EFL Teachers’ Development of Reective Practice Through Knowledge Sharing in a Reective Focus Group

Development in any educational system highly depends on teachers’ qualities. Among other qualities, one of the much-needed teachers’ qualities is reection. As such, the present study examined EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers’ perceptions towards knowledge sharing in a reective focus group and the improvement of their reective practice through knowledge sharing in a focus group. In addition, the study sought the benets and challenges to knowledge sharing in a reective focus group. The results indicated that the participants did not have a positive attitude towards knowledge sharing. Furthermore, it was also revealed that the focus group platform could enable teachers to improve their reective practice. Among other factors, receiving constructive feedback, and recognizing the possible relationship between theory and practice were benets of reective practice through knowledge sharing. Regarding the barriers to using reective focus group, various inhibitors were reported by the teachers, including personal, institutional, and educational. The implications of the study are also presented.

To be an effective teacher, the dedication of time and effort is essential (Gelter, 2003). However, there are some barriers which prevent teachers from being re ective. The related literature shows that the study of barriers to re ective practice is missing. To the researchers' knowledge, only one study has dealt with the issue. Soodmand Afshar and Farahani (2018) investigated the inhibitors to re ective practice. As they report, three types of inhibitors to EFL learners' re ective thinking included 'affective-emotional', 'cognitive' and 'learning situation' barriers.
Apart from the aforementioned barriers, it has been argued that the application of higher-order thinking in general and critical thinking in particular in non-western countries is not a realistic aim since such a construct is socially constructed, a property of western culture (Weinstock, Assor & Broide, 2009;Mathews & Lowe, 2011) and rooted in western ideology (e.g., McGuire, 2007). Such an idea has been contested by various researchers on the ground that the "fundamental problem underlying the 'cultural-speci city model' of critical thinking lies in its uncritical, monolithic, and static view of the culture of 'the other" (Yoneyama, 2012, p. 234). The difference between the critical thinking of western and non-western societies, among other factors, has been caused by either linguistic (Lun, Fischer & Ward, 2010) or pedagogical (Wang, 2010) issues. If the second possibility is accepted, it can be assumed that through proper education individuals in non-western countries like Iran may learn to think critically. Thus, it seems necessary to involve teachers in some type of exercise to engage them in re ective thinking in order to improve their re ective practice. Accordingly, various platforms have been proposed to train teachers to grow into re ective practitioners including writing re ective journals/diaries, lesson study, video recordings, peer observation of teaching, blogs or online discussion groups, action research, and focus groups (see Cirocki Lo, 2010). Studies have also investigated the role of video recording (e.g., Lakshmi, 2012;Orlova, 2009) in this regard.
To date, the power of knowledge sharing is underestimated (Jong, Meirink & Admiraal,2019). In addition, among the proposed practices, research on focus group as a platform to develop re ective practice is scare. To meet this knowledge gap, the present study aimed at investigating the effect of using knowledge sharing in a focus group on EFL teachers' re ective practice. Having such an aim in mind, we It has been suggested that focus groups can be used as both a qualitative research methodology and a re ection tool (Schmiede, 1995). Accordingly, in the present study, the rationale behind using a focus group platform was twofold. First, it was aimed to encourage the EFL teachers to re ect critically on their experiences. In other words, the researcher intended to draw on the participants' attitudes, feelings, beliefs, experiences, and reactions towards their own experiences. Second, it was used as a tool to help teachers engage in knowledge sharing during the treatment.
EFL teachers' perceptions toward knowledge sharing questionnaire The purpose of using the researcher-made questionnaire was to nd out what were the participants' perceptions towards knowledge sharing in the focus group. To prepare the questionnaire (authors, unpublished manuscript), the rst 20 items were piloted on 15 M.A students studying in the same university. The students were either teachers of schools or language schools. The scale was also given to ve experts to pass their judgments on the statements. It should be stated that due to the small sample of the participants, we did not intend to generalize the ndings we identi ed through the scale in the present study, and the report of our study was primarily descriptive.
There were 15 items in the questionnaire. Each item was followed by a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. As for Cronbach's Alpha, the value was .765 for the scale.
A Survey of re ective practice A survey of re ective practice developed by Larrivee (2008) measures how teachers are progressing as re ective practitioners. There are four levels, namely pre-re ection, surface re ection, pedagogical re ection, and critical re ection in the scale. Each participant rated each item as frequently, sometimes, or infrequently. The completion of the scale took about 15 minutes.

Semi-structured interviews
To investigate the bene ts and potential challenges of using a re ective focus group a semi-structured interview was carried out after the treatment. Two questions inquired the interviewees' opinions regarding the bene ts and challenges. The interviews were in Persian and each interview lasted for about 30 minutes.

