Reflective Teaching Through Journal Writing: a Study on EFL Teachers’ Reflection-for-Action, Reflection-in-Action, and Reflection-on-Action

The aim of the current mixed methods study was twofold: to explore the extent to which EFL teachers engage in reflective teaching and to examine the extent to which raising teachers’ awareness of reflective teaching changes their reflective practice. Data were collected by the following means: (a) Akbari et al.’s (2010) reflective teaching inventory (quantitative method) administered to 250 Iranian EFL teachers and (b) reflective journals written by 60 Iranian EFL teachers (qualitative method). The results indicated that EFL teachers engaged in five factors underlying reflective teaching (namely, cognitive, metacognitive, affective, critical, practical) to varying degrees. For the qualitative phase, 60 male and female EFL teachers from two language institutes in Sabzevar, northeast Iran, were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups with the experimental group receiving the treatment. After completing the treatment, reflective teaching inventory as a posttest was given to the two groups to determine the effect of the treatment. Then, a t test was applied to determine statistically significant difference between the mean scores of both groups. The results of t test revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of using reflective teaching components. Using Farrell’s (2004) framework, reflective journal data were analyzed, with results indicating that EFL teachers practiced three chronological types of reflection, namely, reflection-for-action, reflection-in-action, and reflection-on-action to different degrees. The analysis of the contents of reflective journals resulted in a framework with categories of metacognitive, learner, cognitive, and critical. The results also showed that the experimental group practiced reflective teaching more than the control group. The findings of this study might encourage the instructors of teacher education programs to have a fresh look at their practices and policies with the intention of customizing techniques that promote a reflective approach to teaching practices among teachers.