Developing Reflective TESOL Practitioners Through Teacher Education: Insights from Asia

This textbook provides insights from Asian contexts into how reflective practice is nurtured on 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-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. Hence, this book addresses a gap.

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 on a range of TESOL and ELT teacher education courses.

Andrzej Cirocki is an associate professor in English Language Education in the Department of Education at the University of York, United Kingdom. He is an adjunct professor of TESOL at Universitas Negeri Surabaya in Indonesia, the President of the National Centre for ELT Materials Development in Indonesia, and a co-founder of TESOL Café Colombia. He teaches on modules such as TESOL Methods, Teaching and Learning Language, Evaluating TESOL Classroom, Curriculum Design, and Methodology of Teaching English for Academic Purposes. His professional interests include English-as-an-additional-language teacher education and professional development, reflective teaching, teacher autonomy, teacher self-efficacy, and teaching English as an additional language. In addition to his authorship of numerous publications, involvement in international research projects (e.g., Indonesia, Japan, Ecuador) and delivery of CPD courses for EFL/ESL teachers worldwide, he is also the editor-in-chief of The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL.

Xuesong (Andy) Gao is a professor of Language and Literacy Education in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales in Australia. His research interests include language learner autonomy, language education policy and language teacher education. He is the editor-in-chief of the International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, an executive editor for Teaching and Teacher Education, a principal associate editor for The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, and a Section editor for SAGE Open (Education Section). He also edits the English Language Education Series for Springer.

Mark Wyatt is an ELT consultant, currently advising on English in education projects in Oman, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. His most recent academic post was as an associate professor of English at Khalifa University in the United Arab Emirates. He previously worked for the Universities of Leeds (on a BA TESOL Project with in-service English language teachers in Oman) and Portsmouth (where he worked with pre-service B.Ed TESL students from Malaysia). Earlier in his career, he supported teachers in Thailand and Nepal. His research on reflective practice includes a 2010 article in the Asian EFL Journal and a 2022 book chapter in Zia Tajeddin and Atsuko Watanabe’s volume: Teacher Reflection: Policies, Practices, and Impacts. Other research interests include language teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs (see 2021 articles in System and TESOL Quarterly), practitioner research (see a 2021 article in Educational Action Research), mentoring and English as a medium of instruction. He recently co-edited International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education (2022) and English as a Medium of Instruction on the Arabian Peninsula (2023).