Foreign language

Reflection-for-Action

The study found that participants engaging in reflection for action in three distinct orientations: a) improvement of their own teaching practices b) the students, to enhance their learning c) institutions.

First, participants wanted to enhance their teaching practices. Engaging in reflective-practice-oriented online discussions; participants had the chance to observe each other‟s teaching practices by reading reflection papers and discussion comments. In this way, they were able to analyze the missing parts in their teaching as well. According to Uzum, Petron and Berg (2014), “Reflection-for-action may entail a teacher‟s making note of the weaknesses in a lesson and proposing action to address these problems in future lessons.” (p. 5). Thus, in this light, evidence of teachers engaging in reflection on action can be seen in participants‟ future intentions toovercome their weaknesses in their teaching. For instance, P # 3 realized that she never used mnemonics as P # 1 did in her teaching to enhance students‟ vocabulary knowledge, which can be regarded as identifying a weakness. Thus, she stated that she wanted to try that vocabulary teaching technique in her teaching practice. A similar attempt was seen in interview sessions of P # 1, P # 5 and P # 8, as well.
Upon seeing P # 9 sharing her to-do list strategy to overcome students‟ personal barriers, they decided to use this technique with their own students in their future teaching.
As the second direction, participants aimed to expand the students learning processes, which can be regarded as participants‟ engaging in reflection-for-action.

Although it may not be possible for reflective practitioners to comment on experience, which they have not hadyet, it is possible to consider the future scenarios by observing other teachers‟ teaching processes with the help of reflection-for-action (Wilson, 2008). Thus, by observing each other‟s reflection papers and discussion comments, they became aware of the importance of applying warm-up activities to gain the attention of the students and to motivate them and stated their willingness to apply them in their future practices. Similarly, they defined the place of technology in language classroom by reading how their classmates utilized technology via some activities or tools. For instance, the majority of the participants were eager to

implement wikis in their future practices to enhance students‟ learning environment with this brand new technological tools. Besides these things, participants also reflected upon the effectiveness of the activities they once utilized and found ineffective in their classroom environments. Seeing their classmates applying similar activities, such as error correction technique by writing students mistakes on the board, they understood that they might benefit from those activities again according to the classroom dynamics of their prospective students.
As the third orientation, teachers as agents of changes, participants mentioned their intentions to suggest ideas to their institutions to change several conditions.
First of all, one of participants wanted to suggest her administrators cultural exchange programs for preparatory school students. Secondly, for the sake of increasing students‟ awareness towards the target culture, one of the participants indicated his desire to start movie clubs in their institutions. That way, participant believed that he could create cultural relevance between the target culture and his students‟ own cultures. The third intention for change was detected in the assessment procedure. Two of the participants reconsidered the grading system of their online

course book exercises. They considered the possibility of making those activities voluntary in order to develop responsibilities among students to make them autonomous learners. Last but not least, participants stated their desire to ask for peer observation sessions in their institutions in order to enhance their professional development.

Considering participants talks on their intentions towards changes in their future teaching practices, teacher identity and applications of their institutions, it can be concluded that the participants engaged in the process on reflection-for-action.