Online writing instruction: Understanding university EFL instructors’ beliefs and practices as a complex system

Abstract

With ongoing debates about the nature and constituents of effective online writing instruction, little is known about the beliefs and practices of online writing instructors. Most studies conducted on language teachers’ beliefs focused primarily on examining the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices based on static views, which are represented as a simplified linear or dual relationship. Complexity theory (CT) goes beyond this reductionist framework by understanding not only the components of teachers’ beliefs and practice systems but also how these components interact and mutually inform each other, creating new entities. Guided by CT perspectives, this article reports and analysis data from a multiple-case study on two experienced Saudi university English as a foreign language (EFL) writing instructors’ beliefs and practices concerning online writing instruction (OWI). Data collection included three sources: semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis. The study findings revealed that, first, the belief systems of the two instructors incorporated various interrelated and interactive beliefs and sub-beliefs in three main areas: online writing, OWI, and online writing assessment and feedback giving; second, the complex dynamic interactions between the diverse constituents of both instructors’ beliefs and practice systems played an influential role in determining whether instructors were ready to engage with and adapt pedagogical practices for OWI. The overall findings revealed two distinct belief systems within the two cases concerning engagement with OWI: one humanistic-oriented and the other structural-oriented. The study proposes a series of pedagogical and professional best practices relevant to online writing instruction.