English Language Teaching Educational Journal ISSN 2621-6485 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 75 10.12928/eltej.v3i2.2477 http://journal2.uad.ac.id/index.php/eltej/index eltej@pbi.uad.ac.id A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development Metin Esen a,1,* a Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, School of Foreign Languages, Milli İrade Binası - Ayvalı Mah. Gazze Cad. No: 7 Etlik-Keçiören / Ankara, 06010, Turkey 1 esen.metin@outlook.com * corresponding author 1. Introduction With the advancements in technology and the ease of access to knowledge provided by smartphones, computers, and the internet connection, being an active language learner is presented with a huge inventory of opportunities, sources, and interaction patterns. According to Harmer (2007) and Genç İlter (2015), it is a good idea for teachers to guide their learners in identifying and utilizing suitable digital material to boost their language learning processes. Harmer (2007) also specify that cooperation between learners can be maintained through the use of computerised language learning processes. Though the opportunities of being an effective language learner has become abundant, it is still challenging for learners to locate the appropriate paths leading to these opportunities. This is the exact point where advising in language learning proves a required and significant procedure in establishing those paths. In its broadest sense, advising is associated with several concepts such as mentoring, supervising, encouragement, tutoring, counselling, guidance, and in some cases friendship (Hemwall & Trachte, 2005; Melander, 2005; Rawlins & Rawlins, 2005). Kato and Mynard (2016) associate advising in language learning with learner autonomy as individual learners with autonomy are highly aware of their own learning procedures being in charge of various A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history Received 09 July, 2020 Revised 17 August, 2020 Accepted 31 August, 2020 Advising in language learning is one of the new ways of creating aware, reflective, and autonomous learners in the area of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Some language learning institutions help their learners with their learning issues through advising in Self-access Centres practices by advisors and teacher-advisors. This case study aimed at exploring the presence of advising in teacher development frameworks assessing various teacher skills and behaviours. The research also asked 12 teacher-advisors form Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, School of Foreign Languages if they believed advising had an impact on their professional development. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from the participants through a 38-item questionnaire and a 10-question written interview. The analysis of the results suggested that teacher development frameworks directly or indirectly assessed some teacher behaviours that can also be attributed to a teacher, and teachers seemed to believe that the practice of advising had positive impact on their teaching skills. This is an open access article under the CC–BY-SA license. Keywords advising in language learning learner autonomy in-service teacher education teacher development framework continuous professional development 10.12928/eltej.v3i2.2477 http://journal2.uad.ac.id/index.php/eltej/index mailto:esen.metin@outlook.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 76 English Language Teaching Educational Journal ISSN 2621-6485 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 Metin Esen (A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development) elements such as planning, monitoring, time management, evaluation, and contextualisation (Little, 1991). Kato and Mynard (2016) emphasize that autonomy cannot be achieved with a “one size fits all” approach, and advising could help in “engaging learners in reflection, in discovering different ways to learn, and in making decisions about the ways which are most effective for them” (p. 18). It would not be irrelevant to claim that advising is a reciprocal process, and it is pragmatic for the advisor, who is the language teacher, in the same rate it is for the advisee, who is the language learner in the context of the field of Second Language Education (SLE). Kato and Maynard (2016) also underline the fact that building skills as an advisor is a continual phase just as the process of becoming an autonomous learner is. Ciekanski (2007) defines this process as the concept of educational reciprocity, and she suggests several pedagogical roles embraced by advisors such as being an advisor, a teacher, a tutor, or even a companion, and lists five fundamental emotional strategies and values practiced by advisors, which are a) “the meaning of negotiation” during which the advisor learns about the advisee and the topic to be advised on while the advisee gathers information on how to think reflectively, b) “preservation and creation of language learning knowledge” which is about the advisee regarding the advisor as the source of language learning knowledge also having the freedom to shape their own learning styles, c) “personal and professional exchanges” that necessitates the inclusion of the affective factor as well as the cognitive domain to create an unspoken agreement between the two, d) “engagement” which concerns to what degree the advisors involve themselves in the process in terms of sparing time, effort, and knowledge, and e) “recognition of otherness” that clarifies how the goal of autonomous learning is shared by all but the way to achieve it differs for everyone (Ciekanski, 2007, pp. 123-124). Although the