special issue:Projection of Immunity in Teachers’ Level of Thinking in Iranian IELTS Writing Classrooms

Subject Areas : Applied Linguistics

Fatemeh Mohammad jafari ¹ , Seyed Hamed Etemadi ²

1 - Department of Foreign Languages, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Department of English language, Nour Branch, Islamic Azad University, Nour, Iran

Received: 2024-07-09 Accepted : 2024-08-01 Published : 2024-07-28

Keywords: Teacher Immunity, SRSD, Teachers’ Level of Thinking, Writing Classrooms,

Abstract :

Without a question, having a healthy and wellbeing state which may result from positive teacher-student relationship can cultivate teachers’ self-efficacy and it affects how they approach their professional identity. Speaking of health and well-being, language teacher immunity can be a great help to study how teachers’ health and well-being are linked to effective classroom practices. Following that, this qualitative study, tried to use retrodictive qualitative modeling to work backwards to uncover the developmental paths that led teachers to a clear state. In this study, five IELTS teachers from two separate institutions were invited to participate to be investigated and compared. Also, this study intended to describe the occurrence of self-regulated strategy development in teaching writing through levels of thinking in Bloom’s taxonomy. To answer the questions of this ethnographic study, three data collection techniques of document collection, classroom observations, and interviews were utilized to proceed both thematic and descriptive content analyses. The results of this comparative ethnography discovered that in the Iranian IELTS classrooms, “the Visionary” and “The Spark plug” should be placed in two separate groups of immunity (productive and adaptive) to increase the categories of immunity to 3 in this context (Productive, adaptive, and maladaptive). Moreover, regarding teachers’ performances the researchers were convinced to add “organization of thoughts” to the second stage of SRSD to extend this stage to “Discussion/ Organization of thoughts” in Iranian IELTS teaching contexts.

References:

Abednia, A. (2012). Teachers’ professional identity: Contributions of a critical EFL teacher education course in Iran. Teaching and teacher education, 28(5), 706-717.

DeTeso, J. A. (2011). Student-Teacher relationships as predictors of reading comprehension gains in 2nd grade, Columbia University.

Harris, K. R., & S. Graham (2016). Self-regulated strategy development in writing: Policy implications of an evidence-based practice. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3(1), 77-84.

Hildenbrand, K. J., & J. A. Schultz (2012). Development of a rubric to improve critical thinking. Athletic Training Education Journal, 7(3), 86-94.

Hiver, P., & Z. Dörnyei (2017). Language teacher immunity: A double-edged sword. Applied Linguistics, 38(3), 405-423.

Heylighen, F. (2008). Complexity and Self-organization, HEYLIGHEN (in Bates & Maack. eds) prepared for the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, edited by Marcia J. Bates and Mary Niles Maack (Taylor & Francis, 2008)

Muganga, L.,& P. Ssenkusu (2019). Teacher-centered vs. student-centered: An examination of student teachers’ perceptions about pedagogical practices at Uganda’s Makerere University. Cultural and Pedagogical Inquiry, 11(2), 16-40.

Ordem, E. (2017). Developing Critical-Thinking Dispositions in a Listening/Speaking Class. English Language Teaching, 10(1), 50-55.

Rezaei, O., et al. (2016). Evaluation of IELTS preparatory courses in Iran: Teaching practices and strategies in focus. Teaching English Language, 10(2), 47-71.

Safdari, S. (2023). Trajectory of L2 Motivation Theories Development: Transition from the Social Psychological Views to the Socio-dynamic Perspectives. Journal of Teaching English Lnaguage Studies, 8(1), 39-48.

Scriven, M., & R. Paul (1987). Critical thinking. The 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, CA.

Sheybani, M., & F. Miri (2019). The relationship between EFL teachers’ professional identity and their critical thinking: A structural equation modeling approach. Cogent Psychology, 6(1),

Suleman, Q., Shehzad, S., Syed, MA.,& Raja, SA. (2018). Relationship between perceived occupational stress and psychological well-being among secondary school heads in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. PloS one , 13(12), 1-22

