Making Sense of Core Qualities to Sustain Professional Development through Core Reflection Practice

Abstract

Professional development in sustainable teacher education has recently shifted to focusing on pedagogical practice rather than theoretical knowledge. Given that, reflection practice can have an effective role in identifying undiscovered potentials of prospective language teachers. Hence, the current study was an attempt to examine the potential core qualities of Iranian prospective language teachers in a way to sustain professional development through merging theoretical knowledge and pedagogical practice. To that end, core reflection model, which is a concept in the context of sustainability, was practiced by ten prospective language teachers through drawing on their reflective journals, focus group discussions, and field notes collected over a four month period. Analysis of the obtained data revealed several core qualities on the three scales of feeling, thinking, and wanting. These qualities appeared to have been developed through interaction of both theoretical knowledge and pedagogical practice. This demonstrates the value of reflection practice as a way toward more development in making sense of teachers’ core qualities. Thus it can lead to positive changes in shaping teachers sustainable professional identity.

Detecting a Sustainable Mindset through Using Content Analysis of Teacher-produced Learning Journals

“…Additionally, one more reason for employing learning journals as a part of the learning strategy, in the current study, was to reveal a sustainable mindset in our teacherparticipants and their students. The value of using teacher reflection journals to discern sustainable values and dispositions specifically has also been shown by using manual coding methods (Khazaeenezhad, Tavakoli & Amirian, 2018). Since a mindset is an abstract term, we predicted that the journals would both prompt and reveal the depth and nature of our learnersí sustainable mindsets.…”

El alcance de la práctica reflexiva en la formación de profesores

“…Lo anterior, considera aspectos que hasta ahora no han sido abordados, como lo son los aspectos emocionales y cognitivos para ayudarnos a reflexionar, coincidiendo con lo planteado por Korthagen (2010). Complementariamente, Khazaeenezhad et al (2018) consideran que la reflexión es el concepto principal que influye en la toma de decisiones, el comportamiento y la acción de los docentes, ya que permite a los maestros expresarse y caracterizarse a sí mismos y a los demás, respecto de su práctica, cómo, por qué lo hacen. Nocetti y Moya- Medina (2018) en su estudio agrupan la idea de estudiantes y docentes sobre la reflexión: mientras que un alto porcentaje consideraba la reflexión como un proceso de autoevaluación, para un grupo minoritario es un proceso de problematización de la propia práctica.…”

The development of reflective skills in physical education teacher education: a systematic review

“…Therefore, a broad consensus exists that RP has become important for academic and professional development (Khazaeenezhad, Tavakoli, & Amirian, 2018;Watts, 2019). By reflecting on what happens in the classroom, teachers can promote effective change.…”