Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
JOURNAL OF EFFICIENCY AND RESPONSIBILITY IN EDUCATION AND SCIENCE, cilt.16, sa.1, ss.55-64, 2023 (Hakemli Dergi)
This paper reports on the professional journey of an
English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher from teaching older learners to
teaching younger ones at a primary school, and the impact of mentoring on the teacher in facilitating
the transitioning process. The participant is a Turkish male EFL teacher with 23
years of teaching experience. He participated to the mentoring program which was
organized as a collaborative action research (CAR) teacher development project
implemented by the author of the present study. During this process, the
participant completed three cycles of action research. For each cycle, he
identified a problem and/or any aspect of teaching the wished to improve,
designed an action plan, implemented this with his Grade 2 English classes,
reflected on his action, and documented his action research project. He was
also interviewed to gain additional insight into his experiences. Qualitative
data from the interviews was
subjected to content analysis.
The findings show that the mentoring process helped the participant increase
his awareness of using new and innovative age-appropriate techniques, led him gain
self-confidence and improved his teaching practice, thus facilitating the
transitioning to teaching English to a younger age.