‘Keeping SCORE’: Reflective Practice Through Classroom Observations

The study sets out to explore the benefits of Reflective practice for professional development in ESL teachers teaching undergraduate classes. There has been a shift in paradigm from teacher training to teacher education and from teacher education to teacher development. As a result, quality improvement through professional development became the responsibility of the teacher him/her self. The aim of the study was to find out whether teachers can learn, grow and improve professionally through their reflections. The study was conducted as a self-reflective inquiry within the framework of teachers’ day-to-day classroom activity. The study was open ended and exploratory in nature and its focus was on gaining access to the intricacies of professional development through reflective practice in the ESL teachers at undergraduate level, teaching both rural and urban students. It also provides the review of the literature, available on the utility of reflective practice in various fields of work. Data from the teacher participants is collected in three stages – pre-reflection data, whilst-reflection data through vignettes, audio-video recording, peer observation, and post-reflection data seeking teachers’ opinion on the utility of the reflective practice for teachers’ professional development. It presents the possibility of practicing reflection in regular classrooms, value of reflection for English teachers’ professional development, its value towards students’ learning, difficulties in implementing the practice, and facilities required for the effective implementation of this practice for teachers’ professional development. They indicate a wide range of possibilities that encompass teachers’ professional development that in turn results in effective classroom practice and indicate the way to further research in this area to help the teachers of English to meet out the global demands of the field effectively. It finally discusses the need for reflective practice as a means to develop ESL teachers professionally.

Research has shown that there is high congruity between pedagogical beliefs and classroom practices among expert teachers and how this demarcates them from their novice counterparts. However, this is not necessarily true for all experts and novices in the profession because their individual differences affect the degree of congruity and this has caused revisions in the ways which the expert-novice divide is understood. This paper examines belief-practice congruity and expert-novice differences through a case study of a novice Malaysian ESL teacher. The teacher’s beliefs about teaching and learning were obtained via a two-part questionnaire, while the classroom practices were analysed based on permitted recordings of her lessons. The findings reveal a convergence between the teacher’s classroom practices and her personal beliefs about teaching and learning, as well as the teacher’s role in the ESL classroom. The findings also reveal the teacher’s classroom practices, especially her use of error correction techniques, mirrored those of expert teachers. It was also found that the teacher’s own perceptions of student learning, her teaching experience and the realities of her classroom have shaped her beliefs and influenced her practices. The findings may not only provide useful insights into belief-practice congruity as experienced by novice ESL teachers, but also imply the need for increased awareness of expert and novice teachers’ individual differences which have direct consequences on instruction and learning. Keywords: teacher’s beliefs; classroom practices; convergence/divergence; expert/novice teachers; ESL classroom

In 2018, Vietnam’s National Teacher Education Programme established a new framework for schoolteachers’ professional development. Classroom observation was the dominant method used for teacher monitoring, assessment and development. This paper explores the use and impact of current classroom observation policy and practice on novice teachers in Vietnamese secondary schools. Our study draws on qualitative data from 35 semi-structured interviews across four provinces. Our findings revealed ongoing policy-practice tensions, with the prioritisation and dominance of classroom observation as an assessment tool for sorting rather than supporting teachers. These tensions were indicative of a wider policy-practice disconnect enshrined in recent reform by the Ministry of Education and Training that advocated the adoption of lesson study as the preferred national approach in schools. However, the experiences of our participants reflected a very different picture in practice that reinforced traditional hierarchies of power associated with evaluative models of observation that are designed to standardise and rank teachers’ classroom performance rather than develop the quality of teaching. Instead of the more collaborative and collegial ethos typically associated with inquiry-based approaches like lesson study, observation was being used largely as a high-stakes assessment, resulting in increased levels of anxiety and stress among teachers.

Engaging in reflective practice not only nurtures pre-service teachers’ critical thinking and propels professional growth but also instils an enduring drive for self-directed professional enhancement and development. This study aimed to investigate how teaching reflection can help pre-service teachers become novice in-service teachers and examine the effectiveness of reflective practice in enhancing pedagogical skills and fostering professional growth. The study was conducted at a prominent university in the UK, and data were collected through multiple sources such as students’ feedback, peer observation, and reflective journals, which provided a rich dataset for this self-narrative research. The findings reveal that reflective practice contributes significantly to the development of critical pedagogical skills. It fosters a deeper understanding of teaching methodologies and enhances pre-service teachers’ abilities to apply these strategies to diverse educational contexts. Notably, it also shows a more proactive approach to professional growth, underscoring reflective practices as catalysts for ongoing personal and professional development. This study suggests that the effective implementation of reflective practices needs to be aligned with broader trends in higher education, such as the integration of educational technology into teaching practice.

