Video Clubs: EFL Teachers’ Selective Attention Before and After

The paper aims to introduce results of a study of the effects of participation in video clubs on EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers’ selective attention. It is a part of a larger project concerned with EFL teachers’ professional vision. The paper introduces the theoretical background of study on teachers’ professional vision and selective attention and the rationale of video clubs used specifically for EFL teachers. 11 EFL teachers participated in this year-long study and attended video club meetings that aimed to foster their professional vision for conscious development of pupils’ communicative competence. They were interviewed at the beginning and at the end of the programme; video sequences of their own teaching and of other teacher’s teaching were used as prompts. The transcribed data were analysed using a theory-driven system of categories describing the areas of teachers’ selective attention (i.e. aims, context, content, pupil/s, teacher, process). The results suggest that after participating in video clubs the teachers paid more attention to aims and content, and less to the teacher. The results for the category of pupil(s) differed for the own/other video sequence. As the development of communicative competence represents the ultimate goal of EFL teaching, it is encouraging that after the intervention the teachers’ comments were more aim and content oriented.

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