process might seem highly structured and relatively easy to master for an experienced SLE teacher, advising shares some characteristics of counselling in terms of a dialogue concerning learning, which is described by Kelly (1996) as “a form of therapeutic dialogue that enables an individual to manage a problem” (p. 94). This thin line between psychological counselling and language learning advising, implied by the term “therapeutic dialogue” (Kelly, 1996, p. 94), creates a considerable challenge for the teacher- advisors as standard language teacher education does not train them to cope with the therapeutic cases that may come up in the classroom anytime. In order to keep the conversation within the limits of advising and carry out an effective session with the advisee, the advisor/teacher-advisor is required to possess certain skills and personal traits. According to Aoki (2012), the most important ones among these skills and traits are to 1) build rapport and maintain empathy, 2) keep positivity and avoid judgmental remarks, 3) be enthusiastic to aid the advisee, 4) maintain a structured dialogue, 5) ask the correct question, 6) listen effectively, 7) observe closely and decipher meaning, 8) present timely and meaningful alternatives, and 9) be able to identify the reasons behind learner issues. Kelly (1996) also suggests two lists of several macro and micro skills that an advisor should have. The macro skills are ones that an average teacher is supposed to have, such as goal-setting, modelling, and giving feedback. Micro skills, on the other hand, are those necessary for a language learning advisor to carry out a successful advising session with the learners. These include skills such as attending, paraphrasing, questioning, and confronting. Similarly, Kato and Mynard (2016) suggest several basic strategies to carry out an Intentional Reflective Dialogue with the learners, and the list is made up of items such as repeating, mirroring, restating, summarizing, giving positive feedback, empathizing, complimenting, using metaview/linking, and using metaphors. These skills are not direct components of the curricula of language teacher education programs mainly because advising is a totally different role than teaching, and partly because it is a newly emerging field with inadequate amount of research that examines these two distinct roles under the same roof. However, this fact does not diminish the importance of advising in language learning processes. Unlike other subjects learnt at school, English does not only stand as the “ends” but also serves as the “means” being a device for communication held in an unlimited number of cases from shopping in a supermarket to listening to a lecture at a college. Therefore, guiding a learner in transforming into an autonomous and self-aware language learner might help that learner manipulate his/her personal life, experiences, notions, and will power to learn more effectively (Kato & Mynard, 2016). As this is an unneglectable fact for teachers of English, perhaps they might already be acquiring some of the traits of an advisor in their pre-service and in-service trainings, and some of the performance features that would be expected from an advisor are also expected from an ISSN 2621-6485 English Language Teaching Educational Journal 77 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 Metin Esen (A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development) ordinary language teacher as the core aim of advising, achieving transformative learning, is parallel to the core aim of language teaching. With this notion taken into utmost consideration, this case study is designed specifically to establish if advising in language learning is already assessed directly or indirectly in language teacher development frameworks. Additionally, the research is intended to find to what degree and in what ways participant teacher-advisors believe the practice of advising has affected their continuous professional development. In the scope of the study, answer to the following research questions were sought: RQ1: Is the concept of advising directly or indirectly assessed in various teacher development frameworks? RQ2: Do teacher-advisors believe advising had an impact on their continuous professional development? 2. Methods 2.1 Research Design The research was designed to collect data as a case study to have closer look at a context both peculiar to its own nature and representative of similar environments. A case study might be defined as intensively and systematically investigating a particular person, a group, or a society, and the process involves researcher(s) analyzing data in the light of various variables (Woods, 1980). According to Crandall (2000), the use of case studies in teaching professions is an excellent way of bringing theory and practice together since they portray detailed contexts of agents shaping teacher profiles and decision-making processes. Through the case method, Kelch and Malupa-Kim (2014, p. 12) teachers can “interact with theoretical principles by drawing upon their own and others’ experiential and practical knowledge in addressing real-world problems.” 2.1. Maintaining the Integrity of the Specifications The template is used to format your paper and style the text. All margins, column widths, line spaces, and text fonts are prescribed; please do not alter them. You may note peculiarities. For example, the head margin in this template measures proportionately more than is customary. This measurement and others are deliberate, using specifications that anticipate your paper as one part of the entire proceedings, and not as an independent document. Please do not revise any of the current designations. 