How Reflective Are EFL Instructors in Turkey?

Abstract

Reflective practice is based on reflection that encourages instructors to make well-grounded decisions by looking at particular situations from different perspectives and trying to find the most appropriate solutions and implementing necessary changes in their action in order to ensure better learning outcomes of their learners. Through reflection, instructors reach newfound clarity, on which they base changes in action and future improvement. The aim of this research is to assess the reflective thinking skills of EFL instructors and to determine their reflective thinking skills in terms of demographic variables such as gender and graduation degree. The research was carried out with descriptive survey method. Reflective Thinking Inventory, which was developed by Akbari, Behzadpoor and Dadvand (2010), was mailed to 112 EFL instructors working at universities. Regarding the instructors' demographical characteristics, the data was analyzed by means of frequency technique. In the analysis between the instructors' reflective thinking skills and their demographical characteristics, medium was interpreted by the use of Kruskal Wallis H and t-test. Based on the results, some recommendations were made for the instructors. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center.