Envisioning the 21st Century Online Professional Development for Turkish EFL Preservice Teachers via Webquests: An Exploratory Case Study into Preservice Teachers’ Insights into Global Citizenship Education

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Kaçar I. G.

15th METU International ELT Convention: Envisioning Future Paths, Ankara, Türkiye, 10 - 11 Mayıs 2024, ss.57, (Özet Bildiri)

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Ankara
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.57
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Based on an inquiry-based and socio-constructivist philosophy of learning, web

quests are likely to offer multiple experiential opportunities for 21st century EFL 

pre-service teachers’ professional development. As EFL teachers are expected to 

effectively address the learning needs of ever- culturally and linguistically diverse 

learner profiles today, they need to raise their awareness towards how to incorporate 

characteristics of global citizenship into their future teaching contexts.  They also 

need to be informed of how to align their curricula with global citizenship elements 

to foster inclusive classroom practices. Considering the compelling need to raise 

21st century preservice teachers as inquiry-oriented professionals equipped with 

the different dimensions of global citizenship education (i.e. knowledge and 

understanding, skills, as well as values and attitudes), this six-week exploratory 

case study focuses on 19 Turkish EFL preservice teachers’ insights into how to 

integrate webquests as a tool to raise K-12 learners as global citizens and how to 

promote global citizenship in K-12 curricula. The participants taking the World 

Englishes and Culture course received a three-hour online training session on 

different dimensions of global citizenship prior to their study involvement. The 

data were collected via document analysis, online preservice teacher reflections, 

and semi-structured interviews and were analysed via the content analysis. 

Findings indicated the pre-serviced teachers’ enhanced agency towards the 

creation of online collaborative differentiated webquest tasks aligned with global 

citizenship for diverse learner profiles as well as their insights into how to use 

webquests as a catalyst to foster inclusive practices and a global mindset in K-12 

learners.

Keywords: Global citizenship education, EFL pre-service teachers, inclusive 

practices, K-12 learners, teacher agency–5