Innovation in Language Learning

Since 1990, a major concern in language teacher education was to enhance teaching skills and critical dispositions in the plethora of prospective and experienced teachers via training programs and to enable them to reflect on and critically analyze their own practice with the goal of promoting their mediating classroom roles and maximizing learning. Likewise, the current quasi-experimental study aimed to compare the short term and long term impact of a 60-hour reflective task-supported (RTS) teacher training course (TTC) on 37 pre-service and 40 in-service Iranian teachers’ performance of their mediating roles as planner, manager, involver, facilitator, and controller. Individual participants were observed while teaching at the onset of the study, right after the RTS TTC, and with a 5-week Interval. Teachers’ mediating roles were quantified based on an observation form by three supervisors and the data were analyzed via repeated measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).  The findings indicated significant improvements in the performance of mediating roles from the first to the second observation immediately after the training in both groups and from the immediate to the delayed observation only in the pre-service group.  The findings suggest pedagogical implications for teacher trainers and educators.

Keywords: Teacher training program, pre-service and in-service teachers, mediating roles.