Learning to Do Action Research Through Reflection: A Longitudinal Study of Rural EFL Teachers
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Chunguo Meng
Abstract
This longitudinal study presents a full view of three rural high school EFL teachers’ stories about learning to do action research through reflection. It takes a closer look at the contributions of reflection to action research, the challenges the teachers faced, and the changes they achieved. Over a 22-week semester, the three teachers engaged in a series of interrelated learning activities including journal writing, individual dialogues, group meetings and action research. The findings show that learning to do action research was a time-consuming and arduous task, and such difficulties arose when they identified research topics, formed research questions, collected data and wrote their reports. However, reflection through writing, talking and discussing pushed the process forward. The teachers’ professional development was mainly reflected in the changes in teaching practices and beliefs. A revisit held seven years later confirms that teachers’ ability to identify problems and to take action improved, but none of them tried to do further action research. For the teachers living in an unsupportive research context, integrating action research into teaching practices may not be a priority.
©2014 Walter de Gruyter, Berlin Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Tensions in Teachers’ Conceptions of Research: Insights from College English Teaching in China
- Learning to Do Action Research Through Reflection: A Longitudinal Study of Rural EFL Teachers
- Chinese EFL Learners’ Actual Word Processing and Lexical Learning in Performing a Collaborative Output Task
- Interpretation of English Ambiguous Verb-Locative Prepositional Phrase Constructions by Mandarin and Spanish Speakers: Evidence for the Representational Deficit Hypothesis
- Assessing the Roles of Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge in Chinese EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension
- Plagiarism in Their Own Words: What Chinese and American Students Say about Academic Dishonesty
- Instructors’ Debate over Error Feedback on Chinese International Students’ Academic Writings in a U.S. University
- Chinese Abstracts
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Tensions in Teachers’ Conceptions of Research: Insights from College English Teaching in China
- Learning to Do Action Research Through Reflection: A Longitudinal Study of Rural EFL Teachers
- Chinese EFL Learners’ Actual Word Processing and Lexical Learning in Performing a Collaborative Output Task
- Interpretation of English Ambiguous Verb-Locative Prepositional Phrase Constructions by Mandarin and Spanish Speakers: Evidence for the Representational Deficit Hypothesis
- Assessing the Roles of Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge in Chinese EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension
- Plagiarism in Their Own Words: What Chinese and American Students Say about Academic Dishonesty
- Instructors’ Debate over Error Feedback on Chinese International Students’ Academic Writings in a U.S. University
- Chinese Abstracts
