Teaching Practice Report

Why Teachers Should Use Journals in Their Reflective
Practice Throughout Their Teaching Career
Aviva Ueno

Abstract
This paper reports on how a veteran English instructor with decades of teachingexperience at the tertiary level benefits from and develops professionally by keeping
and reflecting on a teaching journal. It describes how the instructor used her teaching
journal to adapt to her new position as an adjunct lecturer for the Center for Foreign
Language Education and Research (FLER) and improved her approaches to teaching
English Reading & Writing 1 and 2 by reflecting on and comparing the first monthof instruction of the English Reading & Writing 1 course in the spring semester tothe first month of instruction in the English Reading & Writing 2 course in the fallsemester. It demonstrates how keeping a teaching journal can be an essential tool
for reflective practice and professional development for teachers at every stage of
their teaching career, and how it can be particularly beneficial for teachers enteringa new teaching context.
Keywords: Reflective practice, Teaching journals, Professional development

My Context
I have taught English in Japan for over 35 years, 18 of which have been at the tertiarylevel. At my previous university, I began as a part-time instructor and eventually became an
assistant professor on a limited contract. In addition to teaching required academic English
courses to first- through third-year students, my administrative duties included coordinating
the English language program for my department, developing materials and updating thecurriculum, hiring and supervising part-time instructors, and other administrative tasks. It wasa challenging position, but one I had become comfortable and confident in, which made the ideaof starting a new job at a different institution extremely daunting. Even with decades of teachingexperience, leaving my comfort zone at this point in my teaching career was both exciting andscary! My peers and colleagues reassured me that with all of my experience, I would have noproblem adapting to my new teaching environment. Still, I had my concerns because it is, inmany ways, harder to adjust and change one’s practices after having spent so many years in thesame job in the same place, and the anxiety that I felt was genuine. I couldn’t help but wonder25

多言語教育実践ジャーナル

第 4 巻（JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE, VOL. 4）

if this “old dog” could still learn the “new tricks” necessary to succeed in my new position.
I last felt this “fear of the unknown” in the spring semester of 2020, when all university
classes were moved online due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. My inexperience and lackof expertise in teaching online made me feel unsure of my practices–I was very much a fishout of water. During that time, I developed a critical friendship with a colleague at anotheruniversity who was equally unnerved by the challenges of online teaching. As part of ourcritical friendship, we kept teaching journals to record our experiences and to facilitate our
discussions. We met regularly online to support each other, a process that led to numerous
epiphanies and helped both of us adjust to the new normal of online teaching. (Ueno & Yoshida,2023). Because keeping a teaching journal was one of the keys to the success of our criticalfriendship, continuing to keep a teaching journal when I began at FLER made perfect sense.
Bailey et al. (2001) point out that keeping a journal allows teachers to describe ongoing issues,vent frustrations, and clarify thoughts. As I was in a new environment and had yet to establish
relationships where I felt comfortable consulting about my concerns and feelings, my journal
became a vital tool to help me cope, adapt, and reflect on the successes and challenges ofteaching in a new context.

Literature Review
Reflective Practice and Teaching Journals
Reflective Practice is a key component of language (and other) teacher development(see for example, Farrell, 2012). It has been long established that teachers keeping professional
diaries/journals is one of the most meaningful ways of engaging in (language) teacher
professional development (Bailey et al., 2001). However, a curiously recurring theme in theliterature was how useful teacher journals are for novice/new/pre-service teachers. For example,
nearly 50 years ago, Schumann and Schumann (1977) presented “the results of a secondary
analysis of 26 diary studies by novice ESL teachers” in the USA, all of whom “had less thansix months of prior teaching experience” (p. 241). Given the age of that paper, it may be thatdiary studies were not always considered to be good just for novice teachers. However, that does
not seem to have been the case i.e., such an approach to teacher professional development still
seems to be seen as good primarily for “the newbies” but not so for those of us with decades ofclassroom experience, i.e., the “veterans.” For example, Komur and Çepik (2015) analyzed “thepositive and negative reflections of ten pre-service English teachers [in Turkey] who kept diaries
on their own learning and teaching processes and daily lives” (p. 1593), concluding that suchdiaries could “provide an effective tool to gain insight into the pre-service English teachers’
learning and teaching processes” (p. 1593). More recently, but in the same vein, Altalhab etal. (2021) reported on “the reflective diary experiences of 50 “Saudi pre-service teachers whotaught English in intermediate schools” (p. 173). This paper suggests that keeping a teaching
journal can be an essential tool for reflective practice and professional development, even for,26