Procedure
To nd out what were the participants' perceptions towards knowledge sharing in a focus group, the perceptions toward knowledge sharing questionnaires in the form of hard copies were distributed among them. Since it is recommended that focus groups take place in a familiar meeting area (Winlow,et.al., 2013), the participants were invited to take part in the focus group forum which was held in their university every Thursday evening.
The forum included two cycles. In the rst cycle, which included four stages, the participants were expected to gain basic familiarity with recent theories on postmethod pedagogy and re ective practice. To do so, the participants were assigned to read two leading books (see Appendix A). Each week some questions were assigned to the participants. The participants were required to answer the questions on what they had already studied and sent the answers to the rst researcher via email. At the beginning of each focus group session, the participants were required to discuss the questions (e.g., Appendix B) At the same time, the other participants were required to express their judgments on the views. To prepare the questions, the assigned books and the related literature was consulted (e.g., Gutiérrez,2019). During the second cycle, which included ve stages based on Bartlett's (1990, p. 209), the participants' experiential knowledge was addressed.
In contrast to interview in which the interviewer has the role of investigator, in a focus group discussion platform, the researcher adopts the role of a mediator (Cohen & Garrett, 1999). Accordingly, in the present study, the rst researcher was given a peripheral, not a central role. His role was to ensure that all topics were covered in the rst cycle, to guide the discussions, and to ensure that all participants took part in the discussion. With the contest of the participants, all conversations were fully recorded and transcribed. The transcripts were then read through several times and key themes within and between groups were identi ed (Cameron, 2000).
Following each session of the focus group, the survey of re ective practice was given to the participants and was collected in person. From this, we hoped to determine whether the forums had enabled EFL teachers to move beyond low levels of re ection and whether the discussions had improved their re ection.
A week after the treatment, the teachers took part in an interview. The audio-recorded sessions were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Constant comparative method (Glaser, 1965) was employed to identify emerging themes. As the next step, the codes were categorized to determine relevant subcategories. As for trustworthiness, we asked another researcher to code the data. The obtained inter-rater reliability was about 0.82, indicating an acceptable level of consistency.

Results
As to the rst research question which inquired EFL teachers' perceptions toward knowledge sharing in a focus group, Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics in terms of frequency and percentage for the questionnaire. As shown, about 73 percent of the teachers disagreed with the statement which states that it is important to share knowledge with other academics for the bene t of all. A similar pattern can be found for the second and the third item. About 81.8 percent stated that knowledge sharing is time consuming while 9 percent disagreed. All participants disagreed that knowledge sharing helps teachers evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching. But a more surprising nding regarding item 4 was that 72.7 percent admitted that knowledge sharing is time-consuming. About 63.7 percent disagreed that knowledge sharing helps one change his view about the effectiveness of her teaching. Also, 72.8 disagreed with item 6. Concerning item 7; just 9.1 percent agreed with the statement. It was interesting that 45.5 stated that they lack trust in other staff to share knowledge with while 54.5 neither agreed nor disagreed. But a more interesting nding was that 81.8 percent disagreed that knowledge sharing helps teachers theorize what they practice. A similar pattern can be found for item 10 since 72.8 percent disagreed with the statement. None of the respondents agreed that knowledge sharing helps one look for solutions to problems that arise in the classroom. On the other hand, 72.7 percent disagreed with it. In response to item 12, only 9.1 percent agreed that knowledge sharing helps teachers develop critical thinking in daily practice. Similarly, only 9.1 percent agreed that Knowledge sharing helps one considers new strategies and ideas and re ect upon their own learning processes. Regarding item 14, 72.8 percent believed that It is di cult to share to knowledge for which one has worked hard to earn. while 27.3 percent disagreed. Finally, about 45 percent considered knowledge sharing as a burden for teachers. As to the second research question, after each session, the survey of re ective practice was given to the participants. As illustrated in Table 2, the participants' pedagogical re ection was higher than the other three stages in all sessions. As the treatment continued, the respondents' pre-re ection decreased; on the contrary, their critical re ection had a steady increase. Overall, based on the results, as the focus group knowledge sharing continued, both pre-re ection and surface re ection declined over time. In contrast, pedagogical and critical re ection witnessed a steady rise.
The third research question inquired bene ts of being engaged in re ective focus group. As Table 4 shows, knowledge sharing in a focus group is bene cial for EFL teachers in various ways. In this regard, items 1 to 3 refer to opportunities to share experiences, receiving constructive feedback, and recognizing the possible relationship between theory and practice. However, what is noticeable is that based on items 4 to 9, focus group helps teachers in different aspects with their re ective practice.
The fourth research question explored the potential challenges of using a re ective focus group. As Table 5 illustrates, the potential challenges to using a re ective focus group can be categorized into three classes of 'personal', 'educational', and 'institutional'.  Personal issues were teachers' lack of familiarity with the importance of group discussion, teachers' lack of theoretical knowledge, teachers' lack of motivation, teachers' underestimating colleagues' knowledge, and teachers' workload. The institutional issue was lack of support from the side of educational institutions to encourage teachers to do group work. Regarding the educational issues, the prevalent conventional teaching method and lack of training as to teamwork were the most important barriers. Finally, the cultural issue as the barrier was the competitive behavior in the institutions.

