Abstract
ABSTRACT The aim of the present study is to explore English teachers' perspectives on instructional planning and to compare the perspectives of novice teachers to the perspectives of experienced teachers. Related researches have shown that while most secondary and high school teachers systematically or randomly engage in instructional planning, they do not all plan in exactly the same way. The planning options the teachers employ in fact reflect their differential beliefs and perceptions about teaching and learning. Apart from investigating the perspectives of the teachers on instructional planning in general, the present study focuses particularly on their perspectives on daily planning. Because in daily planning, the individual teacher is the only authority who must apply considerable independent thought, organisation and judgement. The teacher must make the required adaptations in the daily plan considering the needs of the learners to provide a successful instruction. In order to achieve that task, the teacher needs to have the necessary decision-making skills. Daily planning and decision making are two closely related processes. The study was carried out at various schools in Bursa, Turkey. 50 novice and 50 experienced English teachers participated in the study. First of all, an interview was conducted with a school inspector. This interview provided the researcher with information about instructional planning requirements. Then a questionnaire was administered to 50 novice and 50 experienced English teachers and interviews were conducted with 10 novice and 10 experienced English teachers to find out their perspectives and tendencies about instructional planning. The results obtained from the questionnaire and the interview revealed that although the teachers tend to have positive perspectives on instructional planning, they cannot engage in instructional planning properly due to some problems they have aboutthis issue such as not having enough time, not having enough guidance, being subjected to contradictory requirements about instructional planning, lacking the necessary teaching materials, etc. Moreover, the results indicated only a few differences between the novice and the experienced teachers in their planning perspectives. For instance; the novices believe that evaluating the good and the bad sides of their daily plans would increase the quality of their future plans. But the experienced teachers seem to be hesitant to believe it. On the other hand, the experienced teachers appear to think about the good and the bad sides of the lesson that is over more regularly than the novices. Another difference was noted in terms of the teachers' importance order of pre-planning considerations. Unlike the experienced teachers who regard subject-matter and content to be taught in the first place, the novice teachers consider students' needs as the most important pre planning consideration. Considering the other points in the study, no significant difference between the two groups of teachers in their planning perspectives was noted.