چکیده:
Considering the paucity of self-studies exploring English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' journeys into becoming a creative teacher, in this qualitative action research, a mainstream Iranian teacher-researcher narrates the changes and challenges she observed while planning her creative classroom practices, implementing, and reflecting on them. While she experienced changes like going beyond the textbook, becoming a caring observer, and becoming a moment catcher, she faced constraining challenges like overcoming inner fears, showing (non)-compliance with institutional rules, and coping with situations when things did not turn out as expected. Such an insider view of teacher creativity reiterates that creativity needs to be considered not just as a set of techniques and procedures to be mastered but as an ongoing passion for renovation which should be cultivated over time despite existing constraints.
خلاصه ماشینی:
“I Suppose I Am Now a More Creative Teacher”: An EFL Teacher’s Journey into Creativity within Constraints* Seyedeh Fahimeh Mohammadi ** MA in TEFL, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran Seyyedeh Fahimeh Parsaiyan (Corresponding author) *** Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran Leila Tajik **** Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran Abstract Considering the paucity of self-studies exploring English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' journeys into becoming a creative teacher, in this qualitative action research, a mainstream Iranian teacher-researcher narrates the changes and challenges she observed while planning her creative classroom practices, implementing, and reflecting on them.
Nonetheless, despite a fairly large literature on creativity in general and language teacher creativity to a lesser extent (Philip, 2013; Lilly & Bramwell-Rejskind, 2004; Nelson, 2016; Schoff, 2016; Woodward, 2015; Xerri, 2013), English language teachers’ narratives of fostering their creativy including the challenges they go through in cultivating their creativity, the social and personal lived experiences, values, and assumptions which form their practices, and the constraints they face are comparatively scarce.
The cyclical process of planning teaching practices (as novel and effective as I could and according to the objectives of each unit of the textbook assigned by the language institute I was working for); implementing them; observing and documenting the events, and eventually critically reflecting on them (Burns, 2010) provided me with spaces to self-study myself and keep records of the challenges and changes I went through.