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Research Paper	Projection of Immunity in Teachers’ Level of Thinking in Iranian IELTS Writing Classrooms Fatemeh Mohammad Jafari1, Seyed Hamed Etemadi 2* 1 Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran [e-mail] 2 Assistant Professor, Department of English Language, Nour Branch, Islamic Azad University, Nour, Iran [e-mail]
Received: 08 October, 2023                                               Accepted: 10 January, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Without a question, having a healthy and wellbeing state which may result from positive teacher-student relationship can cultivate teachers’ self-efficacy and it definitely affects how they approach their professional identity (Abednia, 2012). So, teachers are mostly inclined to take challenges if they benefit from feeling of well-being which can be defined as physically and psychologically being healthy (Suleman et al., 2018). However, health issues sit somewhat uncomfortably within professional identity, and it remains in a marginal aspect of teachers’ work (Jourdan et. all., 2016). Speaking of health and well-being, language teacher immunity can be a great help to study how teachers’ health and well-being are conceptualized and linked to effective classroom practices. In fact, self-organizing system in language teaching determines whether teachers continue their profession and behave productively in classroom settings which is conceptualized as a teacher immunity. Based on Heylighen (2008), there are four stages stand out as central to the self-organization process (triggering, coupling, realignment, and stabilization). The first two phases are concerned with behavior and interaction of system components on the local level, while the two latter phases shift up to a system-centered, global level. Relatively, Hiver and Dörnyei (2017) stated that two forms of language teacher immunity (productive-positive and maladaptive-negative) are powerful factors in determining how teachers encounter stress in their profession. Actually, they explore how teachers are successful, overcoming multiple difficulties in their classrooms. As Hiver and Dörnyei (2017) mentioned, teacher immunity displays itself in six core language immunity archetypes: (the visionary, the spark plug, the fossilized, defeated, the sell-out, and the over-compensator). The following definitions are for the first three archetypes which were the main concern of this inquiry.

 

The Visionary 

It refers to teachers who are positive in their classroom and do their practice with high levels of self-efficacy. Also, they have extremely positive attitudes toward language teaching as a career which make their openness to change supreme. In fact, they experience remarkable coping skills and resilience result from high levels of burnout.

 

The Spark Plug

It refers to language teachers who have strong emotional commitment to the language teaching profession. They possess teaching self-efficacy and have considerable coping skills and resilience from moderately high levels of burnout. They have an openness to change as well.

 

The Fossilized Teacher

It refers to language teachers with an unsure attitude, experiencing moderate burnout without any willingness to change. They little amount of self-efficacy, ordinary coping skills and resilience.

To confirm that, Hiver and Dörnyei (2017) assert that language education still lacks sufficient knowledge of its teachers’ professional identity dimension which is all about health and immunity. Therefore, studies related to the determination of teachers’ well-being seem to be vital for improving the relationships between student–teacher, teacher–teacher, teacher–administrator, and the quality of education. For example, findings from DeTeso (2011) study confirmed that positive relationships between teachers and students are associated with students’ performances in writing. The results of his study showed that students who experienced positive interactions with their teachers likely benefited from that relationship as a support for their learning and students whose relationships with teachers characterized by conflict over time experienced less support for learning. However, in traditional ESL writing classes, the English teacher just gives the students a topic and then asks the class to write the essays individually. So, most learners have found writing classes boring as there is no interaction or brainstorming between the teacher and the students. In this situation, the students are not sure of the quality, expressions and organization of their writing. In fact, the most effective way of teaching and learning ESL writing which is building and establishment of critical thinking of the learners has been overlooked. Subsequently, Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model of writing was found to address the cognitive, social, and motivational dimensions of writing (Harris & Graham, 2016). The cognitive components enable students to plan, write, and revise their essays. The social components engage students to dialogic interactions with teachers and other students, and the motivational aspects improve students’ self-efficacy to increase their expectations for success in their performance. Yet, in tests like IELTS, despite its communicative nature, its writing sections in Iran are mostly characterized by being short and providing candidates with the required skills and strategies for completing the test successfully. In fact, having teacher-centered classrooms is one of the remarkable characteristics of this exam preparatory courses (Muganga & Ssenkusu, 2019).

      Therefore, in an attempt to understand teachers’ immunity archetypes and the way it affected the process of IELTS writing, this study embarked to fill in a gap to describe critical level of IELTS vocabulary instruction as a result of perturbation throughout the course. To this end, and due to challenging nature of IELTS writing task 2 essays, in which examinees are asked to write an argumentative essay, an attempt was made to subject the writing of students to thorough and careful scrutiny to observe lexical phrases and words which demonstrated students’ critical impression developed from sense of criticality endorsed by their teachers. To make this end meet, the following questions were proposed: What kind of immunity do teachers develop as a result of perturbations in vocabulary teaching in IELTS preparation courses? How does teachers’ level of thinking affect students’ impression in using lexical phrases in IELTS writing modules?