Revealing teachers’ beliefs about teaching in EFL speaking contexts may help better teaching practice. This research was conducted to investigate a teacher’s belief about teaching speaking focusing on convergences and discrepancies between the beliefs and the practices in the classroom. Grounded in a qualitative case study with interviews and classroom observations, an experienced English teacher with more than 10 years of teaching speaking in English participated in the study. The results of the study indicated that the teacher paid more attention to fluency and gave practical speaking tips when the students encountered communication breakdowns. Further, the teacher generally practiced her belief in the classroom, even though she encountered some discrepancies. It was due to some students’ factors including students’ language proficiency and their affective factors. Therefore, it is essential for EFL teachers to systematically and regularly monitor the relations between their beliefs and practices through reflective practices in order to improve their everyday practice of teaching speaking in particular. It is further suggested that teachers get engaged in some reflective practices to bridge their beliefs and teaching practices and find out how the reflection can benefit their beliefs and instructional decisions.

Contributed by many factors, teachers’ identity, particularly among novice teachers, is essential since it affects their teaching practice and professional career. This study explored different influences that contributed to the construction of novice Indonesian teachers of English who apparently faced challenges in constructing their identity. This narrative inquiry study involved two novice English teachers of Primary and Senior High Schools in East and West Bandung with one and a half years of teaching experience. Data from in-depth interviews and journal writing were analyzed by Creswell’s (2014) thematic analysis. The study figured out that negotiating with school context and understanding oneself were the factors that influenced novice teachers’ identity construction. Negotiating with the school context shows that the novice teachers interacted with the school context and made some adjustments to their teacher identity. Understanding oneself refers to the meaning-making process of themselves as a person and a teacher. This study also found that novice teachers had some negotiations about their idealism and the school’s current practices. One of the participants became more eager to reflect her idealism in her practice, while the other tried to let go of her idealism and adjust with her students. This study suggested that novice teachers should do continuous reflections on their teaching practices and themselves as teachers to help them develop as professionals.

In teaching science, the beliefs of teachers may come into conflict and inhibit the implementation of reformed teaching practice. An experienced biology teacher, Mr. Hobbs, was found to have two different sets of epistemological beliefs while his classroom practice was predominantly teacher-centered. A case study was then performed in order to investigate the underlying issues that contributed to his classroom practice. Data sources included preliminary and follow-up interviews and classroom observations. Data analysis indicated that factors that prevented the epistemological conflict from reaching a resolution included Mr. Hobbs’ beliefs about learning, contextual teaching factors, personal experiences as a student, and views of the nature of science. The findings from this case indicate that science teachers possess complex belief systems that are not immediately obvious to either the teacher or science teacher educators, and science teacher educators need to address teacher beliefs when they encourage teachers to implement reformed teaching practices.

This chapter reports on a follow-up study to the case studies reported in Chaps. 2, 3, and 4. As a result of the positive student feedback in the six case studies presented earlier, I decided to extend my research and investigate whether the student voice on teaching and learning in small classes might act as a trigger for teachers’ reflection and classroom practice. I wanted to see if it was possible to broker dialogue between teachers and students to co-construct appropriate pedagogy in small classes. I start the chapter by showing how the study builds on previous research that has succeeded in using the student voice as a prompt for teacher reflection on curriculum innovation. I then describe how I elicited the student voice on teaching and learning in their respective classes (all schools, students and teachers were different from those in my earlier case studies) and collated their suggestions for improving teaching and learning in their respective contexts. Students’ feedback on how to improve teaching and learning processes included some intriguing suggestions including their perceived need for more time to work on tasks in class, their belief that teachers needed to reduce the amount of teacher talk, their preference for more varied group work in class and better use of classroom space. Students also sought a wider variety of language tasks and more chances to engage in peer assessment practices. After triangulating interview data with classroom observations, teachers were provided with student interview transcripts and I elicited their reaction to the students’ feedback in interviews. Further observations were arranged to determine whether teachers could incorporate suggested changes into their teaching and I conclude this chapter by demonstrating how the student voice acted as a catalyst for teachers’ professional development.

The strategies employed by teachers in teaching English as a foreign language play a crucial role in determining students’ success in mastering the language. Prior research has consistently indicated that teachers’ instructional strategies are influenced by their learning experiences, formal education, and length of teaching experience. Studies in language pedagogy suggest that experienced teachers tend to demonstrate greater flexibility and pedagogical awareness in selecting and implementing teaching strategies, while novice teachers often rely more heavily on prescribed frameworks. Grounded in this literature, the present study aims to examine the differences in strategy selection and implementation between novice and experienced English teachers. This study adopted a mixed-methods approach involving self-rating questionnaires, classroom observations, and semi-structured interviews. The participants consisted of novice and experienced English teachers teaching at the secondary school level. Quantitative data from the questionnaires were supported and elaborated by qualitative data obtained from observations and interviews. The findings reveal both similarities and clear differences in the strategies used by novice and experienced teachers. Novice teachers tended to follow structured and predefined strategies aligned with their personal teaching standards, whereas experienced teachers demonstrated greater adaptability by modifying, combining, and contextualizing strategies to meet students’ needs and classroom dynamics. These findings highlight the importance of pedagogical flexibility in effective English language teaching. In conclusion, this study underscores the need for teacher education programs to emphasize reflective practice, differentiated strategy training, and mentorship to better prepare novice teachers for diverse instructional contexts.

This paper is a response to the growing need for researchers who would document how reflective practices in language teaching help shape teachers' professional expertise and later on, positively impact student achievement. Two English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers teaching in a government-owned highschool in the Philippines participated in the study: a novice (NLT) and an experienced language teacher (ELT). Both participants' reflective teaching practices were identified, compared, and analyzed using a standardized surveyquestionnaire that gauges English language teaching reflections of practitioners. Moreover, the participants' reflective entries in their daily lesson logs were subjected to documentary analysis to describe their perceived successful teaching strategies, the difficulties they encountered in teaching, and the pedagogical innovations they employed. The results revealed that the ELT practiced majority of the reflective teaching components as compared to the shifting, inconsistent reflective practices of the NLT. The experienced practitioner also had more reflective entries and relevant accounts in her daily lesson log than the less experienced one. It was also revealed that in relation to teaching strategies and innovations, the ELT incorporated more varied, eclectic mechanisms in teaching English while the NLT adhered to more practical ones. Both participants also viewed students' unpreparedness, inattentiveness, and absenteeism as factors that make language teaching difficult. As such, it may be assumed that wealth of experience may influence the extent by which a teacher observes reflective practices in L2 teaching.

Novice teachers, who are in the initial stages of their career as educators, may exhibit a propensity for uncertainty regarding the execution of their professional responsibility. This is particularly dependent on their motivation and experiences accrued throughout their teaching journey. Consequently, novice teachers must engage in reflective practices concerning their professional experiences which involve their beliefs, motivations, and significant incidents that shape their professional identity development. This study involved three EFL novice teachers in elementary schools who are in their first year of teaching. This is a qualitative study that employed the Critical Incident Technique to gather and analyze the data following the five steps proposed by Hughes, William Son, & Lloyd (2007). The data were obtained using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews which were conducted online. Findings reveal that female novice teachers are more intrinsically motivated, driven by their interest in English and teaching, whereas male novice teacher is primarily motivated by his educational background and the prestige of the profession. Although all participants encountered similar critical incidents related to student behavior, teaching ability, classroom management, and teacher-teacher relationships, their responses varied. One participant viewed these challenges as opportunities for growth, while others felt demotivated, particularly when teaching elementary school students. The future career trajectories of novice teachers in education may be influenced by their reflections on these experiences.

In recent years, the field of language teaching has seen a surge of interest among researchers regarding the concepts of agency and autonomy. However, despite the significance of these concepts in shaping language teachers' practices and professionalism, there is still a lack of understanding regarding the complex interplay between novice teachers' agency and autonomy and how such interaction affects their instructional practices and ongoing professional development. Therefore, this study focused on the interconnection between novice language teachers' agency and autonomy through the lens of activity theory. Through a qualitative exploratory design, we analyzed data from semi-structured interviews and narrative frames with ten novice language teachers who were selected via convenience sampling. The findings indicated that teaching materials, curricula, and assessment methods served not just as aids but as pivotal mediators that significantly influenced teachers' agency and autonomy. The study findings also revealed that institutional policies shaped teachers' practices in a way that these rules and policies significantly influenced their professional autonomy and agency behaviors. In addition, the school community dynamics had a profound impact on teachers' experiences of agency and autonomy. The findings offer implications for teachers, teacher educators, and policy makers to support language teachers' professional practices and development by raising their awareness regarding the factors which might influence novice language teachers' agency and autonomy.

The relationship between teachers’ beliefs about environmental education and their classroom practices is often complex and not necessarily congruent, yet few studies examine this beliefs–practice nexus in post-industrial, resource-constrained contexts like Azerbaijan. The study aims to address this gap and investigate the beliefs and practices of secondary school teachers in environmental education in the Black City, a historically industrialised and one of the most polluted areas of Baku, Azerbaijan, known for its legacy of oil extraction. Teachers were recruited from three secondary schools located in this region. Interviews and classroom observations were employed as key research methods. Findings show a dominant knowledge-centred and indirect approach to environmental education. Alignment was observed for content (beliefs and practices both prioritised knowledge), while pedagogy revealed misalignment (direct learning espoused, indirect learning enacted). As the first study exploring the intersection of teachers’ beliefs of environmental education and instructional practices in Azerbaijan (to the best of researcher’s knowledge), the study provides foundational insights into how educators perceive and implement environmental education in their classrooms, highlighting both opportunities and challenges within the national educational context.

Research on EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices is significant for teaching effectiveness. This paper investigated and compared the convergences and discrepancies between an EFL teacher’s stated beliefs and observed classroom practices related to teaching an L2 speaking-oriented Topical Debates course. In mainland China, Topical Debates is a credit-bearing course that focuses on addressing both sides of an issue, as well as the associated different views. It is a compulsory course for English majors and an optional course for non-English majors. A qualitative case study with interviews and classroom observations was applied over two months. The findings indicate that the teacher generally practiced what she believed in the classrooms. Although some discrepancies existed, the reasons are related to the context of the teaching as well as learner factors, including their lack of preparation and their language proficiency level. The findings also demonstrate that this teacher held many common educational beliefs, which are highly crucial for teaching Topical Debates, such as critical thinking and logical thinking. The results suggest that it is necessary for EFL teachers to regularly and systematically examine the relations between their beliefs and practices through reflective practices for a better monitoring of their daily teaching practicums.

Despite repeated attempts to reform schools, teachers' work has remained surprisingly stable. The purpose of this study was to investigate implementation of a state-funded restructuring initiative that intended broad changes in teachers' professional roles. Sponsors of the founding legislation reasoned that changes in teachers' roles would contribute to higher student achievement. This study examined the question of whether and how this program of comprehensive whole-school change promoted changes in teachers' roles in school governance, collegial relations, and the classroom. Further, the study traced the relationship of these changes to one another, and weighed the likelihood that they had the capacity to affect core educational practices. Theoretically, this study is situated in the available literature on teachers' collegial relations; participation in shared decision making; and classroom roles, relationships and practice. Three elementary schools served as the sites for intensive qualitative data collection completed over a two-year period. The schools differed in geographic location (two urban, one rural), but all enrolled a racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse population of students, and more than half of the students in each school qualified for free or reduced price lunch. The study resulted in multiple types and sources of data on teachers' professional roles, including: observations in classrooms, collegial interactions, and governance situations; interviews with teachers (including teacher leaders), parents, administrators, and students; and documents pertaining to the restructuring plans and process. Findings show that changes in the three areas were achieved unevenly in the three schools. All three schools introduced changes in classroom practice and roles, ranging from the adoption of multi-age classrooms to more modest innovations in curriculum or instruction. In only one case were changes in professional roles outside the classroom organized to support and sustain classroom changes. Two of the three schools introduced changes in staff organization (teacher teams) and leadership (governance committees), but under-estimated the professional development and other supports that would in turn support changes in classroom practice. Altogether, it appears unlikely that the observed changes in professional roles were sufficiently well established and connected to affect core educational practice in the long run.