The impact of collaborative reflection and dialogic journals on EFL teachers’ ecological agency

Abstract

ABSTRACT This explanatory sequential mixed method study aimed to investigate the impact of collaborative reflection and dialogic journals on EFL teachers’ ecological agency. For this purpose, 60 EFL teachers selected through purposive sampling were randomly assigned to three groups, one control group, and two experimental groups. The participants of the control group took part in a 10-session teacher training course. The participants of experimental group 1 participated in collaborative reflection sessions for 10 weeks and the participants of experimental group 2 were required to keep dialogic journals for 10 weeks. To investigate the effect of the treatment, the teacher ecological agency questionnaire was administered twice in the pretest and posttest. Finally, a set of semi-structured interviews were conducted with the participants of both experimental groups. The results indicated that collaborative reflection and dialogic journals had a significant effect on the development of the participants’ ecological agency. However, the participants of experimental group 2 outperformed the participants of experimental group 1 in the posttest examining ecological agency. The thematic analyses of the semi-structured interview revealed that both collaborative reflection and dialogic journals have contributed to the development of EFL teachers’ ecological agency. The findings of the current study have significant pedagogical implications for teachers, teacher educators, policymakers, and researchers.