Personal practical knowledge of international faculty: A case study

2021-6
Bahar Cemre, Karaağaçlı
Show full item record
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
485
views
539
downloads
In the context of internationalization, international faculty are considered among stakeholders in higher education. These instructors’ cognition about teaching reflects over the classroom and the institution through their personal practical knowledge embodied by past experiences, current awareness, and future expectations. Their cognition also shapes and is shaped within sociocultural venues. In this regard, this case study was designed to explore personal practical knowledge of five English language instructors working at the Department of Foreign Languages of a Turkish foundation university. Their personal practical knowledge was examined with four constructs. These were narrative unity, images, cycles, and rhythms. In addition, the extracurricular activities generated and supported by these instructors were scrutinized with reference to Cultural Historical Activity Theory. In line with the theory, students attending the clubs, coordinators, and international teaching assistants also participated in the study. Data were collected in one academic term with semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, observations, and reflections on documents. Data analysis was carried out with a three-tiered method. Upon examining narrative unity, images, rhythms, and cycles, teaching philosophies as a moral component of personal practical knowledge was found to be externalized through the preferred classroom practices. Besides, teacher learning actualized with mediation was found to embody the instructors’ personal practical knowledge. Their knowledge was also seen to be influential in informing their practices in the classrooms and the clubs. As non-formal curricular settings developed with personal practical knowledge, these extracurricular activities provided affordances for intercultural reflections among students and instructors within the department.
Internationalization in higher education, Teacher cognition, Personal practical knowledge, Cultural Historical Activity Theory, Extracurricular activities in English teaching
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/91117
Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

Lookıng At The Elt Methods Through The Eyes Of Teachers At Work An Analysıs
Bilgi, Şeniz (2015-09-01)
Approaches to English Language Teaching (ELT) and methodology courses are the indispensable parts of the undergraduate programs in ELT Departments. Starting from their sophomore years, students take a variety of methodology courses where they get to know the theory of language teaching along with the techniques. Yet, when they graduate and become teachers themselves, whether they are able to apply what they have learnt in theory to practice is rather questionable and is an area open to research since some a...
Exploring technology integration approaches and practices of preservice and in-service english language teachers
Akcaoğlu, Mete; Eröz Tuğa, Betil; Department of English Literature (2008)
In this study, three aspects of technology integration in English Language Teaching within the context of private universities in Ankara, Turkey were investigated. Firstly, preservice and in-service teachers’ computer usage frequencies/types, computer competence levels, perceived barriers to technology integration and attitudes toward computers were explored. Then, factors (age, gender, work experience, institutional factors being preservice or in-service) that might potentially affect the findings of the f...
Issues in pre-service and in-service teacher training programs for university English instructors in Turkey
Balbay, Seher; Temir, Tuğçe; Doğan, Cemile (2018-06-01)
English language teaching programs in Turkish universities do not have uniform standards. The quality of education given to teachers in their undergraduate programs varies as does the teacher training provided during employment. The factors affecting the teacher training policies are numerous, such as the needs of the institution, the funding, time, technology and especially the importance attached to an ongoing development process. Particularly in higher education, lip service is paid to English language t...
Conflicting Perspectives on the Internationalization of Higher Education: Evidence from the Turkish Case
Bulut Şahin, Betül; Kondakçı, Yaşar (2022-09-01)
The internationalization of higher education (IHE) has become a key policy issue for governments, a research field for scholars, a strategic priority for universities, and a career orientation for administrative staff. Yet, with recent social, political, and economic trends heavily embellished by globalization and neoliberalism, the term IHE has resulted in conflicting perspectives. Although there are numerous analyses on IHE, these analyses seldom focus on conflicts among different constituencies of the un...
Internal and external alignment of the material adaptation and development education given by an EFL teacher education program in Turkey /
Tekir, Serpil; Akar, Hanife; Department of Educational Sciences (2016)
The aim of the study was two-fold: first, to investigate to what extent the instructional materials education given by an EFL Teacher Education program at a state university in central Turkey is aligned to the explicit policies and standards set at macro level; second, to analyse the internal alignment among the written, taught, learned and tested curricula of the teacher education program with respect to the instructional materials education being given. With these purposes, the study adopted a multi-phase...
Citation Formats
K. Bahar Cemre, “Personal practical knowledge of international faculty: A case study,” M.A. - Master of Arts, Middle East Technical University, 2021.
METU IIS - Integrated Information Service open@metu.edu.tr