Developing Reflective TESOL Practitioners Through Teacher Education

This textbook provides insights from Asian contexts into how reflective practice is nurtured in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and English Language Teaching (ELT) teacher education programmes. There is increasing recognition worldwide that, given the centrality of reflective practice to teachers’ ongoing professional development, supporting teachers to become reflective practitioners should be integral to teacher education programmes. Consequently, tertiary and master’s level courses in areas such as TESOL and ELT tend to promote reflective practice, supported by theoretical input from the burgeoning literature on reflection, much of which is produced in the West. Relatively under-represented in the literature are global perspectives on reflective practice; there are consequently relatively few accounts as to how reflective practice is embedded in teacher education programmes in different parts of the world, including Asia. 

Contributing authors from fourteen countries provide insights into the ways in which teachers are helped to grow as reflective practitioners on their teacher education programmes in their unique contexts. This textbook showcases how reflective teaching practices are developed, supported by frameworks for critical reflection and in interaction with local educational policies. These distinctive accounts aid readers in reflecting on the ways in which reflective practice is supported in their own teacher education contexts and in considering ways of enhancing the reflective dimension of their programmes. This textbook showcases innovative reflective activities and can be used as a principal text or as supplemental reading in a range of TESOL and ELT teacher education courses.