A study on post-method pedagogy and reflective teaching at public schools

Post-method pedagogy is now the current issue in English Language Teaching. The methods era has been criticized for having shortcomings of both application and meeting needs of the practitioners while achieving teaching. It is suggested that post-method perspective offers flexibility for teaching English as it enables teachers to consider context-sensitive concerns with the aim of grasping the needs of particular learners' and settings. Hence, it strengthens them to actualize their own theories to the full rather than following the prescribed methods. So, teachers become autonomous decision-makers. At this point, reflecting on themselves by making self-evaluations in regard with the contextual facets, teachers become modifiers of their own teaching and this leads to better utilization of reflective teaching. Therefore, post-method pedagogy and reflective teaching are closely associated with each other. Recent studies in our context showed the need for investigating the two major areas both qualitatively and quantitatively. The aim of this study is the investigate post-method pedagogy views of the 120 EFL teachers working at public schools in Mardin to detect a relation with their demographic profiles and reflective teaching applications. The data is collected by means of Post-Method Questionnaire (PMQ), Reflective Teaching Questionnaire (RPQ), and semi-structured interviews. For the analysis of the quantitative data, descriptive statistics, independent two samples t-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson correlation was run; while, the interviews were interpreted by content-analysis. As a result of the descriptive statistics, the EFL teachers were found nearly neutral towards post-method pedagogy and no correlation was detected between their perceptions and reflective practices. However, qualitative findings suggested complex and dynamic views and practices. Unlike the quantitative results, the interviewees showed more positive stance towards post-methodology and demonstrated to utilize reflective teaching by considering immediate context and broader issues in the teaching processes.