Exploring The Changing Reflection Of EFL Student Teachers

Teacher reflection is an integral part of teacher education and attracts the attention of generations of researchers in the educational field.However,few studies have closely investigated the characteristics of teacher reflection,especially student teacher reflection.The present study explored the changing reflection of four EFL student teachers in a training school in China.The objectives are to(1)more closely examine student teachers’reflections at different stages;and(2)explore the characteristics of student teachers’changing reflection and its influence on student teacher development.Four student teachers,who were from the same training school in China,were selected as the participants in the study.They generally experienced four stages in the training school,which are training stage,pre-class stage,in-class stage and after-class stage The data was mainly collected from student teachers’ reflective journals and interviews,and then analyzed according to Xu’s(2012)framework adapted from Moscovici’s(2000)theory of social cognition representation.Their reflections thus were classified as based on rules,exemplars,cues and schema.The findings of the study show that student teachers’ reflections in training and pre-class stages are mainly rule-based and exemplar based,while in in-class and after-class stages they are mainly cue-based and schema-based.Such changing lies in the interaction of student teachers’ internal agency and the external context.In addition,the exploration of teachers’ reflection conveyed that exemplars in the training stage are the representation of certain school rules.This finding explains why excellent teacher exemplars in many of the teacher training programs have no significant influence on student teachers’ growth.Finally,this study reveals that the changing of student teachers’ reflection through stages is a natural process.Schema-based and cue-based reflections in the later stages are,in fact,not superior to the reflections in the first stages.New reflections are merely the practical denial of former reflections.Not supported by theoretical guidance or practical evidence,they had no substantially positive effect on student teachers’ development.