 

METHOD

Context and design of the study

This research was a comparative ethnographic study set in two language institutions that were different in the social characteristics of their members. Academy No.1 was situated in North of Tehran with 15 years of experience and Academy No.2 was in West of Tehran and a newly founded institution. Also, within this qualitative study, retrodictive qualitative modeling was used. RQM is a process by which researchers work backwards to uncover the developmental paths that led teachers to a clear state (Safdari, 2023).

 

 

 

Participants

Five IELTS teachers from these two separate sites were invited to participate in this study to investigate and compare the world of teachers while they were practicing IELTS. The first site was Academy No.1 where two of teachers joined 5 years ago to practice IELTS teaching in North of Tehran. The second site was Academy No.2 where the other three have been colleagues for 8 years to practice both pre-IELTS and IELTS courses.

 

Materials and Instruments

Self-Regulated Strategy Development in IELTS writing through Bloom’s Taxonomy

SRSD is an instructional approach to help students learn, use, and adopt the strategies taught by the teachers to monitor, evaluate, and revise their writing. Table 1 demonstrates the detail of self-regulated strategy development. Also, pondering over different approaches concerning critical thinking and its relation to Bloom’s Taxonomy, the definition suggested by (Scriven and Paul 1987) covers the issue thoroughly. According to the revised Bloom’s taxonomy, there are six levels including Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. The following presents the levels with specific description for each.

 

Figure 1

Bloom’s Taxonomy

 

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1

SRDS Model in teaching writing

1.       Developing Background Knowledge	Existing prior knowledge is activated to provide students pre-requisite knowledge for the writing task.
2.       Discuss it	The new strategy is introduced and discussed.
3.       Model it	The teachers model the new strategy for the students.
4.       Memorize it	Students use visual aids to memorize the new strategy.
5.       Support it	Students practice the writing strategy with the scaffolded assistance.
6.       Independent performance	Students independently use the writing strategy.

 

     The procedure of the current study was based on a descriptive content analysis design to diagnose and describe how teachers’ levels of thinking were applied in categorization of SRSD in teaching writing. Therefore, the following newborn model (Table 2) was designed for the related analysis.

 

Table 2

Teachers’ level of thinking in SRSD

Developing background knowledge	Low Order			High Order
	Remembering	Comprehension	Application	Analysis	Evaluation	Creating
Discuss it
Model it
Memorize it
Support it
Independent performance

        

Critical thinking scoring rubric

After teachers’ level of thinking, this study tried to understand how the application of levels of Bloom’s taxonomy in teaching writing would affect students’ critical impression of lexical phrases they used in writings. To do so, Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric from (Hildenbrand & Schultz, 2012) was chosen.

 

Data Collection Procedure

To answer the questions of this ethnographic study, three data collection techniques of document collection, classroom observations, and interviews were utilized to proceed both thematic and descriptive content analyses. To do so, in the first phase of this study, IELTS teaching classes were observed. Every and each event was transcribed, and initial analysis was done by the researchers. In the second phase, each teacher was individually interviewed which were also transcribed and later were presented to the other inter-coders. The directors of studies were also interviewed once after interviewing the teachers in the second phase along with collecting documents.

        In this study, the students’ writings, teachers’ instructional artifacts, some personal photographs, IELTS vocabulary teaching video clips, IELTS Writing teaching power points, videos from Education Channel and visual autobiographies on participants’ Instagram pages were regarded as related materials and used to supplement data from the classroom observations and interviews. The collected documents in fact, were very beneficial to examine the implementation of the teachers’ cognition and impression during their IELTS teaching practice and to study how the teachers thinking level would affect students’ using lexical resources in writing. Therefore, the researchers provided sufficient information to describe the current ethnographic cases under investigation.

        In interview part, the questions fell into the category of semi-structured interview. Also, to ensure the accuracy of the data, they were audio-recorded and transcribed to do the content analysis.

