Reflection or description: A document analysis on ELT student teachers’ reflective journals

Abstract

This documentary study analyses the levels of reflection in the reflective journals written by 59 ELT student teachers from a Turkish university upon their experiences at practice schools. During the practicum, each student teacher wrote four reflective journals on pre-determined topics for observation. The foci of journals were on the lesson observed, the mentor’s classroom management strategies, classroom context and language, blackboard use and error correction. In this study, the journals were analyzed on the basis of Hattan and Smith’s (1995) reflective writing styles and categorized under reflective models by Taggart and Wilson (2005). The analysis reveals that student teachers used a descriptive tone in writing their journals rather than a reflective one. The majority of the reflective statements used were in technical level followed by contextual level. In the journals, as compared to descriptions and reflections in technical and contextual levels, we detect rarer reflections in dialectical level. To shed more light to the study, interviews were held with eleven student teachers selected by convenience sampling method and the results of the analysis were discussed. Not being familiar with the word reflection, time constraint, lack of motivation, the nature of tasks and finally, distrust in the probability of supervisors’ reading the journals were the reasons why the student teachers did not much care about how they wrote the journals.

Keywords

• ELT teacher education; reflection; document analysis; reflective journals; teaching practice

Kaynakça

1. Akbari, R. (2007). Reflections on reflection: A critical appraisal of reflective practices in L2 teacher education. System, 35, 192–207
2. Beck, C. & Kosnik, C. (2002). Components of a good practicum placement: Student teacher perceptions. Teacher Education Quarterly, Spring, 81-98.
3. Bowen, G. A. (2009). Document analysis as a qualitative research method. Qualitative Research Journal, 9(2), 27-40. doi:10.3316/QRJ0902027
4. Boyd, E.M. & Fales, W. A. (1983). Reflective learning: Key to learning from experience. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 23(2), 99-117.
5. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston, MA: D.C., Heath and Company.
6. Elo, S. & Kyngas, H. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process. Journal of Adv. Nursing, 62,107–115.
7. Ewell, P.T. (1997). Organising for learning. AAHE Bulletin, 50(4), 3-6.
8. Farrell, T. S. C. (2008). Promoting reflective practice in initial English language teacher education: reflective microteaching. Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 18, 1-15.

9. Farrel, T.S.C. (2012). Reflecting on reflective practice: (Re)Visiting Dewey and Schön. TESOL Journal, 3(1), March, 2012 TESOL International Association doi: 10.1002/tesj.10
10. Frederick L. N. & Sadler, T. (2013). A third space for reflection by teacher educators: A heuristic for understanding orientations to and components of reflection, Reflective Practice, 14(1), 43-57. doi: 10.1080/14623943.2012.732946
11. Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on ‘reflective practice’ PBPL paper 52. A discussion paper prepared for PBPL CETL (www.open.ac.uk/pbpl. January 2008)
12. Hattan, N. & Smith, D. (1995). Reflection in teacher education: Towards definition and implementation. Teaching & Teacher Education, 11(1), 33–49.
13. Healey, M. & Jenkins, A (2000) Kolb's experiential learning theory and its application in geography in higher education, Journal of Geography, 99(5), 185-195. doi:10.1080/00221340008978967
14. Hopkins, d. (2005). A teacher’s guide to classroom research. Open University Press, Mc Grow-Hill Education, U.K.
15. Howard, T. (2003). Culturally relevant pedagogy: Ingredients for critical teacher reflection. Theory into Practice, 42(3), 195-202. doi: 10.1207/s15430421tip4203_5
16. Larrivee, B. (2000). Transforming teaching practice: Becoming the critically reflective teacher. Reflective Practice, 1(3), 293–307.
17. Larrivee, B. (2008). Development of a tool to assess teachers’ level of reflective practice.
18. Reflective Practice, 9(3), 341-360. doi: 10.1080/14623940802207451
19. Kurt, M. (2017). Quality in reflective thinking: elicitation and classification of reflective acts. Quality and Quantity, October, 1-19. DOI: 10.1007/s11135-017-0609-1
20. Martin, M. (2005). Reflection in teacher education: How can it be supported? Educational ActionResearch, 13(4), 525-542.
21. Mayring, P. (2014). Qualitative content analysis. Theoretical foundation, basic procedures and software solution. Klagenfurt, Australia.
22. Mirzahi, F., Phang, F. A. & Kashefi, H. (2014). Measuring teachers reflective thinking skills Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 141, 640 – 647.
23. Schulman, L. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4-14.
24. Taggart, L. G., & Wilson, P.W., (2005). Promoting reflective thinking in teachers: 50 action strategies. Corwin Press, USA.
25. Vos, H. (2001). Metacognition in Higher Education. PhD Thesis, Enschede, The Netherlands, University of Twente.
26. Yuan, R. & Lee, I. (2014). Pre-service teachers’ changing beliefs in the teaching practicum: Three cases in an EFL context. System, 44, 1-12.