Using course journals to encourage reflective practice in second language teacher education

ABSTRACT

This paper describes how the head of a second language teacher education program uses a course journals assignment to encourage reflective practice. Students in training to become second language teachers often report on a gap between the theory they learn in training programs and the pedagogical practice they implement in the field. Reflective practice in teaching has been shown to help new teachers to overcome this gap. To encourage students to develop a habit toward reflective practice, the head of this program has implemented a semester-long reflective journal assignment in a capstone course. Students report that the journal is engaging and effective in aiding them to develop their reflective abilities. This paper details the use of these course journals with the goal of encouraging more educators of future language educators to implement them as well.

KEYWORDS:

• Second language teacher education (SLTE)
• reflective practice
• course journals

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jared David Barber

Jared David Barber serves as the head of Liberty University’s Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) program, as well as the head of the LU Spanish Institute. He teaches courses on TESL, linguistics, and Spanish. He has a Master of Arts in Linguistics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, and is currently in progress on a PhD in Higher Education at Liberty University. Jared advocates for his TESL students to adopt a ‘focus on form’ approach in their teaching, as this approach strikes a balance between a communicative approach which emphasizes conversational fluency, and a more traditional approach which emphasizes grammatical accuracy. He also incorporates reflective teaching and practice into all of his courses. His research interests include language learning mindsets and motivation, task-based language teaching, second language teacher education, and second language acquisition.