A Study Of Blog-based In-service EFL Teachers’ Reflective Practices And Their Attitudes

Since the development of the network education techniques in the21st century, online reflection makes itpossible for the individuals to present their opinions and share ideas with any teachers in the world. As one ofthe necessary ways to achieve teacher professional development, web blogs have been considered as promisingtool to promote reflective practice. The studies concerning the unguided reflective writing through blogs byin-service EFL teachers are limited. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the thematic and hierarchicalcharacteristics of in-service EFL teachers’ reflective postings, and an online questionnaire to probe the teachers’attitudes on the use of blog to reflect.Firstly, this thesis specifies the definition of reflection, traces the origin and development of categories andlevels of reflection, and gives a comprehensive overview about the literature of teacher reflection andblog-based reflection abroad and at home, highlighting the necessity of this study.Secondly,2576self-created, teaching-relevant reflective entries posted by113participants in the bloggercommunity of Oxford English Teaching and Research were coded by means of Ho and Richards’(1993)framework of thematic categories and Hatton and Smith’s (1995) criteria for reflective level. The frequency ofreflective postings in each theme and level was calculated, then the contents were analyzed with the method ofcontent analysis and discussed within Korthagen’s (1985) Reflection Model. An online questionnaire wasdeveloped to probe their attitudes on blog reflection. Some participants were invited to fill in the questionnaire,the results were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics in SPSS13.0and discussed with internalization andthe Zone of Proximal Development of Lev Vygotsky’s Social Constructivism.The conclusions are:(1) From the perspective of reflective theme, the category of instructional approachesand methods is the most frequently written themes with53%postings, it’s evident that the teachers pay muchattention to the methods in teaching. The least frequently written themes is about theories of teaching with2%postings, revealing that the insufficiency of teachers’ theoretical knowledge, and the disconnection betweentheory and practice in teaching.(2) From the perspective of reflective level, the number of descriptive writingand descriptive reflections far exceeds that of dialogic and critical reflections, exactly speaking,42%postingsare unreflective writing and47%postings are at the level of descriptive reflection, only11%postings fall intothe two higher levels of dialogic and critical reflections, revealing an overall low reflective level.(3) The resultsof the questionnaire show that teachers have positive attitudes towards blog reflection, which supports theeffectiveness of blog as reflective tool to promote teachers’ reflective practice. However, data analysis shows that the teachers haven’t engaged in active reflective practice, revealing that blog reflection needs more supportand guidance, the blog community needs to be better constructed to attract the active participation of teachers.The implications are presented in the following: Theory learning, problem solving, and some structuredquestions in the blog columns should be developed as a good guidance for the teachers to achieve a morecomprehensive reflective thinking, and some incentives should be created to attract more teachers’ activeparticipation, which would better utilize the advantages of network techniques in facilitating teachers’ reflectivepractice. This study is of practical significance in the guidance of in-service EFL teachers’ online reflectivepractice and development in teacher training and development programme.