A Study On English Teachers' Teaching Reflection Of Junior Middle School Based On The Reflective Journals

Reflective teaching is viewed as a new way of teachers' development.As a form of teaching reflection,reflective journal has been paid more attention recently.It is a kind of teaching process,experience and feeling that teachers continuously and truly record in teaching activities with reflection and research value.It is a means and method to promote teachers' professional development.Based on Richard's(1993)model of category and sub-category of teaching reflection,this study adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to study the reflective teaching of junior middle school English teachers in Yining City.In the study,120 teachers from 15 different levels schools were selected as the research subjects,which included 60 novice teachers and 60 experienced teachers.The written reflective journals were collected,marked and counted.The interview was used as an additional research instrument,which contained six questions.And seven novice teachers and eight experienced teachers were interviewed.The content of interview was transcribed,marked and classified.The specific research questions are as the follow:1.What are the general features of teaching reflection of middle school English teachers in Yining City?2.What are the differences and similarities of teaching reflection between novice teachers and experienced teachers?3.How do the factors influence teaching reflection of English teachers?The results are as the follow:1.According to Richard's(1993)two dimensions of teacher reflection,category and sub-category,it can be seen that among the five categories,the categories of Approaches &method and Evaluating teaching hold a relatively high proportion.Theories of teaching is least mentioned.Categories of Self awareness and Questions about teaching are in the middle.And,all the fifteen sub-categories are covered.The sub-categories of Teaching procedures,Content,the Learners,Evaluating,Problems and Solutions are most frequently talked about.The sub-categories of School context,Perception of themselves as teachers,Recognition of personal growth,Asking for reasons,and Application are less used in the journals.Theory,Teacher's knowledge,Setting personal goals,and Asking for advice and suggestions stand in the middle.2.Teachers reflective journals indicate the five categories are all mentioned in teachers' journals.For both novice and experienced teachers,Approaches & method are frequently used by novice teachers and experienced teachers,as well as Evaluating teaching.The category of Theories of teaching is rarely mentioned in novice teachers,neither do the experienced teachers,but it can be seen that experienced teachers do much better than that ofnovice teachers,nearly twice more than the novice teachers.Self awareness and Questions about teaching are in the middle,but there are some differences.For example,experienced teachers write more about Self awareness than novice teacher,while novice teachers do better than experienced teachers in the category of Questions about teaching.And,it can be seen that all the fifteen sub-categories are mentioned by both novice teachers and experienced teachers.The sub-categories of Teaching procedures,Content,The learners,Evaluating,Problems,and Solutions are most commonly used in journals of both novice teachers and experienced teachers.Theory,Application,Teacher's knowledge,School context,Perception of themselves as teachers,Recognition of personal growth and Asking for reasons are less showed in journals of both novice teachers and experienced teachers.And the rest sub-categories are in the middle.However,there are some considerable differences in the choice of sub-categories they wrote about.For example,novice teachers write more about the Content,The learners,Evaluating,Problems,and Solutions than that of experienced teachers,while experienced teachers mentioned more in the sub-categories of Theory,Application,School context and Recognition of personal growth than novice teachers,almost twice more.Independent-samples T-test of categories shows that there is difference of the five categories but no significant difference between novice and experienced teachers in general.To be specific,there is significant difference in the category of Theories of teaching between novice teachers and experienced teachers(P<0.05).While there no significant difference in categories of Approaches & method,Evaluating teaching,Self awareness,Questions about teaching(P>0.05).Independent-samples T-test of sub-categories shows that there is difference between the fifteen sub-categories between novice teachers and experienced teacher in general.To be specific,There is no significant difference in the categories of Problems,Perception of themselves as teachers,Setting personal goals,Asking for advice and suggestions(P>0.05),while there is significant difference in the rest 11 sub-categories(P<0.05).3.Relating to the three internal factors,80% of teachers said that the awareness of teaching reflection and teachers' theoretical foundation were the important influential factors that influence teachers reflection.And among the three external factors,75% of teachers put the evaluation system of social and school and school teaching environment the number one place.To sum up,teachers need to pay more attention to teaching reflection and participate in class observation and evaluation activities,and the schools should show a good environment for teachers' teaching reflection and promote the cooperation and exchange of teachers in the teaching and research group.