An Exploratory study of the effect of reflictive practice on novice EFL teachers
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Date
2015
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university of Oum-El-Bouaghi
Abstract
Novice teachers are at the start line of professional development: they seem to face many challenges, difficulties and complexities during their first years of practice that are arduous to deal with and get over. They are in need of a helping hand that accompanies them through their first journey. This might be "reflective practice", for it has a positive history in education and professional development. The present dissertation aims to firstly, investigate teachers' perceptions and understanding of reflective practice. Secondly, it attempts to explore the effect reflective practice has on novice teachers. A survey questionnaire was administrated to 36 teachers of English at the University of Larbi Ben M'Hidi to serve the first aim. Reflective journals, qualitative data collection tools, were used over the period of five months in order to serve the second aim; in addition, a post-questionnaire was resorted to confirm the findings. Five novice teachers were haphazardly chosen from the English department of Larbi Ben M'Hidi University to participate in the experiment, they were asked to use reflective journals weekly following provided guiding questions. The results obtained from the survey questionnaire show that only few teachers are familiar with reflective practice (36 and as a consequence only few reflect on their teaching. Furthermore, the results gained from the reflective journals and the post-questionnaire analysis proved the effectiveness of reflective practice in helping novice teachers getting through their first year teaching, and their positive attitudes towards using the journals. Reflecting on one's teaching is recommended for both novice teachers, for it helps them sculpt their teaching skills, and veteran teachers, for they never stop learning and improving.
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Teaching : EFL