{"title":"Exploratory Practice as a Professional Development Strategy for English-Language Teachers in Indonesia","authors":"J. Ramdani, S. Baker, X. Gao","doi":"10.1177/00336882231152944","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic forced university-based language teachers to rely on technology for teaching. While the challenges of the rushed move to online teaching have been well documented, less is known about how teachers adapted to online teaching through professional development. This article focuses on the experiences of four English-language teachers in Indonesian higher education, who took part in an exploratory practice study for the integration of technology-enhanced pedagogical practices in teaching. In this article, we explore the pedagogical puzzles they explored with their students, the challenges faced by the teachers and the gains achieved by undertaking exploratory practice for integrating technology into language teaching in 2021. Drawing on data gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, we identified that the application of exploratory practice principles enabled the participant teachers to tackle a variety of pedagogical puzzles related to online teaching and professional development. We also found that they overcame a variety of challenges and used potentially exploitable pedagogic activities to better understand students and their learning needs, which encouraged them to recognize students as partners in teaching. Further investments of resources and support are necessary to ensure that language teachers fully benefit from exploratory practice in terms of professional development during and beyond the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":46946,"journal":{"name":"Relc Journal","volume":"5 1","pages":"340 - 355"},"PeriodicalIF":3.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Relc Journal","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00336882231152944","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic forced university-based language teachers to rely on technology for teaching. While the challenges of the rushed move to online teaching have been well documented, less is known about how teachers adapted to online teaching through professional development. This article focuses on the experiences of four English-language teachers in Indonesian higher education, who took part in an exploratory practice study for the integration of technology-enhanced pedagogical practices in teaching. In this article, we explore the pedagogical puzzles they explored with their students, the challenges faced by the teachers and the gains achieved by undertaking exploratory practice for integrating technology into language teaching in 2021. Drawing on data gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, we identified that the application of exploratory practice principles enabled the participant teachers to tackle a variety of pedagogical puzzles related to online teaching and professional development. We also found that they overcame a variety of challenges and used potentially exploitable pedagogic activities to better understand students and their learning needs, which encouraged them to recognize students as partners in teaching. Further investments of resources and support are necessary to ensure that language teachers fully benefit from exploratory practice in terms of professional development during and beyond the pandemic.
期刊介绍:
The RELC Journal is a fully peer-reviewed international journal that publishes original research and review articles on language education. The aim of this Journal is to present information and ideas on theories, research, methods and materials related to language learning and teaching. Within this framework the Journal welcomes contributions in such areas of current enquiry as first and second language learning and teaching, language and culture, discourse analysis, language planning, language testing, multilingual education, stylistics, translation and information technology. The RELC Journal, therefore, is concerned with linguistics applied to education and contributions that have in mind the common professional concerns of both the practitioner and the researcher.