Discussion
The ndings demonstrated that the EFL teachers did not have a positive attitude towards knowledge sharing and did not consider it to be effective. As the treatment began, there was a steady increase in the level of re ectivity of the participants. This is in compliance with the related literature (e.g., Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth, 2001;McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006) which states that teacher learning communities promote instruction.
Second, it was also revealed that the focus group platform could enable teachers to improve their re ective practice. To the researchers' knowledge, no study has explored the impact of teachers' group work on re ective practice. The only study carried out in the Iranian context was that of Donyaie and Soodmand Afshar (2019) who investigated the effectiveness of teachers' workshops. In tandem with the ndings of the present study, they reported that consciousness-raising interactive workshop improves EFL teachers' re ectivity and enhances their teaching quality.
Third, regarding the bene ts of a focus group platform among other advantages, opportunities to share experiences, receiving constructive feedback, and recognizing, possible relationships between theory and practice, and developing intimate relationships were regarded by the participants as the bene ts of knowledge sharing. Similarly, Ipe (2004) found that a motivator of knowledge sharing is the creation of informal relationships with team members. The ndings are also in line with that of Shadravan et.al.
(2010) who stated that among other bene ts knowledge sharing enhances learning opportunities. Knowledge sharing, as the results indicated, helps teachers think about the theories they have studied and nd their relevance to their teaching context. This may facilitate knowledge creation (Akhavan, Ghojavand & Abdali, 2012) Fourth, regarding the barriers to using a re ective focus group, various inhibitors were stated by the teachers including personal, institutional, and educational. The nding corroborates with the idea of Ipe (2003, p. 352) who argues that a number of factors including the nature of knowledge, motivation to share, opportunities to share, and the culture of work environment in uence knowledge sharing. Also, in this regard, research studies (e.g. Convery, 2011) have acknowledged the impact of organizational trust on knowledge-sharing. Jabbary and Madhoshi (2014) concluded that knowledge sharing happens if there are right people in the right place at the right time and added that the production of science takes place in a secure and stable environment. Another factor found in the present study acting as an inhibitor in knowledge sharing was culture. As O'Dell and Grayson (1998) state, the effect of the organization's culture is much stronger than the commitment of the organization to knowledge sharing (O'Dell & Grayson, 1998). In tandem with the present study which found teachers' workload as playing a role as a barrier to knowledge sharing, Ipe (2004) stated that cost of sharing including time and effort was a barrier to sharing knowledge. Also, in the present study, teachers' competition resulted in knowledge hoarding. This is in line with Gupta and Govindarajan (2000) who argued that if members of an organization believe that power comes from the knowledge, they may resist sharing it with other members.
Competitive behavior is likely to be related to the culture prevailing in language schools which may motivate or bar collaboration. In this regard, Jong (2019, p. 1) argues that "short-term teacher collaboration initiatives depend on the prior existence of collaborative cultures collaboration served as a tool to re ect on teaching practice in all groups". As to how to tackle the barriers, Ipe (2004) recommends that the designation of a reward system to motivate knowledge sharing is important. The relationship between knowledge sharing and incentives is also suggested by other studies (e.g., Gupta & Govindarajan, 2000).

Conclusion
While teacher learning communities is "a promising approach to systemwide improvement of instruction and student learning during the last two decades" (Akiba et. al., 2018), at the outset of the present study, Iranian EFL teachers preferred to work autonomously. They did not receive instructional support for developing knowledge sharing groups from their institutions either. It was through the focus group forum that teachers' degree of re ectivity improved and they began realizing the bene ts of knowledge sharing. The results showed that teachers became acquainted with knowledge sharing though there were some perceived challenges to it.
Like any other study, the present study is subject to limitations. First, the treatment lasted for 8 sessions.
More sessions are needed to improve EFL teachers' re ective practice. The second limitation is the characteristics of the sample of the study. Of all participants, were 9 females and 2 males. It seems that more male participants are needed to take part in the study. The third limitation was that the focus group forum took place every Thursday evening when the participants felt tired having all week long studying for their MA course. Finally, the present study investigated the participants' perceptions towards knowledge sharing through a questionnaire. Further research could investigate the possible reasons for Iranian EFL teachers' negative attitudes towards knowledge sharing through an interview.