Making the English language teachers working in primary schools aware of their principles behind their classroom practices and training them through action research

In recent years, it is accepted as a necessity that in teacher training programmes a greatimportance should be given to the principles and beliefs of language teachers behind theirteaching practices rather than the methods and techniques that they use in the classrooms.Based on this necessity, the present research study aims to offer a teacher training modelthrough action research in order to realize the training of the English language teachers whowork in primary schools by making them aware of their principles behind their classroompractices.The suggested teacher training model has two steps. In the first step, there are someactivities that aim to make the teachers aware of their principles behind their classroomteaching practices. In the second step, it is aimed to train the teachers through action researchafter stating their problems in terms of their classroom practices.In the framework of the first step of the research study that has been carried outpractically, transcripts of three different English teachers of 2nd and 3rd grades in a privateprimary school were written based on the audio recordings and observation of 13-hourlessons. Based on these lesson transcripts, the interview questions about the classroompractices of the teachers were formed. After that, the answers given to these questions wereevaluated in the framework of the principles which were accepted as the sources of theclassroom practices and they were classified under the headings of `use of the mother tongue?,`error correction?, `using/not using of the teacher?s book?, `giving instructions?, `classroommanagement?, `giving praise/punishment to the student? that were observed as the commonclassroom practices in the lessons of these three teachers. As a result of the evaluation, it wasfound out that how the teachers feel themselves in the classrooms and the characteristics ofthe classrooms directly affect the organization of the classroom teaching practices. Also, whatkind of a relationship exists between the teachers? classroom practices and principles wasdirectly stated depending on this evaluation.The findings that were stated at the end of the first step of the suggested model ofteacher training which was named as ?the process of raising awareness? have a kind ofcharacteristic that helps the teachers find out the problems that can be focused on during theprocess of the action research.