Thesis Type: Doctorate
Institution Of The Thesis: Gazi University, Eğitim Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Yabancı Diller Eğitimi, Turkey
Approval Date: 2021
Thesis Language: English
Student: ZHANAR BAIMBETOVA
Supervisor: Cemal Çakır
Abstract:
This study mainly aims to evaluate an undergraduate English Language Teacher Education Program (UELTEP) in Kazakhstani University. To this aim, the current study intends to identify the strong and the weak points of an already existing undergraduate ELT program as perceived by the students, instructors, and alumni. Furthermore, it seeks to obtain students’, instructors’, and alumni’s suggestions for the development of the UELTEP. Apart from this, it aims to determine the extent to which the program fulfills the expectations of the student teachers of the UELTEP. Finally, the study seeks to explore the similarities and differences between the UELTEPs in Turkey and Kazakhstan by examining two sample curricula from each context in terms of the distribution of courses addressing students’ linguistic, pedagogic, and managerial competences. Peacock’s (2009) Evaluation Model was adopted in the study and the data were collected through a student questionnaire, a teacher questionnaire, an alumnus questionnaire, student interviews, student essays, teacher interviews, alumnus interviews, and document analysis. 88 junior and senior ELT students, 19 instructors, and 21 alumni participated in the study. The study has identified various strong points of the UELTEP in Kazakhstan as perceived by students, instructors, and alumni. The results revealed that the UELTEP has a clearly stated philosophy, qualified teachers, effective components for producing teachers, and effective components for developing students’ language skills. Moreover, it provides students with a mobility program. On the other hand, the study identified the weaknesses of the program perceived by students, instructors, and alumni as lack of elective courses, and lack of specialized teaching facilities. Even though the teaching and language skill components are effective, the hours allocated to courses addressing students’ teaching and language skills are insufficient. Another weak point of the UELTEP is that different language levels of students are not addressed effectively enough, and the UELTEP includes some unnecessary courses that are not taught in English. In relation to the strong and the weak points of the UELTEP, the students, the instructors, and the alumni provided some recommendations for the betterment of the program such as adding more methodology courses, increasing the hours of the courses that address students’ language and teaching skills, adding more elective courses that are related to a teaching profession, removing some of the courses, and recruiting native speaker teachers. Overall, the results of the study indicate that the UELTEP partially fulfills the students’ expectations. The study has also identified the similarities and differences between universities in Kazakhstan and Turkey in terms of distribution of the courses addressing pedagogic, linguistic and managerial competences. The amount is somewhat similar in terms of the courses addressing students’ linguistic competence in both curricula. However, the findings indicate that the UELTEP in Turkey offers much more courses addressing pedagogic competence of prospective teachers than the UELTEP in Kazakhstan, especially in terms of English language teaching methodology courses. Finally, two different attitudes not only towards teaching courses, but also towards the length of education, the qualification awarded after graduation, the school types graduates can work at, the total number of credits needed for graduation, career prospects, and practicum length were revealed.
Keywords: program evaluation, language teacher education, English teacher education program evaluation, Peacock’s (2009) model