Effects of Clinical Supervision on EFL Teachers’ Critical Thinking Disposition and Learners’ Overall Language Achievement

Subject Areas : Applied Linguistics

Nasim Mehrabian ¹ , Hadi Salehi ² , Omid Tabatabaei ³ , Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi ⁴

1 - English Department, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran
2 - English Department, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran
3 - English Department, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran
4 - English Department, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Iran

Received: 2023-02-11 Accepted : 2023-06-20 Published : 2023-09-01

Keywords: Clinical supervision, Learners’ overall language achievement, Teacher Education, critical thinking,

Abstract :

Although research on clinical supervision and teachers’ critical thinking has been separately carried out by many scholars, their integration in a unified study has been demanding, particularly in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. Investigation of learners’ language achievement affected by doing clinical supervision appears to have been taken for granted. The present study was an attempt to figure out the effects of clinical supervision model proposed by Gall and Acheson (2011) on EFL teachers’ critical thinking disposition and learners’ overall language achievement. The present study constituted two sets of participants: 60 teachers and 66 learners selected through convenience sampling and were divided into two groups namely experimental. Clinical supervision was conducted for the experimental group teachers within three cycles of planning conference, classroom observation, and feedback conference. Those learners whose teachers took part in the clinical supervision constituted the experimental group while the remaining were the control group whose teachers were not provided with any teacher education program. Data were collected through the Critical Thinking Disposition Scale and learners’ pre-and post-tests. By running one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) and independent samples t-tests, clinical supervision was significantly effective regarding EFL teachers’ critical thinking disposition and resulted in the learners’ significant improvement as well. Findings demand the practice of clinical supervision as an effective and awareness-raising teacher education program to help teachers reflect upon their strengths and weaknesses and self-regulate their teaching practicum.

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