Reflection, Change, and Reconstruction in the Context of Educational Reform and Innovation in China

Book excerpt: This book delivers a state-of-the-art survey of the issues and approaches in contemporary English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher education. It examines the professional development of the teachers who taught English as a foreign language and engaged in a teacher preparation programme of reflective teaching at a university in China. Situated in the context of the reforms of English language teaching and teacher education, this book focuses on the theme of how, if at all, reflective teaching contributes to Chinese university EFL teachers’ development in thinking about English language teaching and in their own classroom practice. To date, the study of English as a foreign language teacher education and professional development mainly focused on the teaching skills and pedagogical knowledge of teachers. However, this book approaches English language teacher education from a different perspective, through an empirical exploration of the teachers’ professional development in their thinking, beliefs, values, understandings of teaching, awareness of students, and their classroom practice while engaged with reflective teaching practice at the group level and the individual level respectively. Adopting an interpretivist and constructivist epistemological paradigm, and drawing on key aspects of reflective teaching theory, the book investigates how the novice, developing, and experienced teachers differed in their views about reflective practice; how the teachers’ thinking about English language teaching transformed; how the teachers’ performance in EFL classroom practice developed; and how the teachers dealt with the changes during the period of the teacher education programme. In addition, the book provides examples of research into the ways that individuals integrate multiple levels of reflection, accommodate different types of reflection, and make them interact with each other mutually and inseparably by using a more comprehensive and multidimensional reflective teaching model. Thus the book helps to better understand teachers’ trajectory of professional growth and is a new and unique resource for exploring effective ways of language teacher education for teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers alike.