Reflections of American and Turkish Fulbright alumni: An International context in language teaching assistantship

Abstract

With the increasing global change and as a consequence of internationalization, the prestige of international educational exchange programs has heightened with bilateral agreements among countries. In parallel, plenty of research in academia has resided on Fulbright language assistantship programs whereas most have been designed on pre-service teachers, and a limited number centred on in-service teachers only from one country context. However, almost no studies have been done on international alumni from two countries to compare the perceived impact of this program through their lenses. Hence, six Turkish FLTAs and six American ETAs were incorporated into this qualitative case study to determine the influence(s) of their personal background information on this cross-cultural experience, and the effects they sensed on their teaching profession with Fulbright. Having conducted semi-structured interviews and sifted data through content analysis, the researcher noted its effects on the personal, linguistic, cultural, social, and contextual understandings of scholars. Moreover, professional growth, student-oriented active learning, and dynamic perspectives were described as themes outlining its reflections on their teaching profession. ETAs felt they cultivated “pedagogical content knowledge”, “soft skills”, “enhancing student motivation” and “adjusting teaching to supply student needs” more, whereas FLTAs reported a higher sense of development in “critical thinking skills”.