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| The Book Series of Asia TEFL |
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Reflective Language Teaching
By Thomas S.C. Farrell, PhD
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| 3. Reflective Practice in Asia II |
 elcome back to the Reflective Language Teaching column. This column continues the previous theme of reflective practice in Asia, and I have also had some practical experience with my most recent visit to Korea at the Korea TESOL National Conference, where I was privileged to give the keynote address at the conference and a Sunday workshop following the conference. I must say I was very impressed at the depth of knowledge of all the teachers who I chatted with during the conference, and especially, the teachers who attended the workshop. I really enjoyed my time in Korea during the best season of May and hope to return soon. Now, on to the theme of reflective practice in Asia. In my last column, I wrote about the MELTA organization¡¯s publication, and this time I want to highlight TESOL¡¯s Language Teacher Research Series, of which I am series editor, and especially the volume Language Teacher Research in Asia, of which I am also the volume editor.
The Language Teacher Research Series was developed so that you as a language teacher could have a forum to carry out research of your practice in your own context. The series has attempted to cover as many geographic regions as possible, with volumes representing the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia/New Zealand. What is distinctive about this series is that these studies document how individual language teachers at all levels of practice systematically reflect on their own practice. This is very different from what has been the standard in language research conducted by outside academics who attempt to interpret other teachers¡¯ practices. This is reflective practice in real action because the final part of the template across volumes is headed Reflection (the others, in order, are Issue, Background Literature, Procedures, Result, and finally, Reflection). The final part of the template asks authors/teachers to give a statement that articulates answers to the question, ¡°So what?¡± What will you do now and in the future? What action will you take as a result of your findings? If you have already acted on your findings, what did you do? What have you learned as a result of the whole process? For example, what have you learned about your teaching? What have you learned about doing research? Also, at this point, the issue of the situated nature of the work should be revisited: Why you think the issue is specific to your context? In the volume Language Teacher Research in Asia, topics for reflection from diverse regions in Asia are covered. They include: Teaching Character Depiction in Narrative Writing (Singapore), Expert and Non-expert Teachers (Thailand), Learner Autonomy (Vietnam), Understanding Chinese Students¡¯ Teacher Dependence (China), and Establishing a Self-Access Language Center in a Japanese Senior High School (Japan). There are many more topics covered in this volume and, of course, all the other volumes. Because the authors all followed the same template for each chapter in each volume, language teachers in Asia and elsewhere can read, and compare within and across volumes, making it easy to try out the same research and reflections in your context. Yes, language teacher research is alive and well in Asia!
In closing, I want to point out that the language teacher research series is coming back to life in TESOL¡¯s new TESOL Journal, making use of the same template. I will be section editor for this, so I hope you will all send in more papers. All details are on the main TESOL web page.
Many thanks again to all those in Korea TESOL who made my most recent trip to Korea so memorable.
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Your comments, questions, and opinions of this article and on Reflective Language Teaching would be highly appreciated. Please email the author at: tfarrell@brocku.ca |
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Copyright ¨Ï 2009
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| 2. Reflective Practice in Asia |
elcome to my second column in Reflective Language Teaching for Asia TEFL NewsNet. This past August, I had the honor of delivering a plenary address on the topic of Reflective Language Teaching at Asia TEFL on the beautiful island of Bali, Indonesia, and I must say that I really enjoyed that experience and the whole event. What a wonderful conference! On my way back to Canada, I also had the honor of delivering a seminar on Reflective Practice at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and a workshop on Reflective Practice in Seoul, South Korea, sponsored by Korea TESOL. In December, I also had the honor of being invited as a Distinguished Lecturer for Temple University Japan (TUJ), where nine times a year, the Distinguished Lecturer Series brings three internationally recognized TESOL scholars to TUJ for intensive weekend seminars. Each seminar can be taken for elective credit for the masters and doctoral degrees, or the general public can attend the opening three-hour public lecture free. I was delighted to lead two weekend seminars (and of course, the opening public lectures, too) on Reflective Language Teaching ? one at their Tokyo campus the first weekend and the second at their Osaka campus the following weekend. I met some wonderful students in both locations. The program seems very healthy and offers a lot to language educators living and teaching in Japan.
