Teaching as a performing art: Promoting nonverbal immediacy of English Teacher Trainees

This dissertation features a research study in which an acting course for ELT pre-service teacher education was designed and applied so as to develop nonverbal immediacy of the teacher trainees and to contribute to the development of the teacher identity. This study is an integration of certain qualitative and quantitative research methods. After piloting the course design, syllabus and acting activities, an acting course for English teacher trainees was administered in an experimental design to measure the impact of an acting course on nonverbal immediacy of teacher trainees. Nonverbal Immediacy Scale-Self Report was utilized as a pre-test and a post-test tool. As for observing the change in the development process of teacher identity, various qualitative data collection techniques and tools were utilized. The results of the experimental study revealed that the experimental group displayed a significant development in their nonverbal immediate behavior, while the control group showed no notable change. The qualitative findings showed that the acting course contributed to development process of teacher identity in pre-service teacher trainees, revealing certain hierarchical stages of identity construction such as awareness, control, autonomy, self-confidence self-esteem and identity. While the first three stages were found to be highly hierarchical, self-confidence and self-esteem were observed at every developmental stage, but with a gradual increase. Apart from these findings, this research study also offers a course design, a suggested syllabus and twenty four acting activities and tasks which were designed for this research to be utilized specifically in English teacher education.