Why Teachers Should Use Journals in Their Reflective Practice Throughout Their Teaching Careerand perhaps in some cases, especially for, veteran teachers.
My teaching journal follows a focused free-write format recommended by Stevens andCooper (2009), which is “like a brainstorm that can list questions, concerns, insights, resources,interests, roadblocks, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and ideas” (p. 139). Farrell(2019) suggests that writing in a journal regularly enables teachers to “identify and address
issues critical to their practice within their teaching context, and, as a result, provide morelearning opportunities for their students” (p. 86). For this study, I chose to focus on the Reading
and Writing 1 and 2 classes because I would teach them in the spring and fall semesters, albeit
with different students from different faculties. I wanted to see how reflecting on my practices
after the first month of teaching Reading and Writing 1 in the spring semester would impact
my approach to teaching Reading and Writing 2 in the fall semester. I wrote weekly about thesecourses in my teaching journal, responding to the following questions: What was the lesson
plan? What went well and why? What could have gone better and why? What actions do I
need to take in the future? When I reviewed my journal entries, I used the EAR model (Curtis,
2023) to reflect on my expectations, assumptions, and realities of myself, my students, and theReading and Writing 1 and 2 courses as a veteran teacher entering a new teaching context.

Reflections Based on the EAR Model (Curtis, 2023)
Self-Expectations as a Reading and Writing Instructor at FLER
As a teacher with extensive experience at the tertiary level in Japan, I was confident
I could adapt quickly to my new teaching context. However, I expected there would be somechallenges because there were significant differences between the teaching position I was
leaving and the one I was entering at FLER. For example, my previous institution’s reading
and writing courses met twice weekly for two semesters and were taught by the same instructor.
In contrast, the Reading and Writing 1 and 2 courses offered by FLER meet once a week for
one semester, with different instructors for the spring and fall semesters. Even though thesupport materials for the Reading and Writing classes were helpful, I expected that it would bechallenging for me to cover all of the items that were included in the syllabus because I wasused to meeting with students to deliver the same type of course content twice a week rather
than just once a week.
Assumptions and Realities During the First Month of the Reading and Writing 1 Course
It has always been my practice to spend time on community-building activities during
the first few lessons of any new course because community-building in the classroom isessential for high student engagement. The Glossary of Education Reform (n.d.) defines student
engagement as “the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students
show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they
have to learn and progress in their education.” Research on learning communities suggests
27

多言語教育実践ジャーナル

第 4 巻（JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE, VOL. 4）that students who feel part of a learning community can engage and reflect more actively andbecome more responsible and autonomous learners (See Berry, 2019; Sadera et al., 2009).
Therefore, investing the time for community building has always been one of my top priorities.
However, my concerns about being able to cover the entire syllabus at a much fasterpace than I was accustomed to led me to make certain assumptions about how things would go
in my Reading and Writing 1 classes. These assumptions led me to make some counter-intuitive
moves in how I planned and delivered the lessons. First, looking at the English program’s
curriculum as a whole and knowing that students would be taking the English Discussion
course in addition to the Reading and Writing 1 course for their English requirement led me
to the assumption that the cohorts for the discussion and Reading and Writing classes would
be the same (which is not always necessarily the case). I therefore assumed that the students
would be able to bond with each other quickly since they shared other classes. Based on thatassumption and because I felt so pressed for time, I invested much less time in community
building in my Reading and Writing 1 classes than I used to in my previous teaching context.
The reality was that even though some students shared other classes, they were all first-year
students trying to get used to university life. They needed more time to get to know each otherand feel comfortable speaking in English in public. Because of this, it took longer to teach thecourse materials than I had expected because the students could not engage with each other inEnglish as quickly as they would have had I placed more time and emphasis on communitybuilding from the beginning of the course. Reflecting on the first month of the course helped me
develop plans of action to spend more time on warm-up discussions and make the class more
active and communicative to help the students bond.
Another assumption I made was that students could apply the discussion skills they
were learning in their discussion class to the small group discussions we had in the Reading
and Writing 1 course. Based on that assumption, I spent less time modeling, scaffolding, or
explaining how to have practical small-group discussions in the Reading and Writing 1 classthan I usually would. I made the mistake of simply providing the discussion questions andexpecting the students to discuss without giving them enough scaffolding, which is something
that, as a veteran teacher, I know never ends well! The reality was that the students had only
begun learning discussion skills in their discussion classes, so they were not comfortable using
the expressions even in their discussion classes, much less in other courses. Moreover, thediscussions that the students were having in each discussion class were very structured andfocused on specific content and particular discussion and communication skills, so it was overly
optimistic for me to assume that they could apply those skills in a completely different context,
particularly so early in the semester. Because I had not effectively shown them how to engage
in discussion in the Reading and Writing 1 class successfully, the discussions we attempted
during the first few weeks of the first semester were less successful than I had hoped, as I noted
in my journal for week two:28

