Influence Of Reflective Teaching Journals On The Professional Development Of Novice English Teachers

Teachers? professional level determines teachers' teaching quality.Teaching reflection is an important way to promote the teachers? professional development(TPD).Teaching journals as a method of reflection are receiving more and more attentions.Reflective journal can help teachers continuously and truly record the teaching process,experience and feelings in teaching activities(Liu Xiaoli,2012).Teachers in a small town are provided few opportunities for teacher training.Novice teachers,lack of teaching experience,are eager to improve their teaching quality for survival and promote their professional development.The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between TPD and the writing of reflective teaching journals.The research questions are:(1)What do novice teachers focus on when they write reflective teaching journals?(2)How does the writing of reflective teaching journal affect the professional development of novice English teachers?(3)What difficulties do the novice teachers have in the process of reflection?This study lasted for twelve weeks and investigated the teaching reflection of three new English teachers in a middle school in the Western Guangdong province.This paper uses interviews and classroom observations,and adopts Richards and Ho's categories(1993)to code and analyze thirty-six reflective teaching journals.Three classroom observations and twelve interviews are conducted to verify the contents of reflective journals.In order to better judge whether the reflective journals can promote TPD,the dimension of TPD is divided into two parts: teaching cognition and teaching practice.Through analyzing and comparing the reflective teaching journals,the following conclusions are drawn in this paper:(1)Three novices mainly focused on teaching methods,teaching contents,and teaching evaluation,but less attention was paid to teaching beliefs and self-awareness.(2)In teaching cognition,three novices have made significant changes in teaching theory,self-awareness and teaching evaluation.In teaching practice,there are some changes in teaching methods and the adjustment of the teaching contents.They became more aware of the learners.However,there was little mention of a wider teaching and learning contexts beyond the classroom.Relatively few explored the underlying causes.(3)They encountered some difficulties in external and internal part.For example,they had not enough time to reflect and low reflective consciousness.In conclusion,the writing of the reflective teaching journals promotes the changes in teaching perception and behaviors which can help three novice English teachers promote their professional development.Finally,the author presents some implications and suggestions for novice English teachers,schools and the future research.