







































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 LE  IN F O  

 

ABST RACT  

 

 

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
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 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 



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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 



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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 



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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):  



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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 



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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 



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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 



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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. The replies to the interview questions also pointed 
to 9 main categories yielded through the coding of most frequent words: independent learning, 
empathy, needs analysis, strategy training, and Learning Management System (LMS). Researchers 
who would like to replicate this study or build on it should take the scope into consideration and 
emancipate the reach from a case study into a more inclusive one to have more representative 
sample to be able to generalize the findings to the whole teacher-advisor profiles. They should also 
include a larger number of teacher development portfolios in the scanning process to create more 
criteria to assess joint characteristics of teachers and advisors.  

 

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