        In fact, the most appropriate primary data collection technique was observing teachers’ teaching practice because unlike other qualitative instruments, it provided the researchers with more unpolished information for the topic under investigation and assisted them to get the data through a primary source without referring to others’ interpretation. The observations were carried out in 5 months first at Academy No. 1 and then at Academy No. 2. All the teachers were informed about the observations two or three days before it happened. Three of teachers were observed for 3 sessions of 90 minutes and it happened in two sessions with the same amount of time for their counterparts. Immediately after each observation, the audio-recordings of the classroom teaching were transcribed to help and write a complete classroom observation field note.

DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS

Comparative analysis of the two ethnographic sites in teaching writing

As it is indicated, teachers at Academy No. 1 had a very positive attitude toward improvisation in teaching IELTS. Based on interviews done, they believed that they need to develop students’ potentials toward IELTS writing performance. So, by giving students different sources to improve their general knowledge about the topic in writing, they tried to change students’ viewpoints to critical thinking and creative thinking, and this could be done only with long-term educational goals which left students doing authentic and creative writings with self-importance feeling.

     However, based on both researchers’ observations and interviews, teachers at Academy No 2. were developing deliberate attitude toward teaching both IELTS speaking and writing. They tried to lead students to guided participation by injecting ideas to their minds and involving them into different collaborative activities to have production over the topic in speaking part, pre-writing stage. In other words, students were to use the ideas in their talks to practice and master vocabulary aspects for institution’s short-term educational goal which was leading students to do controlled writings with templates. In terms of short-term educational goal, according to teacher A, “students in IELTS classes are mostly in hurry and in press time, so we have to provide them with tones of ready-made input in order to help them make progress quickly and as fast as a flash.” To highlight tones of ready-made input, as two other teachers stated, “one of the problems many students have in both speaking and writing is lack of idea, they don’t have enough idea to write. So, we need to help them with giving them ideas to use in an organized way.” The following figure would clearly demonstrate the differences in these two sites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1

The differences between teaching practices

 

                  Academy No. 1 Academy No. 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teachers’ immunity in IELTS courses

According to the mentioned purposes, this study also tried to find out the dominant type of teacher immunity among IELTS teachers in two ethnographic sites to delve into the immunization process. Therefore, with regard to four stages of self-organization (triggering, coupling, realignment, and stabilization), based on observation analysis and interviews done, the researchers went through IELTS teachers’ immunity archetypes. The findings demonstrated that 2 of the teachers from Academy No. 1, fell into “productively immunized” type and from 3 of the teachers under study Academy No. 2, 2 of them were placed in newly proposed type “adaptively immunized” and the other teacher was recognized to be in “maladaptively immunized” type in the context of IELTS teaching in Iran. As it is obvious, the data that the researchers uncovered persuaded them to propose another type. To do so, they changed the extreme adjectives to moderate ones to distinguish the visionary, the spark plug, and the fossilized archetypes more that led them to new immunity type “adaptively immunized”. The results are shown in the following table.

 

Table 3

The results of teachers’ immunity archetypes

Productively Immunized (Visionary)	Adaptively Immunized (Spark Plug)	Maladaptively Immunized (Fossilized)
Academy 1 Teacher A Teacher B	Academy 2 Teacher A Teacher B	Academy 2 Teacher C

 

Teachers’ level of thinking in Self-Regulated Strategy Development

The descriptive analysis of this part covered SRSD stages according to the six categories of Bloom’s taxonomy to report teachers’ level of thinking in teaching writing, and the results were based on the extent to which the SRSD in teaching writing emphasized both lower- and higher-levels of cognition.

 

Teachers’ level of thinking at Academy No.1

 Regarding teacher A, in the first stage of SRSD (developing background knowledge), it was clearly understood that comprehension level was more dominant which meant that according to Bloom’s Taxonomy lower order of thinking rated higher than creation, application, and remembering. To clarify the issue, remembering, comprehension, and application happened when he was teaching students new vocabularies and creation emerged while students were supposed to report their works to the class. When it comes to second stage of SRSD (discussion), one could easily understand from the chart that creation level rated more than evaluation and analysis. To clarify, teacher’s questions led the class into a discussion in which grammatical points were taught and students could judge others’ opinion. In terms of third and fourth stages of SRSD (model/ memorization) which happened together, comprehension level was more dominant than application, analysis and evaluation. In other words, by presenting models to the class, the teacher put the main responsibility on students’ shoulder to analyze and get whatever they needed in their writings. Regarding fifth stage of SRSD (support), the chart illustrated that creation was seen more in students’ collaboration in writing than comprehension which happened through teachers’ assessment. For the last step (independent performance), it was clearly demonstrated that creation was employed more in students’ writings over comprehension result in teachers’ comments.

