Pre-service Teachers’ Reflective Journal Writing on Practicum : Focus of Reflection and Perceptions

This paper aims to explore the content of Korean EFL pre-service teachers’ reflection through practicum weekly logs during their practicum at Korean middle schools. The study has two main foci: finding the focus of pre-service teachers’ reflection, and their perceptions of journal writing activities through practicum logs. The pre-service teachers in the study were 18 students at a Korean university. Data were collected via three sources: journal entries during the practicum, and interviews and questionnaires after the practicum. First, in order to understand the pre-service teachers’ reflections, their journal entries were analyzed. At the same time, in order to see how they perceived of their journal writing activities, the data of journal entries, interviews and questionnaires were examined. As a categorization framework of focusing areas, Bain, Ballantyne, Packer & Mills’s (1999) four areas of pre-service teacher reflection on journals in the practicum were employed: focus on teaching, self, professional issues, and students or class. The results showed that entries focusing teaching and self were prevalent. Of “focus on teaching”, teaching demonstration and classroom observation were considerably discussed. Of “focus on self”, feelings and learning teaching skills were frequently dealt with. The results also revealed that journaling writing had positive potentials: promoting reflective practice, further conceptualizing own views on the application of knowledge, and improving the English language skills.