Why Teachers Should Use Journals in Their Reflective Practice Throughout Their Teaching Career

While the students are keen and cooperative, the small group discussions could havegone better today. I reminded the students of the communication and discussion
skills they had covered in Week 1 of their discussion classes, but they either couldn’t
remember or couldn’t apply those skills effectively. They seemed hesitant to speak witheach other in English. I shouldn’t be surprised by that since I didn’t give them enoughtime to chat and relax in English at the beginning of class, which I regret. I need torethink my approach—spending the extra time to let students get to know each otherand showing them how to engage in small group discussions would have made all thedifference. I won’t make that mistake again! (April 18, 2023)
Instruction of Reading
During the first class, we discussed the value of improving our reading and writing
skills in English as part of the course introduction. Although most of the students were frank
about their general lack of interest in reading and writing in any language, they seemed
impressed with the benefits of reading and writing that I presented, including improving theirgrammar, vocabulary, and critical thinking skills, and were surprised by the data that showed
the amount of information that is written on the Internet in English (58.8%) as comparedto the amount written in Japanese (3%) (Statista, 2023). In class, I instructed the students
to take the Macmillan online reading assessment test to determine their most suitable reader
level. I asked them to choose a reader (either digital or hard copy from the library) and be
prepared to introduce it in the next class. I gave them some points to prepare (author’s name,publication date, genre, why they selected that book, etc.). Although I assumed that somestudents would not be ready to do this in the following class, I expected that enough students
would be prepared and that we could engage in small group discussions about the books wewere reading. However, the reality was quite different from my expectations, as noted in myjournal for week two:
I was excited to get the students talking about their readers, so I put them into small
groups to introduce and discuss their chosen books. I modeled how to approach thegroup work with the reader I had chosen and listed prompts to help them explain theirreader. I also provided follow-up questions that they should ask each other. The students
did OK while modeling the task with me, but once I put them into groups, things went
differently than planned for several reasons. First, although the students said they wereready with their readers, in reality, some had yet to choose their readers, so they werescrambling to connect to the online library to choose one. Then, even those who had
chosen readers struggled to access them because of connectivity issues (although they
had been instructed to download them before the class). The few students who had goneto the library and borrowed books were able to produce their books, but some had yet
to begin reading and had mainly chosen the books because they “liked the cover.” We29