 

Figure 2

Teacher A level of thinking

       

        Concerning teacher B efforts to activate his students’ background information, remembering step in lower order of thinking skills and creation in higher order thinking skills were equally employed to make students use both suitable structures and words to have effective communication at that moment. When it comes to discussion part, as the chart demonstrated, students’ creation level was more dominant than evaluation and comprehension. Students were supposed to talk about a topic in which the teacher himself was involved looking for a chance to teach new words and phrases. For the model and memorization, creation level took place more than analysis and evaluation. The whole step started when the teacher wrote a sample on the board and asked students to write new sentences to exchange idea about using better words and structures. To support students’ attempts, afterwards, he benefited from evaluation more than half to make them ready for the next step. For the last step to promote students’ independency in writing, he got help from students’ creation to comment on their writings together in the classrooms. So, he allocated the same amount of energy to make students evaluate and comprehend the problems.

 

Figure 3

Teacher B level of thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

Teachers’ level of thinking at Academy No.2

Based on SRSD, to bring light to teacher A, it was clearly perceived that comprehension in lower level in teaching vocabularies and phrases was more included in activating students’ knowledge than its counterpart (remembering) in recalling necessary grammars. Creation also, was applied for students’ use of structures and phrases. Instead of providing a situation for students to discuss, teacher A intended to make students organize their thoughts with mind-map and flue chart. Furthermore, seeing the third step, he would employ students’ application more than evaluation and analysis. Now this was a very good chance for students to create a sample to evaluate it which made comprehension happen in students. Next, he would ask students to do the rest at home to make students create and do evaluation that led them comprehend.

 

Figure 4

 Teacher A level of thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

      Looking at the first step in teacher B teaching process, to activate students’ background knowledge, it was obvious from the heart that comprehension level in lower order thinking was much more than its counterpart (remembering) and creation level in higher order thinking skills. To clarify the process, by the help of posing series of questions to recall, remembering level was employed and to introduce new vocabularies or asking to use dictionaries comprehension happened. Creating level within limited speaking tasks was also carried out. Teacher B actually replaced discussion part with organization of thoughts by which again comprehension level became higher. Students’ application level also came into the scene. To explain more, in order to expand and organize students’ ideas, by the help of students he would draw a mind-map on the board. In the next stage of SRSD, through analysis and evaluation, he presented a writing sample to make students review and see the words, phrases, alternatives or even ideas in practice. So, students’ applications were activated. Moreover, over writing tasks he provided a situation for students’ creation. According to the chart, in this stage, evaluation level of thinking was more than comprehension. To put it in another words, he would ask students to write and then evaluate it in the class on the board. For students to become independent in writing, he worked on students’ creation to evaluate their works online. Through re-doing the task, students’ comprehension was also focused on.

 

Figure 5

Teacher B level of thinking

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        Speaking of teacher C level of thinking in teaching writing, it was clear that in developing students’ background knowledge, comprehension level was more administered than remembering and evaluation. That means, before anything, teacher C preferred to evaluate students’ assignments in front of the class. By the help of comprehension step in lower order thinking skills according to Bloom’s Taxonomy, he focused on remembering due to the fact that he spent almost the same amount of time dealing with students to remember grammatical points and words necessary for their writings. Moreover, for the second stage of SRSD (discussion), teacher C dealt more with students’ comprehension to organize their thoughts and let them create in some limited speaking tasks. Therefore, in this stage, comprehension within lower order of thinking was employed much more than its counterpart (application) and creation in higher order of thinking. At the same time, by looking at third step (model, memorization) it was obvious that application was more than analysis. To bring light to the issue, teacher C was analyzing sample writing himself in front of the class and let students write another sample very similar to the original. Afterwards, to support students’ samples, he would start evaluating one of them without students’ involvements. For the last stage of SRSD, it was clear that creation level was more dominant in writing, however evaluation and comprehension were respectively.

 

Figure 6

 Teacher C level of thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comparing teachers’ level of thinking in both sites

For the whole process of self-regulated strategy development in teaching writing, it became obvious from the charts in both sites that creation level, the highest level of thinking, was more overriding in teachers’ works at Academy No.1. When it comes to creation in writing, the students demonstrated full knowledge by applying what they had learned, analyzed, evaluated, and built something, either tangible or conceptual that could include combination, compilation, devise, design and modification in writing.

