Abstract
Reflective practice in pre-service language teacher education is required as a tool to critically evaluate the link between theory and practice as well as to explore the beliefs and practices of pre-service English teachers during the teaching practicum programs. This study was aimed to explore the strategies of reflective practice used by pre-service English teachers during their teaching practicum to promote professional development. A case study was adopted as a research design and reflective journals were employed to collect data. The participants involved were six pre-service English teachers who had joined teaching practicum at schools for three months. This study employed thematic analysis for analysing the data from reflective journals. The results revealed that three strategies of reflective practice were identified: recollection, reflection-in-action, and mentoring process. In each strategy, the participants reflected differently based on the learning experiences they had, the teaching situation they faced, the ability to make decisions, and the beliefs they possessed. Through these strategies, they learned how to develop their own theories of teaching, how to make various links between theory and practice, and how to develop the level of thinking, problem solving, and decision making. If these strategies are continuously conducted, they ultimately can develop their professionalism as teachers. This study implies that reflective practice can also be incorporated in the curriculum of pre-service teachers and not only during teaching practicum since it entails huge benefits for pre-service English teacher development.
Highlights
The complexity of teaching demands teachers to question their practices for their own professional development (Mathew et al, 2017)
The reflective practice is an important component to be integrated into the initial teacher education program, and it has been widely investigated to find out how reflective practice contributes to the professionalism of pre-service teachers (PSTs)
In the context of pre-service teachers, the reflective practice is usually occurred during teaching practicum at schools to give opportunity for the PSTs to evaluate the link between the theory they gained from campus and practice at schools (Yesilbursa, 2011), and to “build a sense of agency as future professional teachers and develop their autonomy and self-confidence” (Widodo & Ferdiansyah, 2018, p. 922)
Summary
The complexity of teaching demands teachers to question their practices for their own professional development (Mathew et al, 2017). The development of research on reflective practice varied from investigating the reflection strategy through video recordings (Susoy, 2015), levels of reflection (Nurfaidah et al, 2017), the relationship between EFL teachers’ reflective practices and self-efficacy (Moradkhani et al, 2017), to the teachers’ perception of their own reflective teaching (Afshar & Farahani, 2018). All these indicate huge interest in reflective practice and its relation to other factors
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