An Ethnography in Turkish Higher Education

This ethnographic study investigated the process of empowerment among teachers working at the Middle East Technical University, Department of Basic English, Ankara, Turkey where the researcher worked as a teacher and teacher trainer. The study focused on the process of empowerment as Conversations with Self and Conversations with Settings with teachers who worked with the trainer in a three-year collaborative action research project. The findings indicate the feasibility of teacher empowerment as Conversations with Self such as background reading, consciousness raising, working with other people, knowing self better and listening and observing both self and others better in order to be able to decide on what knowledge and values are beneficial. The competencies required for the epistemological dimension of Conversations with Settings include doing research, reflection and discussion. The political agenda of such conversations, however, remained at the level of job involvement. That is to say, the political agenda of Conversations with Settings was feasible in terms of autonomy and control only in the classrooms of individual teachers and did not extend to an institutional level.