Facilitating Professional Growth and Autonomy Development of In-Service English Teachers through a Blog: A Case Study in Iran

In order to help teachers maintain their professionalism and empower them to keep up with the indispensable changes inherent to their career, it is crucial to facilitate teachers’ professional development. Professional development initiatives are believed to be more efficient if they are specifically designed and implemented to accommodate needs, lacks, and challenges of the teachers in a certain context. Established on these considerations and through incorporating the theoretical bases of constructivism and cognitive apprenticeship, this research aims to investigate the perceptions of the participating teachers about a professional development initiative which was mediated through a blog addressing the concepts of learner autonomy and learner-centeredness and further explore the participating teachers’ perceptions towards their professional growth and autonomy. To this end, data was collected through three questionnaires, two interviews, and blog entries from four Iranian teachers of English, who were interested in developing their knowledge and practice of teaching along with the principles of learner autonomy and learner-centeredness. The design of the study was qualitative-dominant and based on the principles of multiple-case studies. Following the principles of deductive thematic analysis, this research adopted Evan’s (2014) professional development model which identifies eleven dimensions of change categorized under three primary developmental components as behavioral, attitudinal, and intellectual. The model suggests that change often occurs across more than one component. However, for professional development to occur, it does not require change to take place in every single dimension. According to Evans (2014), professional development is multi-dimensional which comes about through a chain of reactions at micro-level; that is, one change would lead to another, which subsequently makes a cycle of chain-reaction episodes. Analysis of the data revealed that the offered professional development initiative worked efficiently to foster professional growth of the participating teachers with regard to the concepts of learner autonomy and learner-centeredness. Moreover, the participating teachers believed that their perceived professional growth positively contributed to their autonomy development.