Reflective Practice for Teachers in the Post-Method Era

Abstract

In the post-method era, teachers have the choice to select the methods that are suitable to their classroom situations and the requirements of students. No single method can be suggested as the ideal one for teachers because the key features of various methods may be collectively useful in dealing with typical classroom contexts and the needs of the students. Therefore, teachers have the autonomy to decide the appropriate teaching practices for their students, which indicates the key point that they should possess the academic expertise in the selection of methods, material preparation, and design of language activities. Reflective practice is a viable solution in the post-method era to enable teachers to be autonomous in language classroom. It can be described as way to evaluate and analyse their past actions and incidents to get insights for effective teaching learning situation. Gibbs model of reflective practice (1988) that has six steps like description, feeling, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan can be effectively used to enhance the professional skills of the teachers to meet the demands of the post-method era. This chapter describes how reflective practice using Gibbs model can be exploited to make the teachers autonomous in different aspects of second-language teaching.