From Conflict to Negotiation and Accommodation: Development of an EFL Teacher's Concept of Classroom Goals

This study, as part of my action research, describes how I as an EFL university teacher arrived at a new concept of classroom goals through a process of conflict, negotiation, and accommodation with my students in a high-stakes exam classroom culture. Data was collected as one part of a collaborative action research project in my Chinese university during 100 hours of lessons over 17 weeks. Reflective journals both from me and my students, audio/visual-recorded lessons and lesson artifacts were collected and analyzed to present how I adapted my classroom goal orientation under the joint impact of students' feedback, my diagnostic judgment of students' need and insistence on my own teaching values. This scenario demonstrates how a teacher's new concept was formed in her professional development. It argues that a teacher's classroom goal orientation can be influenced by, rather than shape, her students' orientation in certain classroom cultures; and a teacher's development lies in the process where even theoretically-justified and previous-experience-verified concepts have to be in dialog with their new everyday reality.