多言語教育実践ジャーナル

第 4 巻（JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE, VOL. 4）

spent much more time than I had planned for this activity which threw off the rest of
the lesson plan. As always, I had a plan B and C for this class just in case the discussion
went south, so all was not lost, but I felt deflated and regretted that I had not set up theactivity better to ensure success. (April 18, 2023)
After reflecting on the less-than-successful discussion of the books we were reading,I decided to take a more proactive approach by creating a Google form that students wererequired to fill out weekly to chart their reading progress. Students had to report on the title, theauthor, the number of words, why they chose the reader, how many pages they read, the mainideas, and what they liked/disliked about the book. In this way, I could track their progress, andstudents could use the information they added to the form to discuss their readers with theirclassmates. After introducing the Google form, students were better at charting their reading
progress but needed more scaffolding to engage in small group discussions. As the semester
progressed, I organized the small group discussions by assigning each student specific roles(facilitator, reporter, note-taker, and contributor), which helped keep the discussions moreorganized and focused. I also provided handouts with instructions, useful language, and modelanswers, which kept the students on point and productive.
Instruction of Writing
Teaching writing is something that I have enjoyed doing for many years, and I was
excited about working with the students on their academic writing skills. In our first writingclass, I carefully went through each step of the writing process, including brainstorming andforming clear topic sentences, organizing supporting sentences logically by giving reasons,examples, and explanations, and a clear concluding sentence that sums up the paragraph. We
worked collaboratively as a class to create a paragraph on a familiar topic: Should university
students do part-time jobs? This topic was ideal because all students had opinions, and I knew
they would be comfortable talking and writing about it. My journal entry for week three wasmuch more positive than in the previous two weeks:
Such great classes today! The students are starting to become more relaxed with eachother, and rather than trying to warm up by talking about what they are reading (which
has not gone that well in the previous classes), I decided to have the students warm
up by talking about what they did on the weekend, and what their plans were for theupcoming Golden Week break. It was a relaxing and fun way to start the class and put
students into the right frame of mind for the rest of the lesson. It reminded me that one
should never underestimate the importance of the warm-up! I have been letting the time
constraints of teaching these students just once a week get in the way of following theusual practices that had stood me well thus far in my teaching career. I’m not going to
let that happen again! The whole lesson went as planned, and the students worked really30

Why Teachers Should Use Journals in Their Reflective Practice Throughout Their Teaching Career

well together on their paragraphs! Let’s hope I am on a roll now and have smooth sailingahead! (April 25, 2023)
I was pleased with the first day of writing, but I realized in the following weeks that havingclass once a week rather than twice a week made a huge difference in students’ retention of thematerials, as indicated in my journal from week four:
Although we had a week off for Golden Week, I told the students that we would continue
to work on paragraph writing after the break, so part of their homework was to review
the writing skills we had covered. I created a quick review of the writing process with afun, interactive whole-class quiz, but when I asked the first question: What are the threeparts of a paragraph? and gave students a minute to consult with each other to confirm
their answers, they could not come up with even one answer! From my experience, I
know that students tend to retain only some of the information from previous classes,
and there had been a week off between classes, but still!! (May 9, 2023)
After reflecting on the problem of the students’ retention (or lack thereof) of the lessons,I decided to inform students that we would have short weekly review quizzes on the previous
week’s materials based on the slides that I posted every week to the LMS. I hoped this would
encourage students to review more, which would help them retain the materials. Because oftime constraints and to make the class more communicative, I did the quizzes orally withstudents working in groups. While this was lively and beneficial, I could not track each student’s
retention of the materials, so I needed to consider more strategies to tackle this particular issue.

Actions Taken in the First Month of Reading and Writing 2
Based on My Reflections From Reading and Writing 1
The summer break provided some much-needed time to reflect further on my journal
entries from the Reading and Writing 1 course and develop strategies to deliver more effective
lessons in the Reading and Writing 2 courses I would teach in the fall. I was determined toaddress the areas I should have done better at the beginning of the first semester, starting withbuilding a strong learning community with my new classes and teaching strategies for small
group discussions to maximize group work productivity.
I decided that even though it was likely that the students knew each other better andwere more accustomed to university life than in the spring semester, I wanted to make sure notto cut corners when it came to community building and taking time to get the students warmed
up at the beginning of class. I reminded myself that students may not have spoken English since
the previous week or spoken to each other in any language because they take different courses
and have busy extra-curricular schedules and part-time jobs. Therefore, I designated enough31

