Reflecting on the TESOL practicum: A case study

This case study explores connections between reflective language teaching and a constructivist model of teacher learning while documenting the lived experiences of 14 pre-service teachers during their second of two practicum placements. How a bottom-up, constructivist model of teacher learning plays out in practice is discussed at length. Specifically, features such as age, gender, and previous language teaching experience (PLTE) are examined to determine if they influence the learning-to-teach experiences of 14 CTESL students engaged in online, in-person, individual and group reflection. Four stages of data were collected: (1) a document analysis of the practicum course syllabus and a one-on-one interview with the practicum course instructor; (2) a questionnaire completed by 14 CTESL students; (3) one-on-one interviews with four CTESL students; and (4) a group interview with the same four participants. These different forms of data collection allowed for triangulation of data sets. PLTE was found to be the most significant feature in this study, affecting CTESL students' experience of their practicum placements in three distinct areas. Importantly, PLTE was also linked to the occurrence of hindsight reflection, a form of reflection uniquely linked to pre-service teachers who came into the language teacher education (LTE) program with prior teaching experience. Implications for LTE-related research and pedagogy are discussed.