Facilitating the Transitioning of an EFL Teacher from Teaching Older Learners to Teaching Younger Children Through Mentoring

Creative Commons License

Kırkgöz Y.

JOURNAL OF EFFICIENCY AND RESPONSIBILITY IN EDUCATION AND SCIENCE, cilt.16, sa.1, ss.55-64, 2023 (Hakemli Dergi)

Özet

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.