English Language Teaching Professional Development: A Qualitative Study on Face-to-Face and Online Interaction

Online interaction tools are considered as one of the major causes of interaction in virtual environment. Although anumber of studies have been carried out on online interaction tools and online interaction, there seems to be no studyinvestigating pre-service teachers’ perceptions of online interaction. The purpose of this study was manifold: a) toexamine pre-service teachers’ perceptions of using online interaction tools for the purpose of out-side-class activities;b) to explore pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the difference of interaction between face-to-face and online Englishclasses; c) to investigate pre-service teachers’ beliefs about teacher training courses and d) to determine pre-serviceteachers’ perceptions of the importance of online teachers’ roles in online English classes. The participants of the studywere 100 MA students of TEFL at Iran University of Science and Technology. This study was conducted throughadministrating four open-ended questions. The results of the study revealed that (a) the pre-service teachers prefferedface-to-face classes to online ones; (b) the pre-service teachers were of the opinion that online interaction tools couldbe useful for out-side-class activities; (c) the pre-service teachers believed that comprehensive training courses ought tobe provided and (d) online teachers’ role is vital in promoting online interaction in online English classes. This studyhas gone some way towards promoting EFL teachers' perceptions of their roles and attitudes, which are crucial forimproving online interaction among learners. Additionally, it is necessary for pre-service teachers to receive acomprehensive training course. Future work may focus on the comparison of pre-service and in-service teachers’attitudes towards online interaction tools to foster online interaction in English classes.

Keywords:

online interaction , online interaction tools , pre-service teachers’ attitudes , online teacher training , face-to-face classes