2.2. Context and Participants The research took place at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, a state university in Ankara, Turkey, at School of Foreign Languages, acting as the compulsory English preparatory school of the university. The school, with over 2500 students and 112 instructors, aims to help students gain proficiency in Academic English to follow fully/partially English-medium instructed classes in various departments in faculties after a year of compulsory English training. To help these learners with various issues in their language learning endeavours, the school promotes 18 trained teacher-advisors who conduct 40-minute one-to-one sessions with learners building their structured conversations on the strategies and tips suggested in Reflective Dialogue by Kato and Mynard (2016). The core aim of the sessions is to create autonomous learners who are 1) aware of their learning processes; 2) can identify issues blocking learning; 3) help advisees gain self- confidence; and 4) foster independent learning in advisees permanently. The participants of the study are 12 EFL instructors (N= 12) from Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, School of Foreign Languages, who also act as language learning advisors. As can be viewed on Table 1, 8 participants were female teacher-advisors and the remaining 4 were males. The profile was consisted of highly experienced teachers of EFL, with the great majority of them having a teaching experience of more than 10 years. Most of them completed their graduate studies with an MA degree, and two had PhD degrees. Their weekly teaching load was imbalanced as some of them worked as regular teachers (17, 21, and 23 hours) while some of the had administrative and office duties (4 and 12 hours). Their experiences as teacher advisors were 78 English Language Teaching Educational Journal ISSN 2621-6485 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 Metin Esen (A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development) also quite different. There were 7 teacher advisors who were involved in advising over two years while 5 of them were in their first year of advising. Lastly, the number of advisees they welcomed varied a lot as the newer advisors had a lower number of sessions whereas 2 of them advised more than 50 learners in total. Table 1. Profile of the participants Teacher -Advisor Gender Teaching Experience Educational Background Weekly Teaching Load Advising Experience Number of Advisees Star Female 16-20 years MA 21 hours 0-6 months 5-10 Learner-Forever Female 16-20 years BA 12 hours Over 2 years Over 50 Phoenix Male 6-10 years MA 12 hours 0-6 months 5-10 Pearl Female Over 20 years MA 12 hours 6-12 months 0-5 Allie Female - - - Over 2 years - Silver Male Over 20 years MA 4 hours Over 2 years 10-20 Ebby Female 16-20 years MA 12 hours Over 2 years 20-50 Gabriel Male 6-10 years MA 17 hours 0-6 months 0-5 Pennywise Female 16-20 years MA 23 hours Over 4 years Over 50 Freedom Female 10 – 15 years - 23 hours 6-12 months 5-10 Timothy Male 10 – 15 years PhD 4 hours Over 4 years 20-50 LA-X Female 16-20 years PhD - Over 2 years 20-50 2.3. Data Collection and Analysis The study included the scanning of three sample teacher development frameworks to detect criteria relatable with the main purpose of advising. These were: 1) British Council Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Framework for Teachers (British Council, 2015), 2) Cambridge English Teaching Framework Competency Statements (Cambridge Assessment English, 2014), and 3) The Eaquals Framework for Language Teacher Training and Development (Eaquals, 2013). To carry out this detailed search within these three frameworks, the method of Conceptual Analysis was used. According to Kahn and Zeidler (2017), this method “involves testing whether common usage of a word, that represents part of a larger construct, would be appropriate in various situations, or cases” (p. 5). The process included a systematic inquiry into the existence and the frequency of some predefined terminology about advising and learner autonomy taken from the descriptions of Kato and Maynard (2016). These keywords selected were: Effective, Awareness, Reflection, Connection, Responsibility, Motivation, Autonomy, Individual, Differences, Lifelong, Plan, Monitor, Self- evaluate / Self-assess, Transfer, Decision, Need, Independent, Action, Progress, and Affect. Once the relevant teacher performance criteria that explicitly or implicitly contain one or more of these keywords were determined, they were collated together and transformed into a Likert-scale- type questionnaire1 of 38 items in total. The participant teachers were instructed to evaluate their development under the guidance of the items selecting appropriate one among the five scales between strongly agree and strongly disagree. A reliability analysis was carried out on IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics version 25, and the Cronbach’s alpha for these 38 items was .94. Descriptive statistics were used to depict the results of the questionnaire. In the final step, the participants were provided with 10 in-depth written interview questions2 that required the teacher-advisors reflect deeply on their advising practice and its impacts on their professional development as teachers. There were no face-to-face or focus group interviews due to time constraints. However, the items were comprehensive enough to cover several aspects of both advising and teaching, and the participants tended to write quite long reflections under each interview question, requiring no transcription process. As there are no scientific theories regarding the effects of advising