Theory into Practice

… of Researchers in …, 2004

1992

Reflective practice—getting engaged in constant examination, thought, and reflection on one's own teaching through data collected during their teaching—has been extensively used in many teacher education programs in both in-service and pre-service phases of teaching. One of the ways that can be used to capture experiences and thoughts from reflective thinking is through a reflective journal (Loughran, 1996 in Goh, P and Matthew, B, 2011). By documenting, examining, and reflecting events, actions, or problems in teaching and learning process in narrative forms, a teacher will find the patterns of frequent aspects happening in their teaching and be encouraged to think in-depth how certain aspect happens and how to deal with that. Going through such a reflective practice will help teachers be more alert, independent, and developed in their teaching profession. This paper is aimed at analyzing the journal entries of five teaching-practicum students (as the pre-service teachers) coming from Satya Wacana Christian University, Indonesia that is to reveal their professional learning obtained during their teaching practicum.

How important is the distinction between theory and practice in the teaching of writing, really? If in a conference presentation I were to propose a particular theory for understanding the ways students relate to their writing in social media, for instance, but I did so without also discussing how to put these ideas to use in one's teaching, does that render the theory useless? Conversely, if I were to outline a particular writing assignment in that same presentation, but I did so without explaining how it fits within a particular pedagogical framework, does that render the assignment (or at least my understanding of it) unsound? These may come across as impertinent questions, especially for those who view theory and practice as separate sides of the same coin, but the debate over these concepts and their importance in the work of rhetoric and composition instruction is one that has been conspicuously underway in our field at least since 1990 when Maxine Hairston took to task the "very badly written, convoluted, and pretentious" articles in College English, ones that "are as opaque and dull as anything in PMLA or Critical Inquiry" (695). Hairston's is an early shot in what Sidney Dobrin would dub composition's "own version of the 'theory wars'" (164), which arguably came to a head in the early 2000s with the introduction of postprocess theory and the suggestion that writing can't actually be taught. It's no surprise that from that moment forward the idea of proposing a "post" anything in composition studies has been a fairly hard sell.

Teacher Development , 2016

This case study investigates how an ESL teacher’s activity of self-directed journal writing can facilitate learning and function as a mediational tool for teacher professional development. The participant for this study is a native English speaker who taught an ESL freshman writing course in an American university. Since he had little time to consult with teaching experts, he decided to engage in his self-directed journal for reflecting his teaching practices. A sociocultural perspective on human cognitive development is utilized as an analytical framework for tracing his development and capturing the transformative power of narrative within his developmental trajectory. Using grounded theory, his journal entries are analyzed to identify a series of stages that trace his professional development, supported by face-to-face interview data designed to co-construct an interpretation of his journal and to serve as a member check. The data analysis suggests that his journal became a powerful mediational space where he critically reflected on and systematically examined his teaching practices. By externalizing his thoughts and feelings, as he first recognizes his loss of self-regulation and then works toward regaining his sense of professional expertise, he begins to develop alternative ways of thinking about his current teaching practices and starts to embrace new modes of engagement in his L2 classroom.

Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 2007

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