Development of EFL Teachers’ Engagement and Professional Identity: The Effect of Discussing Teacher Competences via E- Collaborative Discussion Forum

This study is a mixed method research that investigated the effect of electronic collaborative discussion forum on Iranian EFL teachers' engagement and professional identity and their development in terms of teachers‘ competences as they were engaged in collaborative teacher inquiry. For this purpose, 5 EFL teachers participated in 11 online forum discussion sessions. Before participating in discussions, their lev- el of engagement and professional identity were examined through administering two questionnaires. In order to investigate the effect of e-collaborative discussions, multidimensional scale of teacher engage- ment and questionnaire for investigating teacher's professional identity were administered twice in pretest and posttest. The results of Wilcoxon signed rank tests revealed significant difference from pretest to- wards posttest in teachers' engagement and professional identity. The content of the participants' discus- sion on an online forum was analyzed using Nvivo software through which categories and subcategories that indicate teacher competences emerged deductively. The major categories are technical competence, critical competence, personal competence and clinical competence. These four major categories include subcategories that represent teacher professional development. In the light of the results, important impli- cations are suggested for teaching practitioners.