Teacher Learning Through Research Lesson:Changes In Experienced Teachers' Beliefs And Practices

Learning to teach effectively is an ongoing,challenging and non-linear process for teachers at all stages.Professional development is viewed as a key to increasing teacher expertise,implementing education reform,and bringing immediate changes in classrooms.Experienced teachers take large portion of the whole group of teachers.Some experienced teachers remain to be experienced teachers over their teaching career,whereas some,probably,a small number of teachers become expert teachers gradually.Professional development of experienced teachers is always a challenging issue in the field of teacher education.Effective teacher learning leads changes in in teacher beliefs and practices.Taking a qualitative case study approach,this study explored the learning experiences of three experienced EFL teachers through doing two research lessons.Multiple sources of data were collected,including in-depth interviews,classroom observations,stimulus recall protocols,e-mails and WeChat communications,teachers'reflective journals and other relevant documents.Adopting activity theory as the theoretical and analytical framework,this study analyzed their learning processes through their process of interaction and negotiation in preparing for and doing the research lessons and the impact of this experience on their beliefs and practices through the contradictions in the activity system.Three major findings were emerged from data analysis.First,the three experienced EFL teachers changed their beliefs and practices in various aspects such as they changed their beliefs in how learning happens.Second,the supervisors played a key role in their process of learning,and their individual efforts and capability of mediation(e.g.,negotiating with supervisors and assistants)determine whether they can achieve their learning goals.Third,strong and specific professional development goals act as a driving force for experienced teachers to take active agency role in their professional development.This study contributes to our understanding of experienced teacher learning through research lessons and has three implications for teacher development programs.First,enhancing experienced teachers' research ability is an effective way to transform them into expert teachers.Second,government and schools need to provide experienced teachers with sound contextual support such as reducing un-teaching related working loads so that they can concentrate on doing research project and research lessons with the aim of improving teaching effectiveness.Finally,reflective awareness and reflective practice need to be emphasized in experienced teacher professional development program.