So, as a result of my recent travels this year, I firmly believe that Reflective Practice is alive and well in Asia. In this column, I am going to prove this by talking about what we can now see in print about teachers in Asia reflecting on their work. I will briefly review one series coming out of Malaysia, called the Sasbadi-MELTA ELT Series, in this column, and in the next column, I will review another series, one that I am very familiar with, called Language Teacher Research, published by TESOL, USA.
The Sasbadi-MELTA ELT Series
Only recently, I discovered the existence of a very exciting series that encourages reflections on practice in the Malaysian and other Asian contexts called the Sasbadi-MELTA ELT Series. The first title in the series was published in 2002, and now, in its sixth year, a total of nineteen titles have been published. The ELT Series addresses various issues, interests, and aspects of English Language teaching in Malaysia and around the world. Besides Malaysians, expert international contributors contribute to this series. The nineteen titles cover a wide range of subjects, including teaching literature, teaching language skills, second language acquisition, ELT teaching materials, assessment, the Internet in the ESL classroom, and teacher development. Details on the titles in the Sasbadi-MELTA ELT Series can be found in www.melta.org.my . I would also like to talk specifically about two recent titles that I am familiar with because they are a good example of teachers in Asia engaging in reflective practice: Practices and Issues in English Language Teacher Education and Qualitative Studies on English Language Teacher Development.
In Qualitative Studies on English Language Teacher Development, the first chapter, Faizah Abd Majid focuses on one aspect of reflective teaching: the making of effective decisions by pre-service English language teachers. She seeks answers to the following questions: What are the types of decision-making made by the participants? What are their concerns in each type of decision-making? and Which of their concerns had and had not improved and why? She concludes that, in particular, the participants were able to make "informed planning, interactive, and evaluative decisions." Faizah also indicates that they had tried to be "communicative" and learner-centered in their approach and materials, and activities, respectively.
With the increasing demands on teachers of English as a foreign language to conduct research in order to further their career opportunities, many expatriate and local teachers in Japanese contexts struggle to find the appropriate support networks at the tertiary level of education necessary to achieve such objectives. John Adamson and Theron Muller conduct a research study into the creation of a non-institutional research group in a local Japanese setting. This study offers insights into how a small support group has been created and sustained. To contextualize and inform the study, the literature from other research in the area of teacher support and collegiality is reviewed, revealing a noticeable necessity in the Japanese context for teachers of English as a foreign language to compensate for their lack of institutional support by creating more autonomous communities of practice that fit their personal needs.
Another reflective practice reported in this book is by Malachi Edwin Vethamani, Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan, and Mahbub Aslam Khan. They document how five in-service English language teachers reflected on their experiences on developing e-portfolio and examined their blog postings to discern how they designed, planned, constructed, and developed their e-portfolio. The teachers expressed their fears and initial reluctance and chronicle how this later changed into confidence, appreciation, and ownership of e-portfolio. The teachers also perceive the whole process as a very meaningful and valuable professional development experience. This book has a lot more chapters to interest language educators in the region and indeed, worldwide.
The second book, Practices and Issues in English Language Teacher Education, although not as focused on the reflections of individual teachers, nevertheless, offers language educators, teacher educators, and administrators in the region many well-detailed research studies in which to ponder English language teacher education in the region. The various chapters in Practices and Issues in English Language Teacher Education examine and address some of the emerging issues in the field of teacher development, and report new approaches, practices, and ideas that bifurcated from previous research. I do not have the space to go into the text in great detail, but an example of some chapters include Barbara Harold and Lauren Stephenson¡¯s study on collaboration with a private school in the United Arab Emirates with the purpose of examining the development and implementation of a school based professional development program that aimed to encourage communities of practice (CoPs). They identify that there is a mismatch between the espoused values of the school's leaders and administrative team and the manner in which the project aims are supported or hindered. It is apparent that, through the use of critical ethnography, the learning that emerged contributes to an evolving and organic model of professional development. Another chapter suggests that in Malaysia, teachers¡¯ personal growth is one of the main agendas of the ministry of education. Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan, Chee Suet Fong, and Malachi Edwin Vethamani¡¯s chapter reports on research that aims to find the relevance of less meaningful in-service training (INSET) given to teachers of English in secondary schools. Based on their findings, they suggest some practical strategies that can be undertaken to improve the structure, planning, and implementation of future INSET programs.