on teaching, the results of the written interviews were analysed with the application of grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). With the help of open coding and 1 https://cutt.ly/questionnaire-and-interview 2 https://cutt.ly/questionnaire-and-interview ISSN 2621-6485 English Language Teaching Educational Journal 79 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 Metin Esen (A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development) conceptual labelling, the themes that recurred the most were identified for each interview question, and the answers by the interviewees were rescanned for a heightened validity in coding. The participant teacher-advisor’s beliefs towards their professional development under the impact of advising could be meaningfully interpreted with the possibilities provided by grounded theory. The categories that were identified in the answers for each interview question were: independent learning, empathy, needs analysis, strategy training, and Learning Management System (LMS). 2.4. Ethical Considerations As this was a case study conducted with a limited number of participations from a renowned state university, the biggest ethical considerations were the written formal consent of the Ethics Committee and the participants individually, the former having been obtained from the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Humanities and social sciences, and the latter having been collected at the beginning of the questionnaire and the interview questions. Furthermore, the results and discussions reported did not reveal the identity of the participants with the use of pseudonyms either chosen by the participant during the questionnaire or appointed by the researcher. 3. Findings and Discussion RQ1: Is the concept of advising directly or indirectly assessed in various teacher development frameworks? All three teacher development frameworks, though indirectly, are intended to assess teacher performance and development in areas such as raising awareness, creating autonomous learners, helping students shape their self-directed learning, identifying learners’ individual as well as collective needs, and instilling the use of technology to aid learning. The framework by British Council (2015) had five different categories containing teacher development criteria with a direct or indirect link to advising and autonomous learning, and these were: planning lessons and courses, understanding learners, integrating ICT, using inclusive practices, and using multilingual approaches (appendix A). For example, the category of integrating ICT had this criterium which would be a joint goal of a teacher and an advisor likewise: Promoting autonomous learning by exploiting digital content and technologies inside and outside of the formal learning environment. Similarly, the teacher development framework by Cambridge Assessment English (2014) two main and four sub categories than can loosely or strongly be associated with advising and learner autonomy, which were: learning and the learner and teaching, learning, and assessment, the latter with the sub categories of planning language learning, using language-learning resources and materials, teaching language systems, and assessing language learning (appendix A). As an illustration, the sub category of teaching language systems showed the criterium assessing teaching how to learn vocabulary; as the difference between “learning the meanings of specific words” and “learning strategies to become independent word learners” is highly stressed (Blachowicz & Fisher, 2000, p. 505): Lesson plans and classroom practice demonstrate a variety of techniques for teaching vocabulary, and strategies to encourage learner autonomy. The teacher development framework by Eaquals (2013), on the other hand, seemed to prove the most inclusive framework in terms of advising and learner autonomy. Starting from the values and attitudes section, the developmental categories of planning teaching and learning, teaching and supporting learning, and assessment of learning had various key areas with teacher development criteria directly and indirectly related to advising and learner autonomy (appendix A). Different from the other two frameworks, Eaquals had area had a specific key area of learner autonomy under the category of teaching and supporting learning. One of the criteria aimed at assessing the teacher behaviour of creating lifelong learners out of language learners, which can only be achieved through learner autonomy (Holec, 1981): 80 English Language Teaching Educational Journal ISSN 2621-6485 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 Metin Esen (A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development) Developing learner autonomy by helping them to set their own objectives and discussing different ways of continuing learning outside the classroom. Tassinari (2012) listed the key elements of learner autonomy as “a cognitive and metacognitive component, an affective and a motivational component, an action-oriented component, and a social component” (p. 28). While the impact of affective/motivational component on learning is openly stated in Key Area 1 within the section of Teaching and supporting learning, Learner autonomy section of the Eaquals framework met all the other three of these essential components with spot-on criteria such as: Including activities to develop learner autonomy as appropriate, bearing in mind individual learner needs (cognitive/metacognitive component) Involving learners in decision making within the lesson and course encouraging learners to take responsibility for their learning, and advising them on independent learning options (action-oriented component) Setting up and managing simple individual and group out-of-class projects for language activation and practice (social component). In the light of these criteria, it was easier to claim that some teacher development frameworks assessed teacher behaviours as if they were all language learning advisors. They were expected by these frameworks to create autonomous learners, help their students set their own objectives and check their own progress, manage their time and environment efficiently, take individual learning needs into consideration while preparing lesson plans and language learning material. RQ2: Do teacher-advisors believe advising had an impact on their continuous professional development? The questionnaire items collated from the advising and learner-autonomy-related teacher development criteria in the three frameworks were received positively by the participant teacher- advisors in general. All the teachers either agreed or strongly agreed with the items 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, and 27, which were about understanding learners and autonomy levels, encouraging goal-setting, recognising learner diversity and background, strategy training, providing individualised feedback, belief in the value of lifelong learning, creating awareness of aims and progress, recognising cognitive and affective differences, and design of tasks/activities to foster learner autonomy. Totally positive reaction towards nearly half of the items on the questionnaire showed that teacher-advisers believed the practice of advising might have had an impact on their performance and professional development. Items 1, 2, 4, 9, 12, 15, 16, 19, 20, 22, 25, 28, and 32 were items where some of the teachers were not sure about the effects of advising on their development in teaching areas, and these areas were palling for differentiated learning, describing learning needs, applying and understanding of motivation in teaching and assessment, recognizing cognitive abilities, individualised assessment, understanding and targeting learner difficulties, selecting appropriate material, fostering self-assessment, being aware / creating awareness of learning styles, planning activities to develop learner autonomy, use of LMSs to support autonomy, including activities targeting learning needs, and incorporate a wide range of techniques to develop learner autonomy. Only a few of the items met with a relatively negative reception by some of the teacher-advisors who disagreed with the criteria. One of these, item 6, was related to the promotion of autonomous learning by exploiting digital content and technologies inside and outside of the formal learning environment. This is quite a normal challenge for the teachers as Raya and Fernandez (2002) state: “There are degrees of student involvement that the individual teacher can determine, taking into consideration the amount of responsibility he is prepared to transfer and the amount of responsibility learners are prepared to assume” (p. 65). Items 29 and 33, which were related to learning and autonomy outside the classroom, were the other two with which the teacher-advisors disagreed. According to Benson (2007), some ways of implementing autonomy outside the classroom are distance learning, CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), and studying at a self-access centre. However, Benson (2007) also emphasizes the complexity of the situation by pointing to the ISSN 2621-6485 English Language Teaching Educational Journal 81 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 Metin Esen (A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development) fact that these autonomous learning styles require a certain amount of autonomy, which may be provided with the support of the teacher. This case requires the utmost cooperation between the two roles of the teacher: the traditional in-class-teacher and the advisor. Finally, items 31, 36, and 37, assessed the teachers’ development in terms of fostering self-assessment habits in their learners, and this was where the rate of disagreement was considerable. Though self-assessment is crucial in the way leading to autonomous learning, Gardner (2000) warns that self-assessment comes with its own drawbacks which are the issue of reliability and the switching roles between learners and teachers. If the teachers are unable to show their learners to assess their learning in reliable ways, and be their own teachers in terms of assessment, the degree of autonomy instilled will not matter for self- assessment. Unlike the questionnaire, the written interview results yielded more meaningful findings regarding the participant teacher-advisors’ beliefs on their professional development thanks to the practice of advising. 3.1. Understanding of Learner Autonomy All the teacher-advisors defined the concept of autonomy in similar ways, and five of them used words such as own-learning, awareness, responsibility, management, method, and decision which can be brought together under the category of independent learning. These terms are also among those used by Kato and Mynard (2016) to describe learner autonomy. For example, the teacher- advisor LA-X describes autonomy as follows: Autonomy is taking the responsibility of one's own learning from the very basic decisions regarding what one wants to learn to more complex aspects as to how it can be learnt efficiently making use of relevant material and human resource, contacting the right people for help at the right stage and capable of making independent decisions at various stages of the process. 