Reflective practice in FSL teacher education programs: exploring thinking, feeling and learning (original) (raw)

2017

Abstract

Reflective practice, often defined as a cognitive process which contributes to developing teacher practice (Dewey, 1933; Loughran, 1996), is now a foundation of teacher professional development (Leitch & Day, 2000). Teacher reflections have become a staple of many teacher education programs (Mueller & Skamp, 2003). And yet, based on our own experiences, we have noticed that many teacher candidates struggle with this task, often wondering: What is the point of teacher reflections? Taking a sociocultural approach to human learning and development, which emphasizes the combination of cognition and emotion in the learning process (Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002), our research is an exploration into teacher reflections. We ask: What are the cognitive processes involved in teacher reflections? What is the role of emotion in reflective practice? Our data consists of weekly reflections collected from two undergraduate students and their course instructor in a French as a Second Language (FSL) teacher education program over one semester and post-hoc interviews. Drawing on critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2013), we place the instructor and the teacher candidates' reflections alongside each other to explore their complex and sometimes contradictory discourses about learning in the classroom, and how they position themselves as they negotiate their (emerging) practice. After a brief description of reflective practices in teacher education, we will provide an overview of FSL pre-service teacher education contexts. Next, we will outline our research methodology and submit our preliminary findings. In closing, we invite the audience to reflect on the research and the findings with us.

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