Volume 7-6 October 2011.

PDF E-book version

Title
The Impact of Critical Friends Groups on Teacher Cognition
A Sociocultural View of L2 Teacher Education

Author
Mehdi Shokouhi Shourmasti (Ph.D. Candidate)
Department of English, Science and Research Branch,
Islamic Azad University, Mazandaran, Iran.

Bio Data
Mehdi Shokouhi Shourmasti is currently a Ph.D. Candidate of TEFL.  His research interests include teacher education, Vygotskian sociocultural perspective, and critical pedagogy.

Abstract
As to the preparation and development of teachers teaching in different organizations, teachers need to engage in continuous professional development. As a result, models of teacher professional development have been developed, among which is the Critical Friends Groups (henceforth CFG) technique. Going through the present literature on CFG, an attempt to explore the effects of CFG on teachers’ cognition is as yet undiscovered. Hence, the present study aimed to explore the experiences of a small group of Iranian EFL teachers during their participation in a CFG over one semester. The major goal of the present study was to see how participation in CFG could result in any changes with regard to teachers’ cognition. The study was framed through a sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1963, 1978). Through a qualitative content analysis approach (Dornyei, 2007), the present paper highlights that CFG has great potentiality with regard to providing some positive and constructive changes in teachers’ cognition.

Keywords: Critical Friends Groups (CFG), Sociocultural theory, Cognition,      Mediation, Verbalization, Scaffolding, Higher order thinking.