he Effects of School-based Professional Development Workshops on English Language Teachers’ Beliefs and Their Classroom Practices: An Inductive Grammar Teaching Approach in Focus
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Date
2020-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AAU
Abstract
The Effects of School-based Professional Development Workshops on English Language Teachers’
Beliefs and Their Classroom Practices: An Inductive Grammar Teaching Approach in Focus
Augna Guade
Addis Ababa University, 2020
i
This study mainly aimed at investigating the effects of school-based professional development workshops on
secondary and preparatory school EFL teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their grammar teaching approaches.
It set out to investigate the extent to which the school-based professional development workshop that dealt with
an inductive grammar teaching approach shaped or changed the teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their
grammar teaching approaches. It further targeted at exploring the teachers’ pedagogical beliefs about the
effects of professional development workshops on their classroom practices. In order to achieve the intended
objectives, this study employed a mixed methods design involving both the quantitative and qualitative methods
in two phases to study the issues under investigation in detail. The quantitative data in phase I were presented
prior to the qualitative part based on the data collection procedure. Two types of questionnaires (survey and
workshop evaluation questionnaires), classroom observations, interviews and research journal were used to
collect sufficient data for this study. To obtain reliable outcomes, the validity and reliability of the tools were
checked through reviewers and data analyses during the pilot study. Based on the lessons obtained from the
pilot study, the tools were revised again and improved for the main study. In the first phase of this study, the
quantitative data were collected through a belief inventory survey questionnaire from eighty-six sample teachers
in twelve randomly selected government schools in Addis Ababa. The data collected through this instrument
were organized and analyzed quantitatively with the help of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences
(SPSS) version 20.The statistical analyses carried out on the data focused on computing descriptive statistics,
particularly the mean and grand mean values of the questionnaire items. The survey questionnaire data in the
first phase of the study indicated that the EFL teachers participating in the study believed in the effectiveness of
professional development workshops to improve their classroom practices. In the second phase, which was a
case study part, the qualitative data were collected from four EFL teachers selected from Bole Preparatory
School based on convenience sampling - four out of eighty-six participant teachers. In this phase, the case study
teachers were observed two-three times (a total of eleven videotaped classroom observations) and interviewed
once before the workshop was provided. The classroom observation data obtained from this phase were
analyzed descriptively case by case based on Pearson’s approach and the PPP (presentation-practiceproduction)
procedure
suggested
by
Hedge
and
Thornbury.
And
the
data
gathered
through
the
initial
interview
were
transcribed
and
thematically
analysed.
The
baseline
data,
i.e.
the
data
mainly
collected
through
the
initial
classroom
observations and interviews before the workshop indicated that the case study teachers tended to
employ a deductive grammar teaching approach in their respective classes. After confirming that the teachers
employed this approach, the researcher introduced an inductive grammar teaching approach through a schoolbased
professional
development
workshop.
The
main
purpose
of
this
workshop
was
to
shape
or
change
the
case
study
teachers’ pedagogical beliefs about the teaching of grammar, and enable them to implement an inductive
grammar teaching approach in their respective classrooms as an alternative approach. After the workshop, the
case study teachers were observed two-five times (a total of fifteen videotaped final classroom observations) for
the second time, and they were also interviewed once each to gain an insight into the effects of the current
workshop. The final classroom observation data were transcribed and analyzed descriptively case by case based
on an inductive grammar teaching approach suggested by Harmer. And the transcribed final interview data
were organized into six major categories and thematically analyzed. As the data in the second phase after the
workshop pointed out, the workshop resulted in some positive changes on the teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and
their grammar teaching approaches. Out of the fifteen final grammar lessons observed, seven of them (47%)
were presented inductively. In addition, however insignificant the improvements were, the teachers made some
sort of changes with the rest observed lessons, especially the beginning part of a grammar lesson which deals
with a rule discovery task. So as to weigh up the effects of the school-based professional development workshop,
the researcher also employed Guskey’s four-point workshop evaluation standard, and the result indicated that
the workshop was fairly effective to bring about the intended change. It was also revealed that the participant
teachers did not implement the workshop in the same efficiency. One of the reasons identified for the
accomplishment variation among the teachers was the difference in the levels of professional motivation, and it
was indicated that a low level of professional motivation resulted in a low degree of implementation of the
workshop. Following the major findings and the conclusions drawn from the study, a few feasible
recommendations were suggested
Description
Keywords
investigating the effects of school-based professional development workshops on secondary and preparatory school EFL teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their grammar teaching approaches.