If I’m honest, the TE720 reflective Teacher Development module was the one that I had the least enthusiasm for.  I mentioned in my opening post that I felt self-conscious about sharing my thoughts in this way. I think that by going through the process, I am now finally aware of the benefits of reflective practice and feel much more at ease posting my thoughts online.

Throughout this course, there were moments when I thought I wouldn’t make it to the end, but through a mixture of sheer determination and support from my tutors, here I am.

When I read my opening statement, I realise just how far I have come since I wrote it. I mentioned that my motivation for doing the Dip TESOL wasn’t solely for professional reasons and that there was a personal element of wanting to challenge myself and try and achieve one of my life goals.

I also said that I expected to make mistakes during the process, which I did, certainly far more than I had expected to. However, I hoped that learning from those mistakes would be a significant part of my reflective journey, and it has. I said at the beginning that I hoped to be able to evaluate which aspects of my teaching I needed to improve on, and I think that I am able to do that now.

On my first post, I write that my main goals of this reflective blog were:

• To be able to assess my teaching in both a positive and critical way.
• To think about what aspects of my teaching could be changed and to develop strategies to become a better teacher.
• To have a better understanding of how the techniques and procedures I use every day in class relate to different theories and methodologies in second language teaching.
• To be able to plan my lessons from a more informed perspective, and to be able to select materials with a clearer understanding of how they will benefit the learners.

In this concluding post, I am going to discuss how these goals have been addressed and what areas of my weakness I have become aware of and am striving to develop in.

In the beginning, I was still a bit reticent to share my thoughts on this blog and instead kept everything on Word documents until I felt comfortable enough to post them. I did post about Valli’s Typology of Reflection, but it wasn’t until much later that I really understood its value, especially what he called ‘reflection in action and reflection on action’ which became a significant part of my reflective journey.

If I was going to highlight any element of this course that I think benefited me most, it was the assessed and peer observations. In my post on peer observations, I expressed my opinion that I wasn’t a fan of assessed observations, quoting Cosh (1999) who argues that because teaching styles and methods are very subjective, that we are unqualified to judge our peers, and that our judgements are subjective. I think this is something I still agree with but, putting the assessed observation scores aside, I found the feedback from these observations extremely illuminating.

My first observation, although not a complete disaster was a bit of a wakeup call for me. In the many institutions, I have worked for I had always excelled in observations so maybe was a bit overconfident and complacent about my first observation.

The feedback I received was extremely detailed and gave me a lot of food for thought and areas to work on:

You need to look closely at all these aspects of classroom management

•     Checking of student learning (some of this was used but more commonly you explained again rather than allowed the students to answer.  Also, your attention was mainly focused on the dominant male student, so you didn’t know whether all students had understood).
•     Contextualisation (this was implicit because you had been discussing ‘tracking’ in the previous lesson, but the sentences could have been exploited more fully to give a deeper sense of context e.g. categorise the predictions (health, space, the environment)
•     Appropriate balance of TTT and STT (after the warmer, you found it hard to be silent even when they were doing group work).
•     Elicitation (you noticed that you often didn’t wait for an answer. Also, you relied on the communicative male rather than nominating)
•     Voice and diction (vary volume e.g. reduce when you are acting as a resource when students doing group work)

 

Nancy Carter

I do feel that I showed improvement in these areas in my second observation, and they are aspects that I have begun thinking about both in the planning stage and while I am teaching.

An aspect of my teaching that came up in my second observation (also with Nancy) was the way I transition between activities. This was something that I think I had always not given as much thought to as I should, and by working on this area, I feel my lessons have improved.

I loved the peer observations, especially being able to see teachers I admired in action. I was not only able to pick up some new ideas and teaching techniques but was able to see how other teachers dealt with some of the aspects of my teaching that I needed to work on.

Some of the action points for future development from being observed by my peers are:

• To think about differentiation strategies for the stronger learners in the class
• Mixing up the groups a bit more, so learners aren’t repeating information to the same students.
• Getting students to peer correct more

One element of this module which I think really found helpful and thought-provoking was writing about ‘critical incidents’. I found this extremely insightful, and it caused me to think about such topics as:

• How much should we impose our cultural norms on students?
• Institutional needs Vs Educational needs
• How ‘real’ is the language we teach in class?
• How I teach pronunciation
• How ESOL is different for ELT

A major event which had the potential to derail my development was the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown. However, this actually turned out to not have as big of an impact on my studies as it first seemed. It allowed me to develop my online teaching skills and I am improving my ability to exploit some of the online learning capabilities while still keeping my primary focus on my lesson aims

Through the other modules, I have become more aware of the importance of context and how it feeds into how I teach and the materials I use. With regards to materials, the TE714 – English Language Teaching Materials module taught me the importance of having a principled approach to material design and adaption. And has enabled me to plan lessons and select materials from a more informed perspective. It also gave me the opportunity to work with other teachers on task evaluation and materials creation projects. I think that is also one of the important things I will take from this course; the value of working and reflecting with other teachers.

I think I am better able to assess my teaching in both a positive and critical way now, and I am also more open to critical feedback from others than I was. With regards to my goal that I wanted to look at ‘aspects of my teaching that could be changed and to develop strategies to become a better teacher’, I think I have achieved this, although that instead of using the word ‘changed’ I would rather say ‘improve upon’.

An area that I really think I have a better understanding of is how the techniques and procedures I use every day in class relate to different theories and methodologies in second language teaching. On the TE710 – ELT Methodology: Approaches & Methods module we looked at teacher beliefs and teacher and learner roles in the classroom, which helped me to see how these aspects can influence my decision making both in the classroom and at the planning stage of my lessons. Another thing I thought was fascinating was how factors such as social and institutional factors, student expectations and group dynamics could also influence decision making in the classroom.

Now, as I near the end of this course, I feel like I have developed as a teacher in more ways than I had anticipated. I feel more confident about sharing my development with my peers and have become aware of the areas I need to work on. I don’t feel I have completely reconstructed myself as a teacher, but that is not what I wanted from this course. What I do think is that I am more aware of who I am as a teacher, and have a much clearer plan for development in the future.

 

References

• Cosh, J. 1999, “Peer observation: a reflective model”, ELT journal,  53, no. 1, pp. 22-27.
• Minott, M.A. 2008, “Valli’s typology of reflection and the analysis of pre-service teachers’ reflective journals”, Australian Journal of Teacher Education (Online), vol. 33, no. 5, pp. 55-65.