ONLINE COLLABORATIVE ACTION RESEARCH IN AN EFL CONTEXT: THE EFFECT ON TEACHERS’ REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

 Technology  can  be  integrated  in  teacher  education  and,  hence,  be  used  to  empower teachers to extend learning beyond their classrooms. Therefore, the present study was an attempt to investigate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ perceptions of action research and explore  the impact  of  their  collaborative  action research  in  an  online  discussion  group  on their reflective  practice.  In  addition,  we  were  interested  to  know  how  online  collaborative  research action research contributes to their promotion of reflective thinking. The participants of this study were 23 Iranian EFL teachers who were recruited based on convenience sampling. The design of the study was a pre-test post-test design. As such, two questionnaires were given to the participants at  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  study.  As  the  next  step,  the  participants  took  part  in  online discussion groups for 10 sessions in which they read and watched some essays and videos, wrote about  some  topics,  and  shared  their  ideas  and  experiences.  To  consolidate  the  findings,  semi-structured interviews were held with 12 participants. The result of the study indicated that most of the  participants  of  the  study  had  optimistic  views  regarding  action  research.  In  addition, participating in online discussion groups enabled them to think more about their teaching practice and gain higher levels of reflectivity. The results of the qualitative phase indicated that the online courses had effect on the teachers’ practice and reflectivity in different ways. Despite all studies conducted  on  action research  in  Iran,  contradictory  results have  been  found regarding  teachers’ perception of action research. In addition, to the researchers’ knowledge, no study has investigated the  use  of  online  collaborative  action  research  on  teachers’  reflection.  As  such,  it  seemed necessary to conduct a study to explore the role of action research as a framework for improving reflective practice.