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Description
The Foreign Language Competency Framework (MOET, 2020) identifies teachers’ ability to situate teaching within context, which puts an emphasis on the importance of teachers’ reflective competence. Reflection habits, therefore, should be cultivated as early as possible during pre-service training.
This study evaluates the level of reflection exhibited in reflective essays of pre-service teachers of English in a university in Hanoi. A rubric adapted from the Assessment Tools by Fleck (2012) was used to score and categorise 70 essays into four levels: descriptive, dialogic, transformative and critical reflection. Findings show that though these essays provide valuable data which portray a developmental journey in teaching competence of pre-service teachers, a lot more would need to be done to place their reflection quality of these essays at transformative and critical levels. Hindrances holding most of pre-service teachers back at descriptive and dialogic reflection levels involved their heavy reliance on their intuition, past experience, peers’ and the lecturer’s comments when reflecting. Also, pre-service teachers tended to focus on how the incident reflected in the essay left impacts on themselves (as a teacher) rather than on students’ learning.
These results imply that reflective practice should not be treated as a “trendy” approach to teacher education but a way to enhance teaching quality and foster professional growth. Cultivating a habit of in-depth reflection in teachers should start as early as possible in teacher education programs. By maximising the opportunities for pre-service teachers to practise teaching and doing structured reflection, an improvement of teaching quality can be observed.
Keywords: reflective essay, pre-service teachers, descriptive reflection, dialogic reflection, transformative reflection, critical reflection
Biography
Tran Thi Hieu Thuy (PhD) has been an EFL/ ESL teacher, teacher educator, English textbook writer and material developer for 20 years. She is currently a lecturer at VNU University of Languages and International Studies and works closely with MOET to design and deliver training courses for in-service English teachers. Her research interests include English Language Teacher Competences, Blended Learning, and Multimodal Instructions. She has published in the fields of Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics.
Nguyen Thi Kim Phuong (M.Ed) is a lecturer at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. She has 18-year experience in teaching English and methodology, and training pre-service and in-service teachers. She is also an author of English textbooks for pre-school and upper secondary students. Her interests include Teacher Education, English Language Teaching, and ICT in ESL classrooms.
