English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers, among other challenges, are required to deal with content areas which are beyond their realms of expertise. This can lead to special types of critical ...incidents (CIs) for them (i.e., subject-related CIs). Despite their importance, CIs seem to have received little attention in EAP teaching and teacher education. This study addresses EAP teachers' subject-related CIs. A total of 13 subject-related CIs gathered from interviews with 34 Iranian EAP teachers were analyzed in order to examine their nature as well as the strategies and tactics that teachers used to handle them and the insights they gained from such incidents. The analysis shows that EAP teachers used three types of strategies for dealing with subject-related CIs: admitting ignorance, avoidance, and risk taking. They used various types of tactics for handling their subject-related CIs and described lessons they learned from them. The results indicate that CIs can provide invaluable insights into the nature of the challenges EAP teachers face regarding the specialized content of EAP courses.
•Provides a picture of the real (subject related) challenges in EAP classes.•Reports EAP teachers' strategies and tactics in handling critical incidents.•Reports the lessons EAP teachers learned from critical incidents.•Recommends use of critical incidents in EAP teacher education.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Academic reading and writing abilities are prerequisites to success in postgraduate programs. These should be domains of competence in particular for students in applied linguistics, whose studies ...and future performance as teachers require insight into these skills. A questionnaire was administered to 194 students, who assessed their own academic reading skills. In addition, open-ended questions added to the questionnaire and interviews with 14 students were analyzed, yielding eight domains identified as particular challenges. The results revealed that students assessed their information literacy to be the weakest one. The eight areas of challenge included: shortage of time, information literacy, content knowledge, critical literacy, writers’ language style and generic features of texts, teachers’ high expectations and vague instructions, insufficient statistical literacy and insufficient interaction with peers.
This study examines the experiences and motivations of language and linguistics academics who have published in potential predatory journals (PPJs). A questionnaire was administered to 2,793 ...academics with publications in 63 language and linguistics PPJs, and 213 of them returned their responses. A subsample of the respondents (n = 21) also contributed qualitative data through semi-structured interviews or email responses to open-ended questions. Analyses of the survey data found that the authors were mainly from Asia, mostly had a doctorate, chose the PPJs chiefly for fast publication and/or meeting degree or job requirements, were predominantly of the opinion that the PPJs were reputable, and commonly reported positive impacts of publishing in the PPJs on their studies or academic careers. A thematic analysis of the qualitative data revealed five main themes: unawareness, unrelenting publication pressures, low information literacy, social identity threat, and failure to publish in top-tier journals.
Despite the importance of reflection on critical incidents (CIs), there are only a few studies in ELT literature addressing English language teachers’ CIs (Farrell, 2008). Accordingly, this study was ...conducted to explore and discuss how six in-service EFL teachers reflected on and reported their CIs. In so doing, the participant teachers reflected retrospectively and introspectively on their CIs for 12 sessions. They put their CIs in a blog each session in order to share them with their colleagues. After the treatment, the three stages of grounded theory were employed in order to analyse the CIs. The results, revealing six categories and 12 subcategories, shed light on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of teachers’ reflections on their CIs. Results may have implications for teacher education and can add to the existing literature on unpacking teachers’ CIs.
Full text
Available for:
NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Despite the existence of a vast growing literature on second language acquisition (SLA) research and a heated debate among second language (L2) researchers about the applicability of research to ...practice, there is scanty empirical evidence in this area (Nassaji, 2012). Accordingly, this paper reports on a study investigating in-service teachers' perspectives on the interface between SLA research and L2 teaching. A total number of 119 English language teachers responded to a questionnaire which collected both qualitative and quantitative data. The results revealed teachers' familiarity with SLA research. Although they held positive views towards the relevance of SLA research to language teaching practice, a low percentage of them indicated that they seek insights from research articles. Lack of time and ability were the most frequently reported reasons for not conducting SLA research. Similarly, teachers' lack of time and the difficulty associated with SLA research articles were the most frequently reported reasons for not reading these articles. Majority of the teachers appeared to conceive of teachers' and researchers' works as related and connected. However, in almost all cases a considerably higher percentage of MA teachers than their BA counterparts viewed SLA research as more relevant and useful for teaching purposes. Teachers also expressed their expectations from SLA research to address practical issues. Further, they highlighted practical aspects of SLA research as more relevant to their practice.
This qualitative longitudinal case study investigated the transformative contribution of reflective inquiry to a language teacher's cognition underlying his provision of oral corrective feedback. The ...data were collected through semistructured interview, classroom observation, and reflective verbal recollection during an educational year. Thematic analysis of the data led to the emergence of four major themes guiding the teacher's oral error treatment, namely Theoretical and Pedagogical Knowledge, Informed Online Decision Making, Critical Reflection, and Expressing Beliefs and Philosophies. Further analysis of the data revealed instances of transformation in the teacher's cognition underlying error correction. Accordingly, the teacher's new approaches revealed an increased awareness towards his pedagogical knowledge and online decision making as informed by his theoretical knowledge regarding corrective feedback whereas his theoretical and pedagogical knowledge did not indicate remarkable changes. Moreover, this teacher’s critical reflection and evaluation of constraints influencing oral error treatment revealed a remarkable transformation, and his latest concerns illustrated his transformed beliefs and enhanced confidence. In addition to the researchers' suggestion for further inquiry and replication, the findings, imply that reflective inquiry has a transformative role in reconstruction of language teachers' cognition on oral corrective feedback.
Understanding and measuring levels of academic integrity within higher education institutions across the world is an important area of study in the era of educational internationalization. Developing ...a cross-cultural measure will undoubtedly assist in creating standardization processes and add to the discourse on cross-cultural understanding on what constitutes honest and dishonest action in the higher education context. This study has used a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analytical procedures to validate a previously published questionnaire, namely the cross-cultural academic integrity questionnaire (CCAIQ). Inspection of response distributions was also undertaken. Primary participants in this study were from Iran (
n
= 216), and secondary reference participants were from New Zealand (
n
= 366) and Nigeria (
n
= 330). The findings indicate that a revised questionnaire (CCAIQ-2) better represents the data obtained from all three regions. Three CCAIQ-2 domains are proposed: cheating, collusion and complying. However, the response distributions (skewness and kurtosis) indicated differences among the three groups, further suggesting that the theoretical constructs developed through factors analysis may not represent equivalence in terms of cross-cultural understanding. This research will inevitably create international debate on the measurement of integrity and how this measurement process can be used to establish internationally recognized and accountable educational regulations.
Full text
Available for:
EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
