Knowledge sharing through WhatsApp: does it promote EFL teachers ’ reflective practice?

Purpose – Reflective practice can greatly improve teachers’ professional development, and various studies have  demonstrated  that  teachers’  knowledge  sharing  has  a  positive  impact  on  their  reflection. Accordingly, the present study was conducted to examine the effect of knowledge sharing in a popular online forum –WhatsApp – on English as foreign language (EFL) teachers’ reflective practice. It was also aimed to probe the challenges the teachers faced to share information in their daily practice.  

Design/methodology/approach – The experimental study was pretest and posttest. To do so, 60 available EFL teachers were chosen as the participants. They were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Both groups received the English language teaching (ELT) reflection inventory as the pretest and posttest. In addition, to find the difficulties EFL teachers encounter to share information in their daily practice, a week after the treatment, a semi-structured interview with 21 volunteer EFL teachers from the experimental  group  was  carried  out.  As  the  treatment,  the  online  discussion  among  the  teachers regarding their daily practice took around 1 h and lasted two weeks. 

Findings – The result of the posttest revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in their reflective practice. The results of the interview revealed that among other factors, the EFL teachers’  lack  of awareness  regarding  the  importance  of  knowledge  sharing, sticking  to  conventional methods of teaching and considering authorities’ views as more trustworthy were the barriers which impede their knowledge sharing. 

Social implications – The findings could inspire reconsideration of the role social media plays in Iranian EFL teacher education and its role in contributing to teachers’ professional development as well as their social interaction with colleagues. The results also call for taking measures to eliminate barriers to EFL teachers’ knowledge sharing, which are partly rooted in the socio-educational context. 

Originality/value – Some studies have argued that knowledge sharing may contribute to the promotion of  EFL  teachers’  reflectivity.  There  are  also  studies  that  have  reported  that  teachers’  involvement  in sharing  of  knowledge  does  not  have  a  significant  effect  on  their  reflective  practice.  Accordingly, contradictory results have been reported regarding the effectiveness of knowledge sharing in promoting teachers’ reflection. In addition, exploring the impact of knowledge sharing on EFL teachers’ reflectivity via WhatsApp deserves more attention.