PRE-SERVICE EFL TEACHERS AS REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONERS: STUDENT PORTFOLIOS AS EVIDENCE OF EMERGING PROFESSIONAL IDENTITIES
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to get a better understanding of the reflection process of pre-service EFL teachers at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš during their theoretical TEFL Methodology course, before entering the EFL classroom. An important element of students’ individual work in this course is their portfolio which consists of the students’ views and opinions on the most important principles of TEFL, recorded at the beginning and the end of the 12-week course, as well as a reflective essay on how and why their beliefs have changed during the course. This qualitative case study employs an in-depth content analysis of these reflective portfolios collected in 2020 and 2021, aiming to identify the themes pertaining to the participants’ emerging teacher identities as well as examine changes in their beliefs about various aspects of language teaching and their own professional development. The findings suggest that reflective thinking should be an essential component of pre-service teacher education courses from the very beginning, and not only during the teaching practice.
Downloads
Article Details
Copyright © 2014 Blaže Koneski Faculty of Philology, Skopje
Journal of Contemporary Philology (JCP)
Современа филологија
References
Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do. Language Teaching, 36(2), 81–109.
Cabaroglu, N. and Roberts, J. (2000). Development in student teachers’ preexisting beliefs during a 1-year PGCE programme. System, 28(3), 387–402.
Conway, P. F. (2001). Anticipatory reflection while learning to teach: From a temporally truncated to a temporally distributed model of reflection in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17(1), 89–106.
Debreli, E. (2012). Change in beliefs of pre-service teachers about teaching and learning English as a foreign language throughout an undergraduate pre-service teacher training program. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46, 367–373.
Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: Heath and Company.
Dumlao, R. P. and Pintacan, J. R. (2019). From practice to writing: Using reflective journal instruction in enhancing pre-service teachers’ professional development. International Journal of Instruction, 12(4), 459–478.
Farrell, T. S. (2013). Reflective practice in ESL teacher development groups: From practices to principles. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Farrell, T. S. (2018). Operationalizing reflective practice in second language teacher education. Journal of Second Language Teacher Education, 1(1), 1–20.
Hatton, N. and Smith D. (1995). Reflection in teacher education: Towards definition and implementation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 11(1), 33–49.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2011). Techniques and principles in language teaching (3rd edn.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Maaranen, K., Pitkäniemi, H., Stenberg, K. and Karlsson, L. (2016). An idealistic view of teaching: teacher students’ personal practical theories. Journal of Education for Teaching, 42(1), 80–92.
Ončevska Ager, Elena. (2016). Pre-service teachers’ cognitions regarding what goes on in the observed EFL classroom. Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 3(3), 53–60.
Reynolds, B. L., Liu S., Van Ha, X., Zhang,X. and Ding, C. (2021). Pre-service teachers learning to teach English as a foreign language to preschool learners in Macau: A longitudinal study. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. Available from: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.720660/full [Accessed: September 11, 2022]
Richards, J. C. and Lockhard, C. (1994). Reflective teaching. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Roberts, L. P. (1992). Attitudes of entering university freshmen toward foreign language study: A descriptive analysis. The Modern Language Journal, 76(3), 275–283.
Schön, D. A. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Vosniadou, S., Lawsona, M. J., Wyraa, M., Van Deura, P., Jeffriesa, D., and Darmawanb, I G. N. (2020). Pre-service teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching and about the self-regulation of learning: A conceptual change perspective. International Journal of Educational Research, 99. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883035518322195 [Accessed: September 11, 2022]
Yeşilbursa, A. (2011). Reflection at the interface of theory and practice: An analysis of pre-service English language teachers’ written reflections. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36(3), 104–116.
Zheng, H. (2009). A review of research on EFL pre-service teachers’ beliefs and practices. Journal of Cambridge Studies, 4(1), 73–81.