Pre-Service Teachers’ Critical Self-Reflection in Microteaching Context at University of Technology and Applied Sciencies – Rustaq, Oman

Abstract

Being reflective is one of the required skills in the 21st century era; however, the concept has been researched since its inception by John Dewey (1859-1952) whose famous observation stated that “we do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience”. This study aims to find out pre-service teachers’ self- reflection patterns in one of the practicum courses at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences (UTAS), Rustaq, Oman. It is more specifically contextualized in a microteaching session where the pre-service teachers are required to teach their peers and then self-reflect on their own teaching performances. Pre-service teachers had to teach twice. It is found that the pre-service teachers do not sufficiently self-reflect on their performances; thus, there is not much improvement in their second teaching lesson. It is important, therefore, as teacher educators to enlighten ELT pre-service teachers about self-reflection based on a rigorous model. Benchmarking Gibbs’ (1998) comprehensive model of reflective cycle to the existing form of self-reflection, the findings show that they provide more descriptive than critical self-reflection for a number of significant reasons. Thus, the study urges the use of an effective and rigorous model in practicum courses such as Gibbs’ model.