223 not working for them in their instructional practice and, thus, they know how to make
their teaching better.
8.5.4 Collegial dialogue
Learning from the experience of colleagues is an important component of improving teaching. Further, Chang et al. 2014, p. 51 stated that teacher professional
development is best done through effective teacher collaboration. However, research participants in this study reported that they have a scant opportunity to talk to other
teachers to discuss their teaching. Collegial dialogues in this study, thus, facilitate research participants in meeting each other to review experiences dealing with the
common issues and to share other academic problems. The case study teachers reported that talking to colleagues about their problems, in particular, to the teachers who teach
the same subject, helped them to find how they might improve or change their practice. Collegial dialogues thus provide more accurate evaluation interpretation of practice.
Additionally, they reported that collegial dialogues help them to learn more about various teaching techniques and methods. In other words, collegial dialogues
encouraged
collegial sharing and enriched teaching practices. The next section of this chapter presents the key findings of this study.
8.6 Key findings
The findings demonstrated that these teachers were positive about their involvement in the series of teacher self-evaluation activities and they reported
significant professional growth through their engagement in the self-evaluation activities. Additionally, the use of various mediational tools such as lesson video
recordings, teacher self-reflection questions, student feedback, and collegial dialogues to self-evaluate practice increased the teachers’ understanding of their teaching. As a
result, these teachers were able to effectively identify areas for improvement. This implies that the qualitynature of a mediation tool is important as it may make a
significant contribution to the teacher’s capacity to gain insights into the strengths and weaknesses of their teaching practices. The teacher, in turn, became more aware of the
teaching actions in need of improvement, although these teachers individually experienced changes and improvement at varied levels. Hence, teacher self-evaluation is
a powerful, productive, and promising method to support teacher professional development.
224 The findings also showed that self-evaluation mediated reflective practices
which led to teaching improvement. Additionally, self-evaluation demonstrated the potential to generate the type of information required by teachers to perceive themselves
differently and, in turn, these describe their possible-selves Markus Nurius, 1986. As a result of self-evaluation, teachers were therefore able to identify whether or not
their professional identity suited the context in which they operated. In this study, two teachers altered their teaching identity: one from dominance to being more
accommodating of the students’ needs, and the others from being distant with the students to taking on a friendlier approach. Hence, the teacher self -evaluation activities
provided the teachers with productive disruption in their understanding of their professional identity and teaching practices and, as a consequence, this created
opportunities for the exploration of new and progressive teacher professional identities. Further, this study emphasised that in conducting self-evaluation, teachers
needed to be supported by evidence derived from a number of sources such as teacher self-reflection questions, student feedback, lesson video recordings, collegial dialogues,
and so forth and many perspectives from self, peers, and students. If the teachers understand their practice only from one perspective, it will dominate their perceptions
and interpretations of all that goes on, yet remain hidden from view Pratt Associates, 1998. Multiple sources and perspectives on teachers’ practice therefore provide a more
balanced and accurate interpretation of practice. The findings also indicated that teacher self-evaluation provides teachers a voice
and control over their own practice. They themselves explore their teaching to identify the possible issues that need be addressed so that “they devote greater energy to it than
if someone else has chosen the issue” Danielson McGreal, 2000, p. 31. Additionally, they have the autonomy to manage their evaluation of their teaching in
ways that are suitable with their abilities and interests. This ownership of performance thus encourages teachers’ awareness that they are responsible for and in control of the
teaching and learning in their classroom. The next section of this chapter discusses the limitations of this study.
8.7 Limitations This study is limited in several ways. First, teacher self-evaluation is new to the
Indonesian education context and as such there have been few studies conducted on this topic. The findings of the durability and the changes of teachers’ pedagogic habitus as a
225 result of engagement in mediated self-evaluation in this study must be considered
preliminary and therefore needs to be followed up with further research. Second, by limiting my study to a single institution, I focused specifically on the phenomenon of
teachers’ pedagogic habitus within a specific sub-field. This project was also a small- scale study initially involving ten English teachers, which focused on case studies of
three teachers. Hence, the findings should not be interpreted as a way to reveal broad patterns of teachers’ pedagogic habitus within the system of higher education in
Indonesia. Third, this study focused on a short-term examination five months of the durability and the changes of teachers’ pedagogic habitus following their engagement in
teacher self-evaluation as a mediational activity with some English teachers in a private university.
8.8 Implications
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