Contributions of Transnational Education Experiences of Pre-service EFL Teachers to their Professional Development

Abstract

The notion of teachers’ professional development has shifted from simply short-term in-service training to every kind of informal experiences, professional meetings or mentoring activities that promote growth and development of the teachers in the profession. Concerning this fact in mind, it is supposed that the transnational education experiences of pre-service teachers might also serve for their professional developments. Although the available literature revealed that the transnational education or short term mobility experiences somehow contributed to the professional development of pre-service teachers, it seems that in-depth studies uniquely focused on the perceptions of EFL pre-service teachers on the contribution of transnational education experiences to their professional development is scarce in number. Thus, the present study intended to examine the perceptions of pre-service EFL teachers qualitatively regarding the contribution of short term mobility experiences to their professional development. The data of the present study is gathered through two-round e-mail interviews with available participants, who are 19 pre-service EFL teachers enrolling in a foreign language teacher education program of a state university in Turkey. The gathered data is analyzed through semantic level thematic analysis of recurrent patterns in their e-mails and the findings were presented in frequencies and percentages adapting a hermeneutic approach. As for the trustworthiness of the findings, the themes emerged from the content analysis of the data were verified by another expert in the field. The findings of the present study revealed that transnational education experiences of participants contributed to their professional development in terms of some aspects including active learning and understanding educational policies and practice in other contexts, using inclusive practices and practicing in a collaborative environment and getting coaching/expert support to a great amount.

Keywords

• Transnational Education,Internationalization,Professional development,Erasmus+,Pre-service teachers

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