Continuous Teacher Development Through Reflective Teaching

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Harun and Al-Amin‘However, government and non-government organizations took a number ofinitiatives by means of in-service teacher training programs to support Englishteachers to cope up with CLT based teaching. UNICEF funded in English subjectbased training for primary English teachers through Primary EducationDevelopment Project-II (PEDP-II). At secondary level, major government initiativewas the Teaching Quality Improvement (TQI) project which was launched in 2006with a target to train 28000 English teachers. BRAC, the largest non-governmentorganization involved in both primary and secondary education, is also workingwith secondary english teacher training through PACE program. Another project‘English Language Teaching Improvement Project (ELTIP)’ funded by Departmentof International Development (DFID) was initiated to train secondary Englishteachers from 1997 and continued until the mid of 2008 before it got the fundrestricted (Hamid and Baldauf, 2008). ELTIP started again in collaboration with TQIto continue supporting in English teachers’ in-service training.’(Hasan, 2012)70Yet teachers are not attaining the desired proficiency and most of them are incompetentfor dealing with a communicative classroom. Although teacher development has been afamiliar notion in the English Language Teaching (ELT) profession for the last few decades,it is still relatively new and has received insufficient attention (Huimin, 2010). If this is thesituation of our English Language teaching, then there is hardly any alternative toteachers taking individual attempts i.e. doing action research, practicing reflectiveteaching etc. to develop their professionalism. By doing so, they can significantly improvetheir classroom practice.Literature ReviewContinuous Professional Development: The idea of Continuous Professional Development(CPD) or Professional Development (PD) means that professionals continue developingthemselves throughout their tenure of active profession as opposed to stoppingdeveloping once they start doing the job. To develop one professionally, both reflectiveteaching and action research can contribute significantly and these will help foster theidea of ‘Continuous Professional Development’ (CPD) (Roy Edwards, 2010).Roy (2010) defines continuous development as,‘a systematic maintenance, improvement and broadening of knowledge and skill,and the development of personal qualities necessary for the execution ofprofessional and technical duties throughout the working life’ (Roy Edwards, 2010).According to this definition CPD is a life-long learning process.To quote Rubina Khan (2008),“Professional development includes a cluster of activities related to theenhancement of career growth and refinement of the skills of the practitioner.”(p.169)This is an all inclusive definition of professional development.Khan also clarifies that“Professional development may range from activities like attending pre-serviceand in-service training, participating in conferences, seminars, workshops, joiningteacher associations, reading books and articles etc.” (p.169)This paper does not include all scope and means of professional development, rather itdiscusses only reflective teaching and action research as a means of professionaldevelopment. Though reflective practice and action research have been introduced andbeing practiced in language teaching for ages in most of the ESL/EFL contexts, and itsbenefits have been immense for practitioners, it is not known to many a languageteacher; nor do many practice it here in Bangladesh. Here both of the terms ‘ActionResearch’ and ‘Reflective Approach’, as processes of teacher education and teacherdevelopment are discussed as one essentially follows the other.http://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/
Continuous Professional DevelopmentThough many of the teachers of our country reflect on their classes infrequently, they canhardly do it methodically and almost none take action research projects in our context.That is why the present paper aims at defining, exploring and suggesting some methods ofpracticing reflective teaching and undertaking action research projects by theBangladeshi english language teachers.Reflective Teaching: Before defining what reflective teaching is and how does it work, wehave to understand what the term ‘reflection’ signifies.Richards (1996) defines,‘Reflection or “critical reflection” refers to an activity or process in which anexperience is recalled, considered, and evaluated, usually in relation to a broaderpurpose.’(Richards, 1996)Simply, ‘reflection’ refers to the process of thinking back about our past action. Hopkinsand Antes (1990) observe that reflective practice has also been defined in terms of actionresearch. Action research, in turn, is defined as a tool of curriculum developmentconsisting of continuous feedback that targets specific problems in a particular schoolsetting (Hopkins & Antes, 1990). So, we can say that reflective teaching means thinkingabout and critically analyzing one's own teaching in order to improve teaching practice.The other synonymous terms of reflective teaching are self-evaluation, teachingexperience, teacher researchers, teacher effectiveness etc.Dewey (1933) talked about reflective teaching extensively in his writing. According to him,“[Reflective thinking is] active, persistent, and careful consideration of a belief orsupposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and thefurther conclusions to which it tends.” Dewey (1933From the above definitions of reflective teaching we can summarize the features ofreflective teaching as:-understanding the teaching and learning situations well-thinking about one’s past action-analyzing the action critically-identifying the problems pertinent to teaching and learning situations- solving the problems in the best way that the present context supports-reaching a definitive goal for better classroom practice.Action Research: Action Research is a kind of research in which the practitioners engagethemselves in professional development in classroom- based-action research. The term‘action research’ has been defined in many ways. Some calls action research to be‘cooperative inquiry’, while others ‘collaborative inquiry’ (coined by John Heron in1971),research “with people” than “on people”, ‘participatory action research’ (Paulo Frerie,1970) etc. These terms clearly indicate the nature and scope of action research.Stenhouse (1975) views action research as “an approach to solve professional practicalproblems.” This definition is very apt and tenable.Corey (1949) defines action research as,“The process by which practitioners attempt to study their problems scientifically inorder to guide, correct and evaluate their decision and action is what a numberof people have called action research.” (Corey,1949)So, it can be agreed that action research is concerned with looking into professionalinquiry from inside and entirely involves the actors, the persons engaged in practice andprofession.Additionally, Corey (1949) opines“Action research is a process for studying problems by practitioners scientifically totake decision for improving their current practices.” Corey (1949)Hence, this type of research essentially entails the idea of reflective teaching in whichpractitioners teach in classroom; teachers may record a particular class or classes usingaudio or video records or take a written account. Then they reflect on both the positive &negative aspects of that class. Next, they take a proper action to improve the overallhttp://www.bdresearchpublications.com/journal/71
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Continuous Teacher Development Through Reflective Teaching

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