Roles of action research in the professional development of Chinese language teachers
A case study
This study examined the roles of action research in the professional development of Chinese language teachers.
Participants were a group of Chinese teachers enrolled in a teacher training course. In light of theories and research,
participants were guided to reflect on their own teaching beliefs and practice and design a research project about their own
teaching. Using a descriptive-explorative design, this study elicited data from multiple sources, including students’ pre-course
survey, professional journals, reflective essays, project reports, group interviews, email exchanges with the instructor, and
instructor’s field notes. Three categories emerged from the data analysis that reflected students’ gains from the process: a
broader conception of research on language teaching and learning, a more sophisticated understanding of foreign language teaching
in general and their own teaching in particular, and a learning process of how to be a teacher-researcher. Contributing and
impeding factors are discussed and values of teacher research are suggested.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Literature review
- Teachers’ beliefs and classroom practice
- Reflection, research, and professional development
- Method
- The context of the study
- Participants
- Data collection
- Data coding and analysis
- Findings
- Adopting broad perceptions about L2 theory and research
- Reflections on teaching in light of theory and research
- The learning process to become teacher-researchers
- Discussions and implications
- Gains through doing research
- Possible impeding factors
- Concluding remarks
-
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Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
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2021.
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Chinese as a Second Language Research 10:2
► pp. 207 ff.
Zhu, Junling
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Critical Literature Review on Teaching Chinese as a World Language in the Context of Globalization.
Language and Sociocultural Theory 9:2
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