Applying The Reflective Teaching Theory To The Cultivation Of "ESL Teachers As Researchers"

Due to the international nature of the English language, ESL teacher education programs are being implemented all over the world. Considerable attention has been given to the process of training ESL teachers. China has made it clear that quality-oriented education will be promoted in all types of schools at all levels. The misleading tendency of examination-oriented education must be corrected. Since teachers play a crucial role in enhancing the quality of education and teaching, they are expected to fulfill new roles and functions in the contemporary age of China. In a learning society a teacher can no longer be presumed to follow prescribed routines and principles of knowledge without any individual reflection or judgment. A good teacher should always stand at the frontier of knowledge and organize his knowledge for instructional purposes. Therefore, besides the formal training received by student teachers, it is imperative to provide them with lifelong learning abilities so that they may keep abreast of the times and have a true mastery of new knowledge. The argument in this paper is that reflective teaching activities can contribute a great deal to ESL teachers'self-development and the cultivation of"ESL teachers as researchers".Firstly the paper deals with the knowledge base, models and approaches of ESL teacher education program, the development of the international ESL teacher education from"teacher training"to"teacher development", the innovation of ESL teacher education in China, and the significance of the cultivation of"ESL teachers as researchers". Then it takes an overview of educational psychology theories underlying reflective teaching: behaviorism, cognitive psychology, information processing, humanism and social constructivism on which reflective teaching is based. After a brief introduction to the social background of reflective teaching, the paper critically analyzes some concepts of reflective teaching defined by Dewey, Schon, among other researchers and points out the main characteristics of reflective teaching.The author has designed a program that aims at observing how reflective teaching activities provide opportunities for the student teachers'change of teaching behavior during their practicum. The program participants include eight student teachers in their second year of ESL postgraduate study at School of Foreign Languages, Shenyang Normal University. They were offered in the first semester a course called Theory & Practice of Modern Foreign Language & Teaching in which three months of instruction on reflective teaching theories and skills were included, and in the second semester a practicum during which they were given an opportunity to apply reflective teaching theories and skills to practice in order to prepare themselves to become the future"ESL teachers as researchers". To demonstrate the impact of using reflective teaching activities to promote student teachers'teaching changes, the author collected data from multiple sources and accomplished the data collection by joining the instruction and practicum as a student teacher and interacting with the other eight student teachers in completing the program requirements. As trust grew it was possible to record their classroom teaching, record their contact sessions, take part in their informal discussions, etc. Trust also gave the author access to studentteachers'lesson plans, journal entries, etc.One purpose of the research is to describe how the reflective teaching activities in an ESL teaching practicum provide opportunities for student teachers to change their teaching behaviors, thus transforming the present Chinese teacher educators'views of laying too much emphasis on the training of teachers'pedagogical theories and skills while paying little attention to the cultivation of their creativity and research potentials. In the analysis of the data by reading student teachers'reflective journals, the author was also able to discover that the role of emotions proved to be influential in the student teachers'ability to reflect on their teaching. Reflective teaching as part craft and part art, different from the traditional operative teaching, is extremely complex and difficult to assess accurately. The evaluation of reflective teaching is based not only on teachers'external teaching behavior but also their internal reflective thinking process. We must observe the principle of development, duality, rationality and openness to adopt a qualitative approach of evaluation and assess the overall abilities of teachers for their lifelong development. The author has also seen in the practicum that the collaborative reflective teaching provides an environment which encourages learning processes because not many individuals have the capacity to go through the reflective teaching process alone. Collaborative settings are important in order to make explicit and objective the implied, private self-reflection based on individual experiences.