{"title":"E-Learning in Kuwait: Students’ Perspective","authors":"Shaima AlShamali, M. Hajeeh, Ahmad AlKhayat","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160201","url":null,"abstract":"The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has wreaked havoc on societies around the world and continues to do so and produced cataclysmic socio-economic challenges. This virus compelled countries to enact restrictive policies in order to combat, defend, and prevent against the spread of infection. In most nations, including Kuwait, a complete lockdown was imposed, with necessary measures taken to limit social gatherings, wear protective masks, and encourage social distancing. Businesses, organizations, and institutions have been forced to discover new avenues to survive and thrive by converting to remote operation using digital technology. Similarly, the epidemic has forced educational institutions to abandon conventional face-to-face instruction in favor of online digital learning. The goal of this study is to assess the online learning process in Kuwait from the perspective of students. In this regard, a survey questionnaire was designed and distributed to students throughout Kuwait; 830 students responded, with just 500 students with complete answers. In light of the dangerous and widespread of the harmful virus, analysis found that students consent to online learning. However, most prefer face-to-face instruction in a classroom setting.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79150388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dropout Intentions in Higher Education: Systematic Literature Review","authors":"José Carlos Véliz Palomino, A. Ortega","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160206","url":null,"abstract":"College dropout proves to be a critical problem in undergraduate programs that directly affects students and the related community, due to direct economic losses and significant social costs. This article addresses a systematic review of the literature on predictors of student dropout intention in higher education, focusing on scientific production in Q1 and Q2 journals from 2018 to 2023, performing a bibliometric review and analyzing the available empirical and theoretical data on the phenomenon of college dropout intention and its affecting factors. The bibliometric results and those related to predictors of dropout intention introduced in previous studies are presented. The largest number of researchers studying this phenomenon are from Germany, however, the United Kingdom is the country with the largest number of publications. Previous research can be grouped into two categories: studies analyzing psychological factors of dropout intention and those related to academic and social integration.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88016031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teacher-Tailored Classroom Observation for Professional Growth of EFL Instructors: An Exploratory Case Study","authors":"Sabire Pınar Acar, Eda Akgün Özpolat, İrem Çomoğlu","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160103","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary approaches to professional development (PD) involve investigating ways of bottom-up, self-directed practices while addressing various needs of teachers. Yet, utilized as a tool in such practices, classroom observation (CO) is not considered to promote teacher professional learning since it is generally regarded as part of the appraisal process. Thus, this exploratory case study aims to explore the insights of four EFL teachers about CO tailored by teachers themselves for their professional growth in a higher education context in Türkiye. Focusing on a bottom-up practice, the teachers pursued a collaborative act on their PD in this specific context. Based on the participants’ previous and current experiences of CO, the data were collected through semi-structured interviews and teacher educator notes. The inductive thematic analysis of the data revealed three major interconnected themes providing pathways toward CO as a PD tool with special emphasis on the generic features of the teacher-tailored CO process. The discussion of findings highlights the importance of empowering, collaborative, and sustainable practices in teachers’ professional growth. Implications are included for English language teacher development programs.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87757626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teacher-practitioner Inquiry in Professional Development A Case of Adaptation and Resistance to Genre-based Systemic Functional Linguistic as a New Writing Instruction: A Case of Adaptation and Resistance to Genre-based Systemic Functional Linguistic as a New Writing Instruction","authors":"Hanh Dinh, L. Nguyen","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160107","url":null,"abstract":"This qualitative study reports the results of sensemaking when teacher-practitioner inquiry in professional development (PD) is carried out for 120 Vietnamese K-12 and college teachers. The PD was designed to prepare teachers to teach with different newly-approved English language coursebooks using a genre-based systemic functional linguistic approach (SFL). During scaffolds in workshops, teaching staff guided teachers in cooperating and drafting lessons using genre-based SFL, examining the lessons’ impacts on students’ responses. Teachers also journaled to unravel the knitted instructional complexities and express their willingness to adapt to emerging teaching practices. Data were collected via the video recordings, teachers’ interviews, and content analysis of their inquiry products. Four themes representing the complexities in teachers’ sensemaking of scaffolded collaborative PD were: 1. Improved teacher agency in terms of planning and instruction; 2. Research-based experiential learning creating a venue for intrinsic motivation to innovate in instruction; 3. An overwhelming feeling of inequity between high and low-resourced instructional situations; 4. The mismatch between teachers’ advocacy for desired deep-learning approach and the traditional ideology of rote learning for exams.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82483357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preservice Teachers’ Experiences on Becoming Culturally Responsive Educators: An Action Research Case Study","authors":"Ekaterina Koubek, S. Wasta","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160102","url":null,"abstract":"Reflection on teaching and learning is considered one of the most essential elements of teacher development. With the rise of multilingual learners in U.S. public schools, the role of critical reflection has become even more prominent in teacher preparation programs to disrupt preservice teachers’ (PSTs) biases and stereotypes regarding these learners and their families. Moreover, to address the widening educational inequities and to enact more equitable teaching practices, PSTs ought to reflect on their pedagogical practices with the guidance of an educator-mentor. Therefore, this qualitative action research case study explored how one teacher preparation program implemented reflective and experiential practices in their graduate Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages coursework to assist PSTs in systematically examining their understandings of culturally responsive practices. Our research was grounded in culturally responsive teaching. Our findings revealed that our PSTs had an awareness of culturally responsive pedagogy; they recognized the importance of learning from and with their students and families but still had areas for growth when implementing culturally responsive practices, prompting us to further explore how these PSTs enact culturally sustaining practices in their future classrooms.