Üniversite hazırlık okulundaki İngilizce öğretim görevlilerinin yansıtıcı öğretim çalışma grupları yoluyla mesleki gelişimleri

It is an undeniable fact that teachers of English language need to be qualified professionals in order to meet the high expectations from them (Richards, 2008). For quality language instruction, these teachers need to be competent in their profession. Especially the EFL instructors teaching at preparatory schools of universities are required to be well-equipped to prepare their students for the academic expectations of departments as well as for the social and professional dimensions of language acquisition. Based on this necessity of improvement and the fact that pre-service teacher education falls short of preparing language teachers for professional realities of their job, effective professional development (PD) is of utmost importance for these teachers. However, it seems that the majority of PD activities available for these teachers consist of traditional and top-down practices in the form of one-off delivery of events. Actually, the newer understanding of teachers' PD prioritizes reflection, collaboration, sustainability, bottom-up decision making, basis on classroom evidence and the ultimate goal of enhanced student learning (Bull et. al., 1994; Craft, 2000; Day, 1999; Day & Sachs, 2004; Knight, 2002). In this scope, the present study investigated Reflective Practice Groups (RPGs) as a way of teachers' PD (Day & Sachs, 2004) in an effort to find out the teachers' perspectives regarding their learning experience throughout the 9-week PD process. In particular, the teachers' insights about the RPG activity were analyzed to explore the developmental effect of the practice based on the interrelations of the emergent meanings. This study was conducted in qualitative research paradigm as a single instrumental case study (Creswell, 2007; Merriam, 2009) with 5 Prep School EFL instructors in a foundation university. The data was collected through a myriad of qualitative tools such as two semi-structured interviews, two reflective essays, a focus group meeting, visual artefacts, researchers' field notes and video-recordings of the RPG meetings. Data collection lasted for 14 weeks in total through which the teachers held 10 RPG meetings and delivered all the related research data. The data was analyzed by using the qualitative data analysis method suggested by Saldana and Omasta (2018) through which the meanings emerging from the themes were examined and synthesized. The results of this case study demonstrated that the EFL instructors participating in RPG meetings benefited from the process, which is evident in their explorations about teacher self, student viewpoints, teaching as a profession and the conduct of RPG process. While reaching these learning points, it was observed that the teachers made use of low affective filter, high collectivity, action orientation and reflective practice. These results suggest that RPGs could be considered as an effective developmental tool in line with the principles of the contemporary PD paradigm. The fundamental suggestion of the study is that collaborative reflection has a significant impact on teachers' PD. In the light of these results, several implications have been offered for researchers, educational institutions and language teachers for further considerations of RPG.