      Moreover, with regard to teachers’ performances at Academy No.2, the researchers were convinced to add “organization of thoughts” to the second stage of SRSD to extend this stage to “Discussion/ Organization of thoughts” in Iranian IELTS teaching contexts. The following is the new table for teachers’ level of thinking in SRSD. Meanwhile, immunity level of teachers is demonstrated through a color spectrum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 3

The new classification of Teachers’ level of thinking in SRSD

Productively Immunized

 

 

 

 

 

Developing background knowledge	Low Order			High Order
	Remembering	Comprehension	Application	Analysis	Evaluation	Creating
Discuss it/ Organize the thoughts
Model it
Memorize it
Support it
Independent performance

 

Thinking level in students’ IELTS writings

In order to see how argumentative teaching would affect the level of critical thinking in students’ writings, each teacher provided the researchers 3 samples with the band scores of 5.5 to 6.5 with the same writing topic to assess the rate of critical thinking transfer from teacher to students. The followings are the content analysis of the students’ writings based on critical thinking scoring rubric extracted from center for teaching, learning and technology at Washington State University (2006) with rating scales of Emerging, Developing and Mastering from 1 to 6 scores which indicates students’ critical thinking level while they were engaged in IELTS courses.

 

Analyzing IELTS students’ writings at Academy No.1

Going through teacher A and B students’ writings, the followings are students’ level of critical thinking.

 

Table 4 

Students’ level of critical thinking in teacher A class

	Summarizing problem	Context and assumptions	Communicating own perspective	Analyzes supporting data	Using other perspectives and positions	Conclusions	Effective Communication
Learner 1	Mastering 6	Developing 4	Mastering 6	Developing 4	Mastering 5	Mastering 5.5	Mastering 5
Learner 2	Mastering 6	Developing 4	Mastering 6	Developing 4	Mastering 6	Mastering 6	Mastering 5
Learner 3	Mastering 5	Developing 4	Mastering 6	Developing 3.5	Mastering 5	Mastering 5	Developing 4

 

Table 5

 Students’ level of critical thinking in teacher B class

	Summarizing problem	Context and assumptions	Communicating own perspective	Analyzes supporting data	Using other perspectives and positions	Conclusions	Effective Communication
Learner 1	Mastering 6	Mastering 5.5	Mastering 6	Mastering 6	Developing 4	Mastering 5	Developing 4
Leaner 2	Mastering 5	Mastering 6	Mastering 6	Mastering 6	Mastering 5	Mastering 6	Developing 4
Learner 3	Mastering 5.5	Mastering 5.5	Mastering 5.5	Mastering 6	Developing 4	Mastering 5	Developing 4

 

Analyzing IELTS students’ writings at Academy No.2    

To analyze student’ level of criticality in their writings, the following tables are for teacher A, B, and C.

 

Table 6

Students’ level of critical thinking in teacher A class 

 

	Summarizing problem	Context and assumptions	Communicating own perspective	Analyzes supporting data	Using other perspectives and positions	conclusions	Effective Communication
Learner 1	Mastering 6	Developing 4	Developing 4	Developing 3.5	Developing 3.5	Developing 4	Developing 4
Learner 2	Mastering 6	Developing 4	Developing 3	Emerging 2	Developing 3.5	Developing 4	Developing 4
Learner 3	Mastering 5.5	Developing 3	Emerging 2	Emerging 2	Emerging 2	Developing 3	Developing 4

 

 

 

 

Table 7

Students’ level of critical thinking in teacher B class

	Summarizing problem	Context and assumptions	Communicating own perspective	Analyzes supporting data	Using other perspectives and positions	Conclusions	Effective Communication
Learner 1	Developing 3.5	Developing 3	Emerging 2	Emerging 2	Emerging 2	Emerging 2	Developing 3
Learner 2	Developing 3.5	Developing 3.5	Emerging 2	Emerging 2	Emerging 2	Emerging 2	Developing 3

 

Table 8

Students’ level of critical thinking in teacher C class

	Summarizing problem	Context and assumption	Communicating own perspective	Analyzes supporting data	Using other perspectives and positions	Conclusions	Effective Communication
Learner 1	Mastering 5	Developing 3.5	Developing 4	Developing 4	Emerging 2	Developing 4	Developing 4
Learner 2	Mastering 5	Developing 3.5	Developing 3	Developing 3	Developing 3	Developing 4	Developing 4
Learner 3	Mastering 5	Developing 3.5	Emerging 2	Developing 3	Developing 3	Developing 3.5	Developing 4

