چکیده:
The theory and practice of language teacher autonomy seems to be contradictory in terms. While, in theory, language teaching is conceptualized as a reflective process wherein teachers exercise their professional expertise, in many contexts including some private language schools of Shahrood and Semnan, teaching performance is tightly monitored through closed-circuit cameras. This study attempts to explore language teachers’ perceptions of teaching under video surveillance through elicitation data gathered and analyzed based on grounded theory. Iterative data collection and analysis and the constant comparative techniques revealed that video surveillance negatively affects language teaching since the participants believed it violates their rights to privacy, induces artificial practice, suppresses teacher initiatives, and deskills teachers by inducing disused atrophy. Through the counter-evidence presented by the language teachers, it was also found that the rationales for using video surveillance are unjustified. The findings of this study have clear implications for managers, supervisors and language teachers teaching in private language schools in the context of this study and other similar contexts.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Exploring EFL Teachers’ Perceptions of Classroom Video Surveillance: A Qualitative Study Seyyed Ali Ostovar-Namaghi1 Mohammad Maleki2 Fatemeh Mozaffari*3 Received: 2019-09-23 | Revised: 2020-02-05 | Accepted: 2020-02-22 Abstract The theory and practice of language teacher autonomy seems to be con- tradictory in terms.
Iterative data collection and analysis and the constant comparative techniques revealed that video surveillance negatively affects language teaching since the participants believed it violates their rights to privacy, induces artificial practice, suppresses teacher initiatives, and deskills teachers by inducing disused atrophy.
: classroom video surveillance, EFL teachers’ perceptions, grounded theory, monitoring practice, ELT Introduction While in general education rhetoric, there has been a shift away from autono- mous, reflective practice towards performativity discourse (Jeffrey, 2002), which legitimizes tight control over the teaching process, in language teacher education, reflective autonomous practice is still the dominant paradigm (Timmins, 2015).
To sum up, despite the fact that, teaching is theoretically conceptualized as a reflective process wherein teachers are free to exercise their professional judgment to respond to the varied needs and learning styles of students, in practice, teaching is a disciplined act which is molded in TTC and controlled through video surveillance.
Although school masters and supervisors who im- pose this technology on classroom practice hypothesize that it positively affects the teaching/learning process by improving teaching efficiency, the empirical findings reviewed above clearly show that it is negatively perceived by stu- dents; hence, prior to accepting this technology to govern classroom practice, the field of language education needs further empirical studies that explore how this technology is perceived by language teachers.