Finally, the Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) Network at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) in Washington, DC requested me to write a brief for the CAELA Network project on the topic of reflective practice for practitioners. The reference for the brief is: Farrell, T.S.C., (2008). Reflective practice in the professional development of teachers of adult English language learners. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Available at
http://www.cal.org/caelanetwork/pd_resources/reflectivepractice.html
As you will see, this brief is written for teachers, program administrators, education researchers, and policymakers. It describes the foundations for and components of reflective practice to facilitate the use of this approach among educators who work with adult English language learners. I hope you enjoy it, and please pass it on to anyone you know (when you click, you will also see a PDF version).
Copyright ¨Ï 20008 |
1. Reflective Language Teaching: An Introduction |
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elcome to the first article of this column on Reflective Language Teaching! Actually, this is not my first column for Asia TEFL as I contributed an article on Professional Development in October, 2005. I am delighted to have been invited back to host this new regular column on reflection for Asia TEFL NewsNet? I will include some parts of the previous article as it was such a long time ago that many will have forgotten it. In that first article, I suggested that the need for ongoing renewal of teachers' skills or knowledge is not a reflection of inadequate initial training, but a response to the fact that the knowledge base of language teaching constantly changes ? what we learned five years ago may not be relevant today, and some of our knowledge and skills may have become outdated. So again, I see this column as a place where you can take some time out from your regular teaching and reflect on important issues related to your practices as a language teacher.
You may now be asking why we should look at our practice beyond the quick after-class muse of ¡°That was a good class¡± or ¡°The students were not very responsive today¡±? While these reflections are a necessary start, they are not very productive in that we do not know why the class was a good one (or even if the students learned anything or enjoyed it). Likewise, we should find out why the students were not responsive ? it could be that the teacher was at fault, the time of day was not conducive to having a class (after lunch or 5 pm on a Friday), or a host of other possible and complex reasons. We need to know equally why a class was responsive or not responsive. Reflective teaching is an approach to professional development that is based on the belief that language teachers can improve their understanding of their own teaching by consciously, systematically reflecting on their teaching experiences. Reflective teaching has many benefits because it frees us from routine and impulsive action, and also allows us to become more confident in our teaching actions and decisions (Farrell, 2008).
In this column, I will be discussing topics that teachers can reflect on, including self-reflection, teachers¡¯ beliefs and classroom practices, critical incidents in teaching and careers, language proficiency, use of metaphors and maxims, and classroom communication and interaction. There are a number of procedures teachers can choose to facilitate this reflection over the course of their professional careers, such as action research, teaching journals, teacher development groups, classroom observations, critical friendships, and concept mapping. I will cover all of the above in future columns. In the next column, I will outline what I think reflective language teaching is by looking at the origins of reflective teaching.
I will be in Bali, Indonesia, at the 6th Asia TEFL Conference, then in Singapore, and finally in Korea in August, all the time talking about reflective teaching. For the Bali event, see http://www.asiatefl-teflin.com/web2/index.php, and for the Korea event, see http://www.kotesol.org/?q=node/627 .
I hope you find the contents of this column useful. Feel free to contact me to discuss them further at tfarrell@brocku.ca .
Reference
Farrell T.S.C. (2008). Reflective language teaching: From research to practice. London: Continuum Press.
Thomas S.C. Farrell is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Brock University, Canada. His professional interests include Reflective Practice, and Language Teacher Education and Development. He is series editor for the Language Teacher Research series (Asia, Americas, Africa, Australia/New Zealand, Europe, and the Middle East) for TESOL, USA. His recent books are Succeeding with English Language Learners: A Guide for Beginning Teachers (2006, Corwin Press, Sage); What Successful Literacy Teachers Do: 70 Research-Based Strategies for Teachers, Reading Coaches, and Instructional Planners (2007, co-authored with Neal Glasgow, Corwin Press, Sage); and Reflective Language Teaching: From Research to Practice (2008, Continuum Press). See his web page at: http://www.brocku.ca/appliedlinguistics/viewpeople.php?id=1&view=all
Copyrighted ¨Ï 2008 Thomas S.C. Farrell and Asia TEFL |
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