A critical and collaborative stance towards retrospective reflection in language teacher education

ABSTRACT

The focus of this paper is to investigate how teacher candidates reflect on their observations in practicum schools from a retrospective angle. First, ten English language teacher candidates, who were pairs during the practicum, wrote reflection reports considering the dynamics of a language classroom throughout a period of ten weeks. Those reports were scrutinised to reveal the criticality level of the participants' reflections. Second, the researchers conducted retrospective interviews on the reflection process with each pair twice, one in the middle of the semester and the other at the end of the semester. Third, critical incidents experienced by the participants during observations were elicited via snake interviews. All qualitative data were analysed using constant comparative analysis technique. Some slight changes in the participants’ views on language teaching towards the end of observations were detected, although the participants could not reach a high level of criticality in their reflections.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical reflection
• collaborative reflection
• language teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Burcu Turhan

Yasemin Kırkgöz is Professor of English Language Teaching at Çukurova University, Turkey. Her research interests include problerm-based learning in ELT, use of technology, language policy and practices, curriculum design and innovation management. She has published book chapters and articles on these topics in both national and international refereed journals as well as reviewing several books. She received various awards, including the Third Annual David E. Eskey Memorial Award for Curricular Innovation for her publication Innovation as a Curriculum Renewal Process in a Turkish University in 2006, and the Leadership and Management Special Interest Group (SIG) award from IATEFL in 2013. She is the co-editor of the book Key Issues in English for Specific Purposes in Higher Education, published by Springer in 2018.

Burcu Turhan is a research assistant at English Language Teaching Department of Hatay Mustafa Kemal University. Her MA thesis is a study on English-medium instruction (EMI) at tertiary level, revealing motivational tendencies of engineering students and lecturers toward EMI.Besides, her PhD study focuses on fostering English language teacher candidates’ immediacy behaviors via a training programme. Her general research interests include foreign language teacher education, pragmatics, English as Medium of Instruction (EMI), metacognition, critical discourse analysis and reflective practice.