Collegial Practicum Journey of EFL Teacher Trainees through Vignette-based Reflections

Abstract

With the intent of facilitating the professional development of English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) teacher trainees, the impetus of this qualitative study is to evaluate the depth and breadth of teacher reflection using vignettes within an initial teacher education program. To this end, this study utilized the vignette technique to reveal 12 EFL teacher trainees’ reflectivity from a collegial perspective. Over a nine-week time period, the participants worked in pairs, and each pair first created vignettes based on their observations or teachings in practicum. Afterwards, they generated reflective responses to the pre-designed questions, which led them to think about the problematic or critical issues raised in the vignettes of their pairs. At the end of the process, a total of 108 vignettes were gathered. The whole qualitative data was exposed to the analysis in light of the two-dimensional framework of Fund et al. (2002), which focuses on both the depth and breadth of teacher reflection. Results indicate that the vignette-based reflections showed more balanced variety in breadth, whereas they did not contain a great number of comments made at deeper levels of reflection. Therefore, it is recommended that all the stakeholders should take more active roles to foster reflectivity and criticality toward educational matters raised in the vignettes.