多言語教育実践ジャーナル

第 4 巻（JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE, VOL. 4）

time for warm-up from day one of my Reading and Writing 2 courses. I gave students clear
roles and responsibilities during the warm-up (and other small-group discussions) by assigningthem specific discussion roles using laminated role cards (facilitator, reporter, note-taker, andcontributor). On the first day of the new classes, I assigned the roles by visiting each table (5groups of 4 students per group) and having students close their eyes and randomly pick a rolecard. While this method of assigning roles may not seem innovative, it created a moment of
excitement for the students, and it allowed me to visit each group and briefly interact withthe students directly from the beginning of the lesson. After the warm-up, all group members
took a minute to help the reporter prepare to report to the class with a summary of the warmup discussion. As noted in my journal for week two, spending time on the warm-up this way
significantly impacted the class atmosphere:
I can’t believe how big a difference using the laminated role cards in the warmup makes! At the beginning of today’s class, I gave hints to elicit the four roles fordiscussion that I had introduced in the previous week, and the students actuallyremembered! We had a huge laugh when I asked, “What do we call the leader of the
discussion?” and one student shouted out, “Terminator!” rather than “Facilitator”! WhenI visited each group with the role cards, holding them face down and having the students
randomly pick them, the reactions were hilarious! Students who pulled the contributor
card were pumping their fists with joy, while those who pulled the reporter card shrieked
with dismay! The warm-up set the tone for the rest of the lesson, which went great! The
students were cheerful and engaged, which is an absolute win, especially for a Saturday
morning class! (September 30, 2023)
By week four, I decided to put more responsibility on the students by having themassign each other roles for discussion. I had students do rock/scissors/paper in their groups, andthe winner was responsible for assigning the roles and explaining why they had chosen each
student for a particular role. I provided them with useful language, such as, “I want you to be thefacilitator because you are a good leader!” “You should be the note-taker because you are goodat listening!” I also taught them the expression “with great power comes great responsibility,”
as used in a recent Spiderman movie, which many knew. In this way, I was helping the students
develop into more responsible and autonomous learners.
My approaches for teaching reading and writing skills during the first month of theReading and Writing 2 course were based on my reflections from my journal entries fromthe Reading and Writing 1 course, with positive outcomes. Even within the first month of thecourse, students exhibited more confidence in their writing. They were able to use reading
skills more effectively to gather information for their first essay, which asked them to give theiropinion on why it is so difficult for Japan to achieve one of the UN’s Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs) of their choice. As I continue to write in my journal and reflect, I am discovering32Why Teachers Should Use Journals in Their Reflective Practice Throughout Their Teaching Career

more effective ways of instructing and supporting my students.

Takeaways
Using a teaching journal to reflect on the first month of the spring and the fall semester
as a veteran teacher in a new teaching context has improved my teaching practices. It has given
me valuable insight into several areas that can benefit other veteran instructors entering a newteaching context.
First, the notion that veteran teachers can quickly adapt to a new teaching context should
not be assumed. Even experienced teachers are “inexperienced” when their context changes. It
may take some time for them to find their feet after entering a new institution, as every context
is unique (Curtis, 2017). However, exposing one’s vulnerabilities to new colleagues can bechallenging as a veteran teacher. Therefore, keeping a teaching journal can be an excellent way
to record and reflect on one’s classroom experiences and express concerns and insecurities thatare difficult to share with others when first joining a new institution. In my second semester at
FLER, a colleague with more than 25 years of teaching experience in Japan, who had also begun
teaching at FLER at the same time as I did, commented that all of her “good teaching tricks andhabits went out the window” when she first came to FLER. It was something of a relief for bothof us to realize that it is not uncommon, even for veteran teachers, to be overwhelmed and tohave anxiety when entering a new teaching context (Mason, personal communication, October18, 2023). This conversation reinforced the idea that journal writing, reflection, and collegial
discussions are valuable forms of professional development at all stages of a teaching career.
Next, although the literature focuses mainly on the importance of pre-service teachers
keeping a teaching journal, it is undeniable that it can also be an invaluable tool for reflection
and professional development for all teachers, regardless of what point they are at in theircareers. As pre-service teachers, we receive training and acquire fundamental teaching skills, but
the time we spend in teacher training is finite. Lange (1990) states that “Teacher development
is a term used in the literature to describe a process of continual intellectual, experiential,
and attitudinal growth of teachers” (p. 250, emphasis added). Bailey et al. (2001) suggest that
Lange’s definition is helpful because it suggests that development can and should continue
throughout the teacher’s career. R, an expert teacher, stated: “I intend to go on teaching as
long as I feel I can learn from my students and those around me. If I feel too self-confident,
that there is nothing for me to learn, this will be my last moment as a teacher” (Olshtain &Kupferberg, 1998). These words are a core part of my teaching philosophy. Teachers who want
to do their best for their students must be lifelong learners and continue to grow and develop
professionally, regardless of where they are in their teaching careers (Ueno, 2023).
My teaching journal helps me to reflect on my teaching professionally and proactively. It
allows me to celebrate my successes, reflect on what I can improve in my teaching, and develop
a plan of action to ensure that I constantly and continuously develop my practices.
33

