Helping EFL Student Teachers to Make Conversations with the Problematic Materials of Their Situations: Practicing Schon's and Brookfield's Approach.

This study was prompted by experiential confrontation with prospective teachers’ opting for fending off effective reflection and harboring of silence, each of which debilitated developing adequate skills of planning appropriate lessons and presenting them meaningfully. Choosing a practitioner inquiry design formulated based upon works of Schön (1983, 1987) and Brookfield (1986, 1995), this study inquired into ways for effective reflection within the existing condition. Ten pre-service EFL student teachers were selected purposefully to take part in the study. Reflective journaling was employed both as a research method and strategy of reflection. The finding indicates that Schön’s theory of trainer-trainee collaborative reflection upon problematic materials of their situations is not only a robust explanatory theory but also practical and useful strategy of EFL reflective practicum. Background A pre-service teacher education program is incomplete without a practicum component. With this conviction, in the year 2003, the Ethiopian Ministry of Education (now on abbreviated as MOE) introduced what it called new teacher education system overhaul with the intention of redressing the preceding crises in teacher education (MOE, 2002, 2003, 1994). The policy reform was premised upon research findings that showed that, to mention a few, teaching skills and techniques of teachers were very basic; methods of teaching were treated theoretically; there had been mismatches between teacher education and secondary school practices; reflective practicum and action research were neglected; theoretical and practical courses in teacher preparation programs were fragmented (MOE, 2003, pp. 40-45). Similarly, English as Foreign Language (EFL) teacher educators had pointed out the persistence of similar problems (Hailom, 1993). The policy-strategy guide distributed to every teacher education institutions in Ethiopia (MOE, 2003) orients all the processes and outcomes of the pre-service teacher education programs. Accordingly, among the key competencies that teachers of all levels must exhibit before they qualify are (1) competent in the subjects and contents of teaching, (2) competent in the classroom actions/interactions, and (3) competent in the values, attributes and abilities essential to professionalism (MOE, 2003, p. 45). Central to the new pre-service teacher education system overhaul is the practicum component and the need for teacher education institutions to emphasize practical knowledge in their programs. That is why, for instance, Haramaya University, which this study selected as its setting, has been robustly engaged in translating the reformed policy to practice. The Haramaya University’s Handbook of Practicum (2007), for example, states that the pre-service practicum is carried out in three consecutive phases. Practicum I is where student teachers mainly involve in school observation. This comprises 2 credits which mean two hours per a week and a total of 32 hours activities. This course is offered when the student teachers are in their second semester of the second year (Haramaya University, p.20). Practicum II is where student teachers take over actual teaching in secondary school classrooms, receiving feedback from the supervising teacher educator and schoolteacher. It comprises 7 credits, which means that 7 hours per a week or 112 hours practices. It is offered when the student teachers are in their third year first semester (p., 84). Lastly, Practicum III is a course in which the same student teachers carry out practice-based inquiry or action research formulated during the previous phases with the advice of the teacher educator. It comprises 4 credits, which means four hours per a week or a total of 32 hours of practice (p., 101). This is offered during the last semester of the whole three-year program. The Problem Despite the government’s aim to overhaul the teacher education system, practical experience of the inquirer--as teacher educator--shows that there is no indication that the problems that had generated the reform are abating. For instance, his practical experience in the EFL teacher practicum shows that the vast majority of the student teachers do not engage in describing and expressing their practicum experiences. On top of this, the inquirer’s observation of EFL student teachers’ practicum teaching actions indicates that they develop no adequate skills of planning appropriate lessons and presenting them meaningfully. Besides, observations of their lesson plans show that their designs and presentations overly involve issues far removed from pupils’ lives and experiences. Still, after the end of the whole EFL practicum program, many of them experience what some theorists (Brookfield, 1995; Farrell, 1998) call impostorship syndrome i.e., they burnout on their pre-service practices. Consequently, since teaching skills and English skills re-construction is significantly proven so un-becoming, many of the prospective teachers are observed to be inclined to thinking that they were incapable of becoming effective teachers of English. On the whole, it is commonplace that student teachers experience what Shulman (in Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005, p. 424) refers to as “pedagogical amnesia”, which means, the inability to read-and-write, textualize and build image of their fruits of practicum learning. Due to this they usually resort to fending off questions and harbor silence. Unusually, they consider practicum course from instrumental point of view; that they consider practicum time as a vacation or a means for cheap grade as it is secondary to theoretical courses. Nevertheless, in second and foreign language teacher education, practicum is an opportunity not only to develop pedagogic skills, but also of the language skills (Williams, 1989). This is mainly because EFL student teachers experiment with English for themselves, which implies English being knowledge as well as language (medium) of reflection by itself. Secondly, in a practicum, EFL student teachers learn to become pedagogically competent prospective teachers. They bear the challenge of equipping themselves with the skills of planning lessons, implementing them and reflectively assessing the lessons in/on action. Thirdly, it is a key opportunity for them to equip themselves with the metacognitive skills of subjecting to inquiry the implicit assumptions that shape the way they behave in practicum. The latter skill is pivotal since it enables student teachers to independently improving their understanding of how effective teaching works as well as to reduce to minimum the misunderstanding engendered by their use of the language (code). Research Questions The general question guiding the inquirer is ’How can I enhance reflective learning within the existing condition? ’. The specific questions are: 1. How can the student teachers’ potential to reflect be prompted? 2. What form of effective reflectivity can be achieved? 3. What determinants of effective reflection can be created? As a practitioner inquiry on own practice, analyzing the institutional conditions or formulating a generalizable ‘theory’ is less significant. Theoretical Framework that Guided this Study Schön’s and Brookfield’s theories of reflection Schön’s (1992, 1987, 1983) theories of reflection offer essential frameworks for integration of reflection and action, and theory and practice in reflective practicum. To Schön, reflection is mainly an ontological process of generating model and knowledge through reflective conversation with “the problematic of [. ] the indeterminate zones of practice” (p. 11). Rejecting what he calls as technical rationality, Schön advanced a new concept of reflective rationality in his theory of reflection-in-action and knowing-in-action. To Schön, practitioner knowledge is knowledge in action. A practitioner faces with surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation in which he finds himself/herself. Then, he/she sets the problems. That is, he/she names them and frames the context in order to attend to them. Next, he/she “carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation” (Schön, 1983, p. 68). Also, the practitioner keeps accounts of or builds up a repertoire of knowledge--“examples, images, understandings and actions” (1987, p. 38). Similar but with slight different philosophical ground to Schön’s, Brookfield (1995, 1986), one of the prominent scholars who extensively writes on theories and practices of reflection, defines reflection as an epistemological process of constantly ‘hunting’ and revising the implicit assumptions that define how we think and act on educational practices. Brookfield defines assumption as “the taken-forgranted beliefs about the world and our place within it that seem obvious to us not to need stating explicitly” (1995, p. 2). He stresses that “In many ways, we are our assumptions” (ibid, p., 2; Emphasis is original). This is because assumptions give meaning and purpose to who we are, why and how we act/interact in what we do. For this reason, Brookfield (1995) offers numerous reflection tools that encourage student teachers to engage in critical reflection on their assumptions about topics such as the dynamics and rhythms of classroom processes; the daily struggle to confront irresolvable dilemmas and contradictory demands; the significance and meaning of teaching for those that teach; the strengths enjoyed or humiliations suffered as part of the teaching process. Reflective practicum contrasts to a mere translation of research-driven knowledge to practice, which entails technical practice of “fixed and clear” body of knowledge (Schön, 1983, p. 41). Both Schön’s and Brookfield’s concepts of reflective practice entail that student teachers should be engaged in constructing reflectively and communicatively interpreted, discussed and validated understandings fr