Promoting ESL Preservice Teachers' Reflection on Learning How To Teach Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Students.

An experiment with reflective teaching methods was conducted with six undergraduate and seven graduate student teachers majoring in applied linguistics and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teaching and minoring in education. The student teachers were placed in urban elementary, middle, and high schools in a variety of ESL program types and with a variety of student proficiency levels. Each wrote in a journal and compiled a teaching portfolio during the 15-week student teaching experience, both to promote reflection on teaching practice and to allow assessment of their progress. The portfolio was to include reflections on both successful and unsuccessful teaching, to be complemented by seminar discussions and readings encouraging reflection. Journal entries (free-written and on assigned topics), students' reading discussions and questions, notes from observations and student teacher conferences, portfolios, and final portfolio reflections were analyzed for emerging themes and connections among them. Salient themes included: encountering a wide range of differences among students; teaching the lesson vs. teaching the students; gaining insights into students' learning; and reconstructing teaching knowledge. Results are discussed, using excerpts from student writings, and recommendations are made for teacher education. Contains 10 references. (MSE) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** Promoting ESL Preservice Teachers' Reflection on Learning How to Teach Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Students Yu Ren Dong Secondary Education Department Queens College, CUNY Paper Presented at the 1998 AERA Conference San Diego, CA April, 1998 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Promoting ESL Preservice Teachers' Reflection on Learning How to Teach Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Students When dealing with linguistically and culturally diverse students, reflective teaching becomes a vital part of teacher education in that preservice teachers need to quickly identify and address these students' needs and backgrounds and to communicate with the students their expectations in order to build a classroom community of learners. Unlike teaching regular students, a reliance on teaching intuition and experience to get to know students often does not work in this setting, instead a constant reflection and a self inquiry become critical and more urgent in second language teaching. Despite the fact that reflective teaching has been discussed widely in the literature, still the developmental pattern of preservice teachers' professional growth through reflection is sparsely studied in the context of second language teaching. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the patterns of students' reflections over time in the context of second language teacher education. Previous Literature on Teacher Reflection and A Developmental Pattern of Becoming a Teacher Preservice teachers' reflection on their student teaching experience is important for their professional development. Schon (1987) addressed the importance of using the reflection process to acquire professional artistry , the competence in dealing with unexpectedness, tensions, frid confusion in actual teaching, for preservice teachers. According to Schon, preparing students for solid and rigorous professional knowledge is not enough, we have also prepare them for professional artistry. This competence can be acquired by reflecting on teaching actions. Reflection involves critically observing the phenomenon, describing the problem, making connections between theory and practice, seeking solutions, and testing out the hypothesis. Applying Schon's reflection theory to the ESL teacher education context, I argue that although preservice teachers have acquired professional knowledge when they embark on their student teaching practicum, they may not have acquired the competence in reflection which leads them to