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89725729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Preservice Teacher Action Research: Making Meaning and Generating Knowledge Through Inquiry","authors":"Rachel Ginsberg","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160101","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes the ways in which action research during preservice teacher education influences the development of a critical inquiry stance. By following eight preservice teachers as they conducted action research in their final semester of student teaching, this article demonstrates how action research created the space for preservice teachers to engage in practical and critical inquiry, which allowed participants the opportunity to develop a critical inquiry stance, to varying degrees. Discussed are the disparate ways participants thought about the meaning they made and the knowledge they generated during their action research assignment. The freedom action research granted preservice teacher to make meaning of their classroom instruction, generate knowledge, and bridge the gap between theory and practice, instruction and learning, and their students and themselves, allowed for the development of a critical inquiry stance. Findings suggest that through inquiry, preservice teachers disrupted the hierarchy of knowledge generation in teaching, as they theorized instruction, problematized pedagogy, and improved their teaching practices.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"622 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78970230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inquiry and Research Skills for Language Teachers by Kenan Dikilitaş and Ali Bostancioğlu","authors":"Raúl Enrique García López","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160109","url":null,"abstract":"Published in 2019, Inquiry and Research Skills for Language Teachers is written to assist teacher educators in the design of research methodology courses in English teacher education programs. Conceived in the authors’ conviction that most research courses do not succeed in empowering teachers’ professional practices, the book resorts to Exploratory Practice to configure an approach that appeals to the interrogation of pre-service teachers’ attitudes and beliefs toward research to increase engagement and foster inquiry skills. In the book, Kenan Dikilitaş and Ali Bostancioğlu lay out a step-by-step guide for teacher educators to design research courses that are more connected to the realities of future teachers, in the hopes of achieving a long-lasting effect on teachers’ professional identities. The book addresses an audience that is familiar with the challenges teachers face when trying to bridge the gap between theory and practice and implement evidence-based teaching.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"529 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77694400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Facilitating the Transitioning of an EFL Teacher from Teaching Older Learners to Teaching Younger Children Through Mentoring","authors":"Yasemin Kırkgöz","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160106","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports the professional journey of an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher from teaching older learners to teaching younger children at a primary school, and the impact of mentoring on the teacher in facilitating the transitioning process. The participant is a Turkish native-speaker male English teacher with 23 years of teaching experience. He participated in the mentoring program, which was organized as a collaborative action research teacher development project, and implemented by the author of the present study. During this process, the participant completed three cycles of action research. For each cycle, he identified a problem and/or any aspect of teaching he wished to improve, designed an action plan, applied it in his Grade 2 English classes, reflected upon his action, and documented his action research. He was also interviewed to gain additional insight into his experiences. Qualitative inductive analysis was used to analyse the interviews and reflective writings. The findings suggest that the mentoring process led to an increase in the teacher’s self-efficacy in young learner pedagogy and teaching performance, helped him socialize into the community of young learner teachers, and gain teacher-researcher identity, which is perceived to smooth his transition into teaching a younger age.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90609045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring the Practical Impacts of Research Engagement on English Language Teaching: Insights from an Online Community of Practice","authors":"Kenan Dikilitaş, Asli Lidice Gokturk Saglam","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160105","url":null,"abstract":"Practitioner research has been gaining prominence as a means for professional development (PD) since it provides teachers with opportunities to reflect on, comprehend, and transform their practices. However, there is a dearth of research that examines how teachers learn in online communities established to mentor teachers across the world to learn how to do research for PD. This study explores teacher researchers’ use and integration of their research experiences in their teaching as well as uncovering how they develop professionally. To this end, we contacted and interviewed 5 international teacher researchers who participated in our 5-week online training in 2021 within the scope of TESOL’s Electronic Village Online (EVO) and shared the preliminary findings. Interviews lasted around 50 minutes during which teachers reflected on their research experience in retrospect and self-reported how this influenced and informed teaching. Transcripts are analyzed thematically through the NVivo software. Findings indicate that our participants reported practical improvement in their instructions not only during but also after the research. They also highlighted how research implementation with their students created opportunities to revisit their own beliefs and the corresponding practices. The study has implications for in-service teacher educators and research mentors who provide online research-driven PD.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84644713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sustaining Action Research: A Practical Guide for Institutional Engagement by Anne Burns, Emily Edwards and Neville John Ellis","authors":"E. Békés","doi":"10.7160/eriesj.2023.160108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7160/eriesj.2023.160108","url":null,"abstract":"The volume Sustaining Action Research: A Practical Guide for Institutional Engagement by Burns, Edwards and Ellis looks at Action Research (AR) and similar participant-oriented approaches from a new perspective. Rather than adding to the growing literature of AR research reports and accounts provided by individual teachers or small groups of teachers, the volume looks at how, beyond the micro level, educational leaders can initiate, support, and sustain AR at their institutions and influence educational developments at meso and macro levels. The book provides teachers, teacher educators, mentors, and educational leaders with a wealth of activities that, in themselves, create an AR cycle, moving from the local context of the microcosm of a classroom up to the institutional and, ultimately, the national and even international level. The volume looks at education from a socioecological perspective and convincingly establishes a solid link between theory and practice, where the individual experiences of classroom practitioners are scaffolded by relevant research and the AR process is both reflected on and celebrated at key stages. The presentation is user-friendly, the information is up-to-date, and the resources are both varied and easily accessible.","PeriodicalId":42715,"journal":{"name":"Journal on Efficiency and Responsibility in Education and Science","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80493289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}