case study, the data were obtained through in-depth interviews, classroom observations, document reviews and focus group interviews. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Classroom observations were conducted in senior year courses offered in the program for 14 weeks in each semester. Observations were unstructured and recorded as field notes. In addition, student teachers’ reflective journals were gathered on a weekly basis. The results suggest that dual diploma programs make a great contribution to prospective EFL teachers’ personal growth in terms of broadening their worldviews, improving their personal skills, making contributions to their perceptions about cultural differences, providing new perspectives about Turkish and American education systems, providing travelling opportunities, and giving them a chance to meet new people from all over the world in a multi-cultural environment. However, the results indicated that both fieldwork experience and practice teaching cause no significant changes in student teachers’ professional identities as a result of having insufficient feedback and doing very few teaching practices. Lastly, it was found that student teachers were not willing to pursue teaching as a career because of the undesired realities of teaching profession in Turkey.  

Subject Keywords

English teachers., Educational exchanges., Cross-cultural orientation., Teacher exchange programs., English teachers, English teachers

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12620359/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/26041

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis