Theme: efl teachers' reflective practice via online discussions plan: I. Introduction II. Main part

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction to Reflective Practice
Teaching is as a complex task, which demands that teachers not only deliver information to their students, but also analyze their own interactions with them and evaluate their teaching practices. In other words, both teaching and learning how to teach requires “interrelated sets of thoughts and actions, all of which may be approached in a number of ways” (Loughran, 1996, p. 3).
In order to control and enhance their teaching processes and practices, teachers try new activities or strategies through which they either become successful or fail in their teaching. Even if successful in one classroom, it does not mean that the same activity or strategy will work in every classroom due to the students’ profiles, need and classroom dynamics. Instead, teachers should ponder and look back to find the strong or weak points of what they have done before, in other words, they should engage in the evaluation processes via reflections.
Reflective practice, also called reflection or reflective teaching, has been defined by first Dewey (1933), a notable founder of the field, and a number of researchers throughout the last century; however, there is not a single, accepted definition (Harrington, Quinn-Leering, &Hodson, 1996). According to Boud, Keogh, and Walker (1985), reflection is simply “a form of response of the learner to experience” (p. 18). In other words, if teaching is considered as a life-long learning path, teachers are walking on this long path as learners and when they have experiences, they think about and analyze them to reach a solution or solve a problem. Loughran (1996) described reflection in a more detailed way stating that:
Reflection is a process that may be applied in puzzling situations to help the learner make better sense of the information at hand, and to enable the teacher to guide and direct learning in appropriate ways. The value of reflection in teaching and learning is that it encourages one to view problems from different perspectives. (p. 4)
This definition meticulously claims that once experience is received, thinking on it, evaluating it and learning from it build up to reflection. The most important point of Loughran’s (1996) definition of reflection is that when a person reflects on a problem or a situation, the person can look at the action from different angles. That means, it enhances the point of view of the person, transforming the individual into what can be called a reflective practitioner who participates in this kind of life-long learning.
John Dewey as the Father of Reflection
John Dewey, as the originator of the term reflection, clearly described reflection around a hundred years ago in his books called How We Think (1910,
1933). Since then, the term reflection has prevailed in several research fields including education. He located reflection at the center of teaching and learning, stating:
Reflective thinking, in distinction from other operations to which we apply the name of thought, involves (1) a state of doubt, hesitation, perplexity, mental difficulty, in which thinking originates, and (2) an act of searching, hunting, inquiring, to find material that will resolve the doubt, settle and dispose of the perplexity. (Dewey, 1933, p. 12)
In other words, according to Dewey’s definition, reflection is the deliberate and active thought of people about their actions to figure out solutions to the problems.
Upon feeling doubt, conflict or hesitation about an action, people question each condition that takes place in this process to reach the roots of these feelings, and this process is defined as reflection. Thus, reflection is not a shallow and superficial concept; instead it is intense thinking about an action.
In order to understand Dewey’s concept of reflective thinking, Rodgers (2002) summarized and listed four key criteria of reflection stated by Dewey. The first one, reflection as a meaning making process, states that according to Dewey, experience is gathered from the interaction of people with the whole world and environment as long as life and learning goes on. The second one, reflection as a rigorous way of thinking, expects reflective practitioners to go beyond accepting beliefs; instead it requires active thinking and questioning of a belief. The third criterion is called reflection in community. According to Rodgers (2002) “Dewey knew that merely to think without ever having to express what one thought is an incomplete act” (2002, p. 856). Therefore, what has been experienced should be shared in order to deepen and enrich its meaning with others’ comments and ideas. The fourth criterion is reflection as a set of attitudes, which requires the integration of whole-heartedness, directness, open-mindedness, responsibility and readiness in a reflective practitioner. These attitudes have complementary and constructive features:
.. .one must remain engaged in the experience as it is happening, in an undistracted way, so that data can be gathered through observation (whole­heartedness and directness). One must also remain open-minded, entertaining many interpretations of his or her experience so that one does not limit one’s understanding the actions that flow from it. Finally, one must accept that a shift in understanding an experience may call for an entire shift in outlook.
And responsibility demands that action-practice- line up with outlook - theory. (Rodgers, 2002, p. 864)
As a philosopher, Dewey defined the term reflection by constructing its key factors related to the content of reflective practice. He went beyond the importance of experience and emphasized the importance of questioning, mulling over, and evaluating people’s actions within their environment.
Donald A. Schön as a Constructor of Reflective Practice
The idea of reflective thinking was a theory suggested by Dewey; however, the idea of „reflective practitioner’ was developed in large part by Donald. A. Schön, who was a student of Dewey, in the 1980s and 1990s. According to Schön (1983), educationalists should engage in the study of their own practice anddevelop their own educational theories deriving from that practice (McNiff& Whitehead, 2002). With his statement,Schön(1983) demonstrated the inefficiency of teacher education books to improve teaching and foster professional development because educators sometimes come across problems that are not stated in the books and defy existing information on teaching. Therefore, to overcome the difficulties educators come across in their teaching practices, they should definitely take part in reflection to find a solution to the existing problems. To clarify the inefficiency of reflective practitioners’ pedagogical knowledge and the need for reflection, Schön (1987) stated that:
because the unique case falls outside the categories of existing theory and technique, the practitioner cannot treat it as an instrumental problem to be solved by applying one of the rules in her store of professional knowledge. The case is not „in the book’. If she is to deal with it competently, she must
do so by a kind of improvisation, inventing and testing in the situation
strategies of her own devising. (Schön, 1987, p.5)
To conclude Schön(1987) sees reflection as rigorously bound to action andpersonal experience. The reflective practitioner has to engage in thinking with the effect of action. In order to take part in this cognitive process of thinking and evaluation of the situation, in 1991, Schön divided reflection into two types and distinguished between “reflection-on-action” and “reflection-in-action” by expanding the theory of reflection stated by Dewey (1933).
Reflection-on-action. Reflection-on-action, as it can be concluded from the name itself, is conducted upon experiencing the action. The practitioner thinks about what the others did and engages in an evaluation to understand whether the activity was successful or not by making judgments on himself or herself. Moreover, the person tries to see if there is any other opportunity or alternative to reach the same or better outcomes of the action (Grayling, 2000). In other words, according to Schön 1983 “We reflect on action, thinking back on what we have done in order to discover how our knowing-in-action may have contributed to an unexpected outcome” (p. 26). As it can be concluded from Schön’s statement, via reflection on action, the reflective practitioner can also evaluate the simultaneous decisions conducted at the time of the action. Therefore, by analyzing past, not only experiences but also active thinking processes in actions help reflective practitioners enhance their teaching practices.
Reflection-in-action.Reflection-in action, sometimes called active or interactive reflection, can be defined as conscious thinking and modification while on the job (Hatton & Smith, 1995). This type of reflection can help the reflective practitioner immediately reflect on the action upon confronting it. For this reason,
this type of reflection can also be defined as a stop-and-think process in which a teacher can virtually evaluate the situation and make a decision about it (van Manen, 1991, p. 101). Reflection-in-action help teachers figure out the weaknesses or provide alternatives to unexpected problems immediately. According to Murphy (2013), teachers get accustomed to some anomalies in their classrooms as they become more experienced. That way, they create frames for similar situations in their mind and apply these frames when they encounter resembling conditions. However, inexperienced teachers may not be able to engage in reflection-in-action as experiences teachers. According to Farrel (2007) “novice teachers may have [more of] a problem in reflection-in-action because they have not built up such an advanced schema of teaching routine” (p. 5). Thus engaging in reflection-in-action may seem as practical as reflection-on-action for novice teachers.
Max van Manen and Reflective Practice
As a pivotal contributor to reflective practice, in his book the Tact of Teaching, van Manen (1991) defined reflection as “a fundamental concept in educational theory”, and in some sense it is just another word for "thinking" (p.98). According to van Manen (1991),reflecting can be described as „engaging in a thinking process’ (p. 98). Therefore, the idea of reflection is closely related to the concept of teaching, during and after which educators engage in thinking in order to control, evaluate and construct the information they deliver to the students.
An important point that should be stated about van Manen (1991) is that he addressed the problems of teachers that make them less reflective. Although the use of reflective practice has a significant role in professional development, it may not be possible for educators to utilize it in every situation. There exist some situations in which teachers cannot control the classroom environment or apply their reflection due to some constraints such as time, crowded classroom environment, or technical problems related to technology. For instance, some schools operate like business, in which teachers have to obey all the rules of teaching. Most of the time administrators provide teachers overloaded schedules or curriculums in which there is no space for the educators to reconstruct or revise their teaching practice. Therefore, the teacher is expected to teach more mechanically and not to reflect on what or how he or she teaches (van Manen, 1991).
Reflection-for-action. One of the significant contributions of van Manen (1991) was to broaden the types of reflection by going beyond Schon’s reflection types, reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action (1983). According to van Manen (1991), teachers not only use reflection to solve problems that happen at the time of teaching to contemplate the alternatives about past experiences, but also consider the possible problems or situations that they may encounter in their future teaching. Therefore, van Manen (1991) proposed the third type of reflection, reflection-for- action, which can be defined as reflection before action or anticipatory reflection. Reflection-for-action
“enables us to deliberately think about possible alternatives, decide on courses of action, plan the things we need to do and anticipate the experiences we and others may have as a result of expected events or of our planned actions” (van Manen, 1991, p. 101).
In other words, by engaging in reflection-for-action, reflective practitioners can increase the power of experience by carefully identifying the strengths and weaknesses they have as teachers or evaluating the strategies or techniques they utilize in their classroom environments to enhance their teaching by overcoming anticipated problems or situations.
According to van Manen, teachers come across at least two types of anticipatory reflection. The first type requires a teacher to choose a pedagogical solution to overcome a problematic situation of a student. For instance, if the teacher has a student who acts in an aggressive manner towards the teacher, the educator can talk to this student in person, share the problem with a colleague to get some suggestion, or contact the student’s family to collaborate with them in order to solve this situation. The teacher has to choose a course of action to find the most suitable way to address the problem, and anticipate the possible outcomes of each choice. Second type of anticipatory reflection, in which a teacher may apply reflection before action, concerns lesson planning. Sometimes teachers need to think ahead while planning a lesson to figure out the strong or weak parts of the plan by anticipating the possible reactions of students. The teacher may need to enhance and improve the content of this planning. While doing that the teacher may also look back at his/her past experiences and design the future course in light of this information (van Manen, 1991).
Although these reflection types,reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action suggested by Schön (1991) and reflection-for-action constructed by van Manen (1991), were designed to differentiate among different kinds of reflection, it is not very easy to separate them as they have multifaceted, overlapping features. In order to clarify the borders of reflection types, looking at their temporality facilitates distinguishing them (Uzum, Petron & Berg, 2014). Thus, Wilson (2008) stated chronological orders and created temporality for reflection types. He stated that reflection-on-action can be categorized as past situations, reflection-in-action can be clarified as present situations or general conditions of practitioners such as education place, teachers current teaching practices, and reflection for action can be analyzed as future actions via which reflective practitioners think about future conditions. The most important contribution of Wilson (2008) can be regarded on the definition of reflection-in-action as he went beyond common definitions by expanding the scope of reflection in action by binding it with present and general conditions or situations of teachers.
To separate categories of reflection types, Murphy (2013) also supported temporality and assigned key words for each reflection types as a) “on action- retrospecting, thinking back, remembering; b) in-action- being aware, in the moment, seeing; c) for action- anticipating thinking ahead, planning” (p. 616). Instead of referring to reflection-in-action as Wilson (2008), Murphy (2013) referred to reflection-in-action as simultaneous, concurrent decisions of teachers. Considering the temporality aspect of reflection suggested by these researchers, times of actions and their interpretations can also play a vital role to distinguish reflection types.
Reflective Practice and Identity
Reflective practice has been utilized to analyze the identity of language learners and language teachers via tools of reflective practice such as diaries, narrative reflections and mentoring meetings. In 2009, Hirano used reflective diary, as well as classroom interaction and interviews in one-year action research study conducted on her adult EFL student who had a difficulty in learning English and found that diaries could be used as a tool for reflection on learner identity. With reflective diaries, the researcher wanted the participant to reflect on his learning processes by using prompts in which the participant was asked to explain the things he learnt, his problems and barriers in the learning process. That way, the participant reflected on his learner identity by identifying anxiety as a problem in his second language learning process. Another study on identity reflection was carried out by
Besser and Chik (2014). With the help of narrative reflections, two groups of students studying in different primary schools defined the importance of language practice opportunities in their language learning. The students also drew on the reflections about their L2 learner identity construction in terms of the target culture.
Being similar to presented studies, some other tools or techniques were utilized to engage teachers in reflections on their teacher identity, especially identity construction. According to Urzua and Vasquez’ study (2008) conducted on novice English as a Second language teachers’ who worked for intensive English language program, providing teachers chances to reflect on existing conditions and their future plans via mentoring meetings on teaching practices play a vital role in the construction of teacher identity. The findings of their study revealed that by engaging in future-oriented talks on participants’ metacognitive selves, such as awareness, intentionality, commitment, self-confidence and responsibility, improved participants’ identity constructions as teachers.
Maclean and White (2007) conducted a study on the impact of reflection on formation of teacher identity with seven experienced teachers and five student teachers who were all graduates completing the final year of a teacher education course which qualified them both as primary and secondary teachers. First, student teachers’ teaching practicums were recorded in videos, and second, experienced teachers reflected on those recorded teaching practicums by suggesting ideas for student teachers. The findings of the study indicated that student teachers could develop their teacher identity by talking about their teaching practicums and evaluating their actions, thoughts, values, feelings and goals. Besides, the participants could also develop their social identity by engaging in social interactions with experienced teachers.
To sum up, studies in the field of teaching claim that reflections can be utilized both for learners and novice teachers to construct learner identity and teacher identity.