Reflective Practices in Foreign Language Teacher Education: A View through Micro and Macro Windows.

Abstract: As professional development models of teacher education that allow for self-directed, collaborative, inquiry-based learning are increasingly replacing more traditional top-down models, researchers acknowledge the impact of teachers' reflective practices. Although many different types of reflective practices are reported, the differences across such practices have rarely been discussed. This study focuses on a form of reflective practice-classroom observation-and compares graduate teaching assistants' observation of their own classroom performance through two distinct "windows"-an entire class and a targeted teacher-fronted activity-within the framework of a foreign language (Japanese) teacher education course. Both types of observation have their distinct advantages and reveal different aspects of the teaching process, as is clearly evidenced in the teaching assistants' reports. The study presents a strong rationale for incorporating both whole-class (macro) and targeted (micro) observations into teacher education programs. Key words: professional development, reflective practice, teacher education, foreign language method course, graduate teaching assistants Language: Japanese, relevant to all languages Introduction Compared with the number of studies on language teaching and learning, research focusing on second and foreign language teacher education has been relatively sparse. The sporadic research conducted before the recent two decades was, according to Freeman and Johnson (1998), mostly process-product oriented, focusing on teacher behavior and the student learning outcomes it produces. The authors contend that most of these studies simply appraise a set of techniques thought to augment effective teacher behavior, ignoring the complex mental processes involved in the practice of teaching. Schulz (2000), in her review of the articles on second language teacher education published in the Modern Language Journal from 1916 to 1999, highlights another drawback: few of these articles were empirical in nature. Foreign language teacher education, asserts Schulz, has suffered from the paucity of empirical research needed to verify assumptions regarding language teacher training and its traditional practices. Historically, second and foreign language teacher education was grounded in a positivistic paradigm, according to which teachers acquire teaching content and best teaching practices by participating in teacher training programs. Recent studies paint a quite different picture of the channels through which teachers develop professional expertise (Borg, 2003; Freeman, 2002; Freeman & Johnson, 1998; Johnson & Golombek, 2003). They conceive teachers' learning experience as a socially negotiated activity: teachers learn through experiences in various social contexts, and they are both receptors and creators of the knowledge base they apply in numerous decisions in the classroom. As Johnson (2006) illustrates, these studies reflect a general sociocultural turn in the human sciences. Today, human cognition and learning are viewed as socially situated activities in which participation and context play a critical role.1 Johnson believes that these studies expose "an epistemological gap between how L2 teacher educators have traditionally prepared L2 teachers to do their work and how L2 teachers actually learn to teach and carry out their work" (2006, p. 239). In recent years, second and foreign language teacher education has been recognized as an emerging and expanding field of study with the special mission of educating preservice and inservice language teachers. A growing number of studies focus on teacher beliefs (e.g., Breen, Hird, Milton, Oliver, & Thwaite, 2001; Crookes, 1997; Johnson, 1992), teachers' practical knowledge (e.g., Johnson & Goettsch, 2000), and their decision-making processes (e.g., Burns, 1996; Smith, 1996; Woods, 1996). They confirm the above-mentioned shift from more traditional top-down professional development models of teacher education to models that "allow for selfdirected, collaborative, inquiry-based learning" (Johnson, 2006, p. …