3.2. Recognising Individual Issues and Needs The most significant words occurring in the answers to the interview questions were session, understanding, deep, problem, feel, and want pointing to the category of empathy. Empathy can be broadly and phenomenologically defined as an emotional reaction to the other side’s observed, pictured, or deduced emotional state (Batson, 2009). In the context of advising, Kato and Mynard (2016, p. 49) define it as “understanding a person’s internal state and imagining how she is thinking and feeling.” All the participants stated that advising gave them opportunities for a better understanding of their learners in various senses. As an answer to the second question, Phoenix wrote: … one-to-one sessions teach me to listen to my learners effectively, and most of the time, what matters for the learners more than any solution to their issue is the fact that they are being listened to. Listening brings along understanding, and understanding helps me guide the student in clearly seeing the situation. Allie, another teacher-advisor, made a clear comparison of her two different mindsets before and after being introduced to the practice of advising, emphasizing a “cooperative” type of understanding: Before advising, I would have been truly stumped if a learner said, “Teacher, why can’t I listen?” But as an advisor, I was instantly intrigued and I tried to feel what the student was feeling and I used that plus their body language and facial expressions as a guide. Once we both had a better understanding of what was really happening, I was able to get an idea of that the learner’s needs were. Empathy is a significant teacher quality regardless of the requirements of advising, and teacher development frameworks, including the ones in the scope of this study, aim at empirically assessing empathy in the form of the ability to identify learners with regards to their individual features, needs, and issues to address the learners with a consideration of these analyses. It was established by Cooper (2004) that self-efficacy and high levels of motivation to learn can be evoked in learners 82 English Language Teaching Educational Journal ISSN 2621-6485 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 Metin Esen (A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development) with the help of teacher empathy, and these are two distinct features of an autonomous language learner. 3.3. Lesson Planning and Material Design To the fourth interview question asking the participants if they took their reflections from their advising sessions into consideration when planning lessons and designing learning material, 6 teachers-advisors replied affirmatively while the other half said no. The most frequent codes captured from the collected answers were score, needs, experience, reflection, observe, and consideration, words implying the category of needs analysis. The participants expressed their enlightenment regarding a better understanding of their learner’s needs. Under the fourth question, briefly summing up the remarks of the other 5 teacher-advisors, LA-X wrote: … I do not only aim to exploit their cognitive resources while designing learning materials, but also focus on the affect. Here, what LA-X consciously or unknowingly meant by the word choices of “cognition” and “affect” might be pointing to perceived/objective and felt/subjective needs of language learners. Brindley (1994, p. 70), describes the two as follows: The first of these terms refers to needs which are derivable from different kinds of factual information about learners, their use of language in real-life communication situations as well as their current language proficiency and language difficulties. The second term refers to the cognitive and affective needs of the learner in the learning situation, derivable from information about affective and cognitive factors such as personality, confidence, altitudes, learners' wants and expectations with regards to the learning of English and their individual cognitive style and learning strategies. Considering the nature of self-directed and autonomous learning, subjective needs would be more important for learners, and it interesting, though not surprising, to observe that the practice of advising might have helped these teacher-advisors to make a distinction between objective and subjective needs of their learners, and take the latter more into consideration while making lesson plans and designing learning material. 3.4. Teaching ‘Learning to Learn’ and Training Lifelong Learners Under the sixth and ninth interview questions, the most frequent codes recorded were mistakes, time, activities, self-esteem, outside, individual, motivation, weekly, encourage, and plan, all indicating the category of strategy training. When the category was tracked within the answers, it was found that most of the teacher-advisors aimed at teaching their students how to apply correct strategies and organize their studies after their reflections following advising sessions. As a good example of the case, Ebby wrote: … I believe learning training is most of the time more effective than teaching itself. The very first week of each period, after getting to know activities, I allocate most of my class hours to “how to organize my studies” activities. One of them is like this: Everybody opens the blended syllabus document on his/her phone, and lists the weekly duties and responsibilities they are supposed to complete. Then they order these tasks according to their needs and priorities. Then I distribute one of the advising tools about setting goals and making plans. By the end of the lesson, they come up with a weekly plan. Many studies aiming to detect elements that contribute to learning a second language discovered that learner autonomy was one of these factors (Deng, 2004; Holec, 1981; Little, 1997). Therefore, Wenden (1991) proposes that the when teacher promote strategy training (e.g. metacognitive learning strategies), they also foster autonomy in their learners. 