A Study Of Pre-service English Teacher Reflection In The Practicum

Teacher reflection has become a focus of the research in teacher education and professional development,but few studies concern the content of Chinese pre-service English teachers’reflection.Based on a foreign language teacher reflection model and related literature,this case study explored with a group of three English-Education-major graduate students as pre-service English teachers,their reflection and factors that facilitated or restricted their reflection in the practicum.The data were collected from three sources:questionnaire,reflection journals and interviews.Based on data analysis,the main findings are summarized as follows:Firstly,the overall data analysis shows that among the seven dimensions,including cognition,meta-cognition,affection,criticism,morality,practice and classroom management,the pre-service English teachers reflected on more experiences in the dimensions of meta-cognition,affection and morality,less in those of practice,classroom management and criticism relatively.Although the content of cognitive reflection was the least of the seven quantitatively,the qualitative data revealed rich content in this dimension.Further exploration into the content of reflection leads to more findings in the four dimensions:meta-cognition,affection,morality and cognition.1)In the dimension of meta-cognition,the pre-service English teachers’ reflection reveals the mentor-teachers’ lesson plans and that of their own,the teacher-student relationship,and their efforts of linking their theoretical knowledge with practice;2)In the affective dimension,the reflection data show the teachers’ care and concern about the students’ learning and growth by observing and understanding the students’ learning attitudes,background,and their psychological needs in and out of their audited classes;3)In the dimension of morality,the teachers’ reflection concerns the fairness and love that a teacher should have;4)In the cognitive dimension,the teachers are found to reflect on their incapacity of teaching and their awareness of the need for professional development in the practicum.Secondly,several factors are found that facilitated or restricted the pre-service English teachers’ reflection in the practicum.Among them,the real teaching contexts,mentor’s help and students’ performance are the main factors facilitating the teachers’ reflection.In addition,peer feedback and other schoolteachers’ teaching in the practice schools also promote them to reflect on the experiences.The factors that restricted the pre-service English teachers’ reflection include the lack of time and teaching experience,and unfavorable learning and teaching atmosphere of those practice schools.In the light of the above findings,the researcher puts forward some implications for improving pre-service English teachers’ reflection and the program implementation for training better reflective teacher learners.Limitations of this study and room for future research are also discussed.