多言語教育実践ジャーナル

第 4 巻（JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE, VOL. 4）

Acknowledgment
Special thanks to Dr. Andy Curtis, Professor, City University of Macau, SAR, PRC, for his
feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

References
Altalhab, S., Alsuhaibani, Y., & Gillies, D. (2021). The reflective diary experiences of EFL preservice teachers. Reflective Practice, 22(2), 173–186.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2020.1865903
Bailey, K. M., Curtis, A., & Nunan, D. (2001). Pursuing professional development: The self assource. Heinle and Heinle.
Berry, S. (2019). Teaching to Connect: Community-Building Strategies for the Virtual
Classroom. Online Learning, 23(1), 164–183. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v23i1.1425
Curtis, A. (2017). Methods and Methodologies for Language Teaching: The Centrality ofContext. Bloomsbury Academic.
Curtis, A. (2023, November 10). 300 Years of Leadership. Keynote. 51st Annual TESL Ontario
Conference (Online). https://pheedloop.com/TESL2023/site/Keynotes/
Farrell, T. S. C. (2012). Reflecting on Reflective Practice: (Re)Visiting Dewey and Schön.
TESOL Journal, 3(1), 7–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.10
Farrell, T. S. C. (2019). Reflective Practice in ELT. Equinox Publishing.
Komur, S., & Çepik, H. (2015). Diaries as a reflective tool in pre-service language teacher
education. Educational Research and Reviews, 10(12), 1593–1598.
https://doi.org/10.5897/ERR2015.2207
Lange, D. (1990). A blueprint for a teacher development programme. In J. C. Richards andD. Nunan (Eds.), Second Language Teacher Education (pp. 245–268). Cambridge
University Press.
Olshtain, E., & Kupferberg, I. (1998). Reflective-narrative discourse of FL teachers exhibits
professional knowledge. Language Teaching Research, 2(3), 185–202.
https://doi.org/10.1177/136216889800200302
Sadera, W. A., Robertson, J., Song, L., & Midon, M. N. (2009). The role of community in online
learning success. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 5(2), 277–284.
https://jolt.merlot.org/vol5no2/sadera_0609.pdf
Schumann, F. M., & Schumann, J. H. (1977). Diary of a language learner: An introspective
study of second language learning. On TESOL ҆ 77, 241–249.
Statista. (2023). Languages most frequently used for web content as of January 2023.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/262946/most-common-languages-on-the-internet/
Stevens, D. D., & Cooper, J. E. (2009). Journal Keeping: How to use reflective writing foreffective learning, teaching, professional insight, and positive change. Stylus Publishing,34

Why Teachers Should Use Journals in Their Reflective Practice Throughout Their Teaching Career

LLC.
The Glossary of Education Reform. (n.d.). https://www.edglossary.org/student-engagement/
Ueno, A. (2023). Continuing Professional Development Through Self-Observation Using Zoom
Class Videos. TEIS Newsletter.
Ueno, A., & Yoshida, A. (2023). Epiphanies in Practice: How Good Friends Can Become
Critical Friends. In A. Verla Uchida & J. R. Rothaman (Eds.), Cultivating Professional
Development Through Critical Friendship and Reflective Practice: Cases From Japan(pp. 109–133). Candlin & Mynard Publishing. https://doi.org/10.47908/27

35