Framing EFL Preservice Teachers' Reflections Amid the Teaching Practicum Through Metaphors

• In Event: 67.031 - Interrogating Preservice Teachers' Performance Through Feedback and Reflective Practice

Abstract

This paper reports on EFL preservice teachers’ instructional reflections during the teaching practicums through metaphors. By eliciting 66 written metaphors from 33 EFL preservice teachers at the beginning and the end of the teaching practicums, respectively, the authors find that the majority of the participants (30 out of 33) improved their reflection level from pre-reflection and surface reflection to pedagogical reflection. Meanwhile, the participants shifted their teaching metaphor orientations from behaviorist/empiricist to cognitivist/constructivist and situative/social-historical. Furthermore, this inquiry confirms that metaphors can act as powerful windows in examining teachers’ tactic referential systems and serve as “filters” though which teachers can articulate their reflective practices. Implications and limitations on examining EFL preservice teachers’ reflections through metaphors are discussed.

Authors

• Gang Zhu, East China Normal University

• Zhengmei Peng, East China Normal University

• Li Deng, East China Normal University

• Matthew James Etchells, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Guofang Li, University of British Columbia

• Mary F. Rice, The University of New Mexico