 

Comparing students’ level of critical thinking in writings in both sites

As can be seen from the tables, these two institutions had different functions in determining the amount of critical thinking in these important and key indicators. Generally, students at Academy No. 2 had approximate performance between emerging and developing while students’ outcomes at Academy No. 1 estimated on developing and mastering enactment which supplemented the findings from the relationship between teachers’ level of thinking and students’ critical impression in IELTS writing task 2.

DISCUSSION

The obtained results are in line with that of Ordem (2017) who claimed that since each teacher has a varying vulnerability degree, it seems unlikely that they develop a unified system to contribute to their professional development owing to the types of immunity. Therefore, more studies should be conducted in this area for researchers to develop true understanding of the immunity along with other factors which affect teachers’ professional identity. Also, the findings of this study are in line with Sheybani and Miri (2019) who found the positive relationship between two variables specify that when EFL teachers’ critical thinking increases, their professional identity increases as well. Consequently, not paying sufficient attention to EFL teachers’ critical thinking, in turn, might lead to their incompetence to gain greatness in professional identity. In this study, IELTS teachers’ critical thinking skills can predict their professional identity, too. In addition, to discover teaching practices and strategies employed in IELTS preparatory courses in these two ethnographic sites, effective teaching methods for the writing courses through strategy-based vs. non-strategy-based instruction determined the findings that non-strategy-based instruction failed to promote level of criticality in students’ argumentative writing performances. In fact, this ethnographic study confirmed what (Rezaei, Barati et al. 2016) claimed that candidates in strategy-based group outperformed their counterparts in non-strategy-based group writing section of IELTS.

CONCLUSION

In consideration of the findings and results, we arrived at some conclusions.  In the context of IELTS, when teachers step into a classroom, they should continuously stimulate and enhance learners’ thinking levels, higher than memorizing facts or learning rotely. Excellence in thought must be purposefully and systematically cultivated because students need to use their brain to think in the language and display full understanding and argue complex real situations.

     In this study we could make this claim that learner-centeredness had come into being due to lowering the teachers’ domination and discrimination and developing a feeling of humble self-importance in students. To put it precisely, the learners could actualize a phenomenon that was entitled social camaraderie. In reference to social camaraderie, the process of language learning turned out to be more enjoyable and dynamic because in this participatory approach, the students commenced at holding challenging and dialectical discussions and negotiations. In fact, this showed overriding nature of creation level, the highest level of thinking in teachers’ works which manifested in students’ writing performance moving from developing to mastering enactment of criticality in IELTS writing Task 2. Therefore, according to the transcripts obtained from observation sessions, in the context of IELTS, it was discovered that in this situation, teachers fell into productive immunity type. Also, the results displayed that although the lesson planning provided direction and guidance in the scope, sequence, and pacing of classroom activities, sticking to it caused the teachers work with lower level of thinking which made students’ writing performance moving between emerging and developing level of criticality which emerged from teachers’ placement in adaptive and maladaptive immunity types.  Furthermore, the results presented that in the IELTS situation in Iran, “the Visionary” and “the Spark plug” should be placed in two separate groups of immunity (productive and adaptive) to increase the categories of immunity to 5 in this context. Finally, based on the findings, teachers in this study fell into first 3 category of immunity and the researchers had to scrutinize everything about these two categories, however, other researches can consider teachers who are from the other two categories and investigate everything about their practices. This study conducted a comparative ethnography between two different institutions through investigating group IELTS writing classes, however, other studies can manage a study to compare the levels of teachers’ instructions between group and private classes.

      

References

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Biodata

Fatemeh Mohammad Jafari is Assistant Professor at Islamic Azad University, Central Tehran Branch. She is an applied linguistics researcher and has published several articles so far. One of her different research interests is working on interdisciplinary ideas.

 

Seyed Hamed Etemadi is Assistant Professor at Islamic Azad University, Nour Branch. He is an applied linguistics researcher and has published some articles in Dynamic Assessment. He is both supervisor and director of studies at one of the language schools in Tehran. He is also willing to develop and apply theories of language learning including assessment and feedback in his pedagogical plans.