3.5. Technology and Learner Autonomy Under the final interview question, the most frequently used words were applications, learning environment, platforms, online, access, and tasks; and these concepts referred to the higher category ISSN 2621-6485 English Language Teaching Educational Journal 83 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 Metin Esen (A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development) of Learning Management System (LMS). When the replies were rescanned under the lead of this category, it was obvious that some of these teacher-advisors directed their students towards various learning management systems which include platforms such as Edmodo and Google Classroom, self-paced online courses such as Future learn and Coursera, and online applications such as Quizlet. Silver, one of the participant teacher-advisors, quoted: … the most extreme case was a student who had issues with her teacher. I asked her what they were doing in class and wanted her to think if she could do all outside. There was a brief aha moment for her when she realized that she did not need her teacher to learn English. Despite promoting self-paced, individual learning and collaboration, Godwin-Jones (2011) discusses that LMSs are teacher-centred, as it is teachers who decide on the content, organisation, presentation, and pace of the learning. There are also other problems related to the incorporation of technology into autonomous learning, and Allie portrayed one of the most significant issue, which is the reliability on and the prevalence of technological tools, quite vividly: I would love to change that and embrace technology more, but I feel that’s an expensive proposition. I would need classes and a much more expensive cell phone data plan. My students would need data plans too. Many of them, esp. the foreign and/or refuge students, don’t even have consistent access to the internet outside of the school –and as I’ve said, the school’s Wi-Fi is iffy at best. This is why some of them can’t do the online homework or online tasks. They can’t afford the book (and its online access code) and/or they know they can’t do the online stuff anyway outside of school. Another teacher-advisor, Pearl, draws attention to the fact that one needs to know the advantages and disadvantages of a convenience before being able to recommend it to someone else: First, I need to be more competent and autonomous in using technology so that I can plan that. So, I need to work on myself before I do on them. 4. Limitations This research had a number of limitations stemming from its nature as a case study (McLeod, 2019). First of all, as the study only analyses a particular group consisting of a limited number of people, the results reached through the data obtain from this narrow sampling may not be generalised to the population represented by this group. Other teacher-advisors in other language teaching institutions might be going through totally different experiences embracing different values and beliefs. Other than that, the researcher is one of the participant teachers who are also serving as advisors at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, School of Foreign Languages. Therefore, his inclusion in the data collection process might have had a negative impact on the results through researcher bias. Additionally, the case study is quite challenging to replicate for other researchers to replicate as other SLE teachers and language learning advisors might not be working under similar conditions, which could cause similar studies to yield different results due to the differences in variables. The sampling was far too narrow for the quantitative part of the questionnaire consisting of 38 Likert-type items. To prevent sampling error, the exact size of the sampling proportional to the complex population, the goals of the study, and analysis methods to be used during the process should be taken into consideration (Taherdoost, 2016). The final limitation of the study was the inclusion of only three teacher development frameworks to scan in terms of learner autonomy. The inclusion of other frameworks could have caused creation of a different, larger, or more comprehensive questionnaire with more development criteria. More comprehensive items could have helped the participant teacher-advisers to reflect on more teacher development areas which might be affected by the practice of advising. 84 English Language Teaching Educational Journal ISSN 2621-6485 Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020, pp. 75-85 Metin Esen (A case study on the impacts of advising on EFL teacher development) 5. Conclusions and Further Research This case study was aimed at scanning three professional teacher development frameworks to see if language learning advising is directly or indirectly assessed, and if the teacher-advisors at Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, School of Languages believed if the practice of advising had an impact on their professional development. It was found that all three frameworks had development criteria that are loosely or strongly related to the skills a teacher-advisor is supposed to have. The results of the questionnaire, prepared under the guidance of the development criteria located in the frameworks, revealed that teacher-advisors at the institution had positive beliefs towards the contributions of advising to their teaching skills. 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