EFL instructors' perceptions of student engagement and their use of student engagement strategies in blended learning

This study aimed to understand EFL instructors' perceptions of student engagement and their use of student engagement strategies in blended learning in a preparatory school in Turkey. Moreover, the study also aimed to find out the problems they encountered for student engagement and the solutions recommended to the mentioned problems. In this narrative case study, 10 EFL instructors were interviewed to collect the data. The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed using Creswell's (2013) systematic content analysis framework. The findings revealed that the EFL instructors' definition of student engagement referred to students' observable behaviors: behavioral engagement, which implies that the instructors have a narrow understanding of the multidimensional construct. It was found that emotional and cognitive engagement indicators might escape the instructors' attention, which mistakenly results in misinterpreting the level of student engagement for some individual learners. This might be a call for expanding instructors' conceptualization of the student engagement to have a good grasp of the dimensions of engagement for better teaching supported by in-service trainings. Despite their narrow understanding of the construct, EFL instructors implemented a wide range of strategies in face-to-face and online teaching to engage students behaviorally, cognitively and emotionally. Moreover, the findings also revealed that the problems they encountered for student engagement were learner-based and institutional-based; however, the solutions they recommended were institutional-based. Taking the results of the study into consideration, several implications and suggestions were made for foreign language instructors, curriculum designers, teacher trainers and language program administrators as well as further studies.