A Case Study Of Blog-Based EFL Teachers’ Reflection

Teacher professional development and in-service training have attracted increasing interest in recent years. Recent education reform efforts have emphasized teacher professional development and continuing education, and it is widely accepted that a teacher’s development spans an entire career. Self-development has become the key of EFL teachers’ development. EFL teachers’ serf-reflection and self-evaluation is one of the main content of self-development. With the spread of information technology, online teacher professional development has been into the field of teachers’ professional education. The blog provides a new platform for EFL teachers’reflection. The study adopts content analysis to analyze the selected case and analyze the topic category and type of blog-based EFL teachers’ reflection as well as the present situation of blog-based EFL teachers’reflection, which aims at providing a reference and enlightment in this area.This thesis consists of six parts. The first part is introduction, which explains research background, significance, objectives, as well as thesis framework. The second part is literature review, which lists relevant literature abroad and at home of teachers’ reflection and blog-based teachers’ reflection. The third part describes the theoretical framework of this thesis, including the constructivism theory based on teacher reflection, teacher professional development theory and teacher reflection and reflective teaching theory. The fourth part elaborates the research design. The research questions of this study are:what the topic categories of blog-based EFL teachers’ reflection are; what the types of blog-based EFL teachers’ reflection are; as well as what the present situation of blog-based EFL teachers’reflection is. The object of the study is Haiyan Teachers’Blog. In this study, Ho, and Richards’(1993) framework of reflection is adopted to analyze the topic category and type of blog-based EFL teachers’reflection and the response to blog is used to analyze the present situation of blog-based EFL teachers’reflection. The fifth part is the data analysis and discussion. The sixth part presents the conclusion of this study, including findings, implications and limitations.The results of this study show that:(1) the topic category of blog-based EFL teachers’ reflection:the topic category of blog-based EFL teachers’ reflection is more about teaching evaluation methods and criteria and instructional approaches and methods, rarely involving the reflection on their self-awareness.(2) the type of blog-based EFL teachers’ reflection:the number of descriptive reflections far exceeded the number of critical ones. The descriptive reflection prevailed more in this blog group. In descriptive reflections, the reflections of theories of teaching are mostly related to how to apply the theory; the reflections of instructional approaches and methods are mostly involving the teaching methods used in the classroom; the reflections of teaching evaluation methods and criteria are mainly related to the solutions from experts to teaching problems; no reflection of self-awareness is about their own qualities as a teacher. In critical reflections, the reflections of theories of teaching are mostly related to EFL teachers’ personal opinions to teaching theory; the reflections of instructional approaches and methods are mostly involving EFL teachers’ knowledge in teaching and don’t address the sociopolitical impact; the reflections of teaching evaluation methods and criteria are mainly related to how to evaluate a lesson and the problems diagnosed from teaching; the reflections of self-awareness are mainly related to the recognition of EFL teachers’ personal growth and personal goals set.(3) the present situation of blog-based EFL teachers’ reflection:blog-based EFL teachers’reflection is mostly personal reflection, there is little collaborative reflection.