Fostering Teacher and Learner Autonomy through Digital Professional Development for Saudi EFL University Teachers: An Exploration of Learning Processes and Outcomes

Abstract

The educational implications of fostering learner autonomy (LA) amongst EFL learners are required in the 21st century, as it obliges learning skills to lead the students to be lifelong learners (Elshaiekh et al., 2021). Henceforth, LA promotion depends mainly on the development of teachers’ autonomy (TA), with the need to equip teachers with hands-on experience in LA for its promotion (Little,1995, 2007). Previous studies have dealt limitedly with presenting training courses about raising teachers’ awareness related to LA promotion. Such studies emphasise the need for this type of training, especially in the Saudi context. Consequently, this study investigates the impacts of a digital professional development course (dCPD) on Saudi EFL teachers’ beliefs and knowledge about promoting the LA skills of the EFL students. This investigation focuses on giving a detailed exploration of the impacts on teachers' conceptual and pedagogical understanding of their learning outcomes. The teachers’ learning process within the course is another objective that this study tracks and examines. That’s to understand the teachers’ engagement in a training course that is based on involving themselves and exercising their autonomy in their professional development. This is because the teachers’ process of engagement in autonomous learning within a digital setting has yet to be understood. Additionally, it explores the teachers’ attitudes regarding their learning and engagement within their learning process of the undertaking training course. Data collection was achieved through the implementation of a purely qualitative case study approach with seven EFL teachers, as the means mainly include: (1) three stages of interviews pre-, post-training as the post includes a stimulated recall part and a delayed informal interview, (2) digital observation for tracking and recording the teachers’ engagement in the course, (3) the platform tasks and teachers’ posts during the training, (4) the platform analytics, (5) the researcher’s diary. The collected data was analysed using the reflective thematic analysis method, allowing the researcher to generate themes from the data sources to answer the research questions. The key findings provided empirical evidence about the types of beneficial impacts the dCPD has had on the teachers’ conceptual and pedagogical understanding of LA, such as (1) enhancement and new learning with the LA conceptual understanding and (2) validation, enhancement, and new learning of the pedagogical understating of the LA principles implementation. Likewise, the findings also demonstrated the teachers’ ability to negotiate and challenge contextual constraints. Another finding of this study indicates that during the training, teachers’ process of engagement in learning within the dCPD was described as either highly engaged or moderately engaged, as the high level of engagement was salient within the independent activities over the social/collaborative activities. More importantly, it has been found that the patterns/intensity of teachers' engagement are shown to be indirectly affecting their learning outcomes. Furthermore, after the training, teachers were able to express their positive satisfaction towards their learning experience, for instance, how they acknowledged their autonomous learning experience during the dCPD, while also recognising some challenges they faced during their learning process. Notably, this study presented several implications for the policymakers in the Saudi Ministry of Education, for the leaders of the higher education institutions, and for the EFL teachers. Primarily, this study contributes to the theoretical and empirical understanding of developing TA and LA. It also contributes to the field of EFL teachers’ professional development pedagogy for improved, more effective, and innovative design that promises more transformational impacts.