سمانه السادات حسینی زاده

Despite the abundance of research on the link between teachers’ beliefs and practices, little research has been conducted investigating the relationship between the beliefs of teachers with specific individual attributes and corrective feedback practices. Thus, this study aims to investigate whether growth mindset teachers’ oral corrective feedback (OCF, henceforth) practices are aligned with their beliefs. Eight in-service growth mindset EFL teachers participated in the study. Having collected the data via two questionnaires and a set of classroom observations, MAXQDA software was used to code and quantify the data. The findings showed that growth mindset teachers’ OCF beliefs and their actual OCF practices were aligned in terms of OCF timing. Regarding OCF types, female teachers’ practices were aligned with their beliefs, but male teachers’ beliefs were more incongruent with their practices. Teachers’ beliefs and practices, however, were inconsistent regarding OCF amount and frequency, which can be due to contextual factors, such as occasional time limit. The implications and suggestions for further research are suggested.

This article reports an experimental study on the effect of volunteering on the effectiveness of a professional development initiative involving 90 English teachers. Two training groups were studied at the start of their training and three months later. The only difference between these two groups was in the kind of their participation: volunteers vs. non-volunteers.  A control group of English teachers received no training and was studied in the same way. The evidence is reported on the changes in teachers’ self-reported self-efficacy and their perceived English proficiency based on two measures including teachers’ self-reported proficiency (Chacon, 2005) and Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001). Evidence indicates a range of positive changes in training teachers from the volunteer training group, and contrasting lack of change, or negative changes, in the participants in both the non-volunteer training group and the untrained group.