Turkish Pre-service EFL Teachers’ Attitudes towards the Integration of the EPOSTL into Teacher Training Programs

Self-assessment plays a key role in foreign language teacher education in terms of enhancing pre-service EFL teachers’ professional development. The European Portfolio of Student Teachers of Languages (EPOSTL) is a way of sustaining self-assessment practices among pre-service EFL teachers during their practicum period. Although the use of the EPOSTL is quite prevalent in global context, it is not commonly implemented in FLTE programs in the Turkish tertiary context. Due to the fact that the EPOSTL can have a rich potential to foster teaching competences of pre-service EFL teachers, it is important to investigate pre-service EFL teachers’ attitudes towards using this portfolio in their undergraduate programs. In this vein, the ultimate aim of this study is to explore pre-service EFL teachers’ general point of views regarding the use of the EPOSTL as a self-assessment tool in their undergraduate program. The study adopts a qualitative design based on a thematic analysis. The participants of the study are 31 senior year pre-service EFL teachers. After they used the EPOSTL for a semester and assessed themselves, their opinions and comments were collected through reflective reports and semi-structured interviews. The results of the thematic analyses showed that the EPOSTL was found to be a very promising portfolio, contributing to the participants’ professional development to the utmost. Several different pedagogical implications were reached including the spread of EPOSTL-oriented FLTE course design or curriculum plans to make student teachers more immersed in the process of self-reflection or the introduction of an EPOSTL-based practicum in which other educational stakeholders can also be included to maximize pre-service EFL teachers’ professional development.