An exploration of Turkish teachers’ attributions to barriers faced within learner-centred teaching

Abstract

This study explored Turkish teachers’ attributional reasoning regarding the barriers they face when they attempted to undertake learner-centred teaching, which is a core requirement of educational reform-based initiations in Turkey. To achieve this aim, a naturalistic inquiry was conducted in order to capture the clarifications of the barriers and related attributional reasoning of 31 teachers. The teachers defined 12 teaching barriers for the initial trials of learner-centred teaching and made several attributions to the faced barriers. The study showed that the teachers made pervasively externalised attributions when explicating the reasons for the barriers they faced. They were the usual suspects of making fundamental attribution error due to the excessive externality of their attributions. The teachers’ barrier clarifications and accompanied attributional reasoning typologies in terms of learner-centred teaching have confirmed that the teachers in this study are only in the early stages in regard to being competent implementers of reform-based initiatives in Turkey.