Introduction

In the current situation of the reform of curriculum education in mainland China, teachers are faced with the role transformation from traditional teachers to novel researchers with research and innovation consciousness, which leads to extensive attention among the public on reflective teaching as a good way to guide the role transformation of teachers. Reflective teaching is the development process of teachers’ self dissection, self denial as well as self transcendence. It is also the behavior of teachers’ reflection on teaching to improve teaching, so as to seek other methods to effectively achieve teaching objectives. As a method of teaching reflection, teaching journal is the most important, convenient and commonly used form and tool of the practice of reflective teaching (Richards & Thomas,2005).

Literature Review

As the pioneer of research on reflection on education, Dewey treats reflection as “the positive, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in terms of the grounds that support it” (Shadi & Hassan,2019). Journal, a way of self expression, has been regarded as one of effective tools for education and reflective teaching since long ago. Generally, with the enrichment of human knowledge and research, teaching journal is widely used by various scholars and experts. In foreign countries, teaching journal has been considered as a formal research, not just a method to promote teaching and professional development; oppositely, the situation is different in China, although there are many teachers writing teaching journals from the perspective of practice. In this part, conceptual contributions of various scholars will be introduced from the definition and functions, contents and style of teaching journal.

2.1 The definition and functions of teaching journal

By searching the database of One Search on HKBU, it can be found that there is no fixed terminology of teaching journal among different scholars, for example, teaching diary, reflective journal, journal writing and so forth. Similarly, there is no unified definition of teaching journal. Brookfield (2002) once points out that teaching journal is used by teachers to conduct the regular records about their teaching and learning life, which presents themselves in a conscious and vivid way. He also defines teaching journal is not only a list of the events happened in teachers’ life, but also their understanding about teaching assumptions via generating these events. However, the shortage of his points is the ignorance of the characteristics of reflective and meaningful of teaching journal. Actually, teaching journals is treated as a way of improving critical-thinking ability and habit for teachers, since it helps them think about their teaching in view of personal and contextual factors from different aspects and review their understanding through record and discovery (Lee,2007). Plus, based on the theoretical research and practical experience in the field of English language teacher development, Richards and Thomas (2005) come to the points of teachers’ reflection: teaching journal can make teachers clearly understand their own thoughts and reflect their beliefs and teaching practices, which is helpful for teachers to strengthen their determination to solve problems and obstacles.

Domestic scholars also have defined the meaning of teaching journal from the view of reflective teaching. Wang (2005) points out a relatively perfect explanation, that is, the teaching reflection journal is an significant way for teachers to record their own teaching behavior, summarize the success and failure of teaching, review and analyze the whole teaching process, so as to improve teachers’ self-development, teaching art and self-worth. However, there are still loopholes in this way of expression, which fails to show the initiative and continuity of writing teaching journals. Zhao (2009) adds that writing teaching journal is like a dialogue between teachers and themselves, which provides a good space for teachers to reflect, and it is a written description and feedback of teaching experience. At present, the generally and commonly used definition of teaching journal at home is that teaching journal is a tool by which teachers can conduct a continuous and real record and description of their experience which owns reflection and research value in their teaching activities in a positive and active way, and on this basis, teachers can critically understand and recognize their teaching journals, so as to constantly update concepts, increase skills, and promote their professional development.

2.2 The contents of teaching journal

There are many things that need to be recorded by the teacher in the teaching journal. The content of teaching journal is not presupposed, but generated by teachers’ induction and summary after actual teaching practice and reflection. In the United States, academic tradition of teaching reflection classifies the contents of teaching reflection from the view of teacher education curriculum orientation, which focuses on learning and teaching contents, teaching strategies and methods, students and social environment (Zeichner & Liston,1996), resulting in various opinions among different scholars about the contents of journal. Richards and Lockhart (2000) propose that the contents of teachers’ reflection ought to contain the teachers’ awareness and decision-making, teachers’ role, learners description, classroom structure, classroom activities and classroom language. Boyd et al. (2005) claims the most basic reflective journal should be concerned with practice and technical level in teaching, and they recommends three dimensions of reflection to write a teaching journal, namely, descriptive, comparative and critical level. Walker (2006) reports the contents of teaching journal concerns with the enhancement of reflection, critical thinking and feeling expression.

The above views on the contents of teaching journal are agreed by many scholars at home. In the book Reflective Teaching, Jin (2006) puts forward that as for the content of teaching journal, teachers can record their successful practices and failures, as well as events and learning experience. Wang (2005) states that teaching journal mainly includes six aspects of contents, that is, the success and the inadequacy in teaching, teaching inspiration, students’ innovation and students’ individual differences, and reflection on and design for future teaching. Li (2013) summarizes that the content of teaching journal includes two categories: descriptive and reflective, which often intersects and complements each other. Descriptive teaching journal refers to the teacher’s declarative record of meaningful events and personal feelings in teaching, while the reflective one is about the teacher’s reflection on teaching events.

2.3 The characteristics and styles of teaching journal

Generally speaking, teaching journal has the characteristics of immediacy, regularity, objectivity, description and reflection. Among them, the description requires recording in a simple, narrative and descriptive way (Boyd et al.,2005). As for the style of teaching journal, there is no fixed format and requirements for teachers to write teaching journal. Each teacher can record in his own way and content of interest, and freely display his writing style and characteristics (Zhao,2009).

To sum up, teaching journal serves as an effective tool for the reflective practice of teaching. The views above show the contents should mainly include the teacher’s beliefs, teaching methods, evaluation and so on. In this research, the standards applied to analyze teachers’ reflective contents is adjusted according to the edition of Wang (2005).

Case Analysis

In this part, a critical analysis and discussion based on three actual teaching journal samples related to the actual teaching context will be conducted as following, before which the voluntary consent has been obtained from this teacher.

3.1 The presentation of the teaching journal samples

Three teaching journals of the English teacher Miss Yu will be presented below during her two-month teaching period, involving reflection on English subject teaching knowledge, classroom teaching and teaching concept. Miss Yu is a senior high school English teacher who has been teaching for two years. I got to know her when I took an internship in her school and at that time, she was an English teacher in grade two.

Teaching journal1:

In this journal, Miss Yu firstly evaluates the warning-up part of her classroom teaching: the students’ participation is not high. Then she analyzes the reasons for this situation: students have less vocabulary and knowledge accumulation in relevant aspects. Finally, the inspiration for the future teaching is: if a unit involves a professional theme, teachers should let students preview, collect and understand the relevant vocabulary in advance.

Teaching journal2:

It can be found that Miss Yu has enhanced the understanding and analysis of students’ learning characteristics, learning situations and learning needs in her teaching journal of reflection on classroom teaching. For example, through the review and reflection of performance of the students’ practice in class, problems and difficulties in vocabulary learning are found, and then she puts forward solution, but it is not in-depth.

Teaching journal3:

In this teaching journal, Miss Yu forms a teaching concept in reflection: teachers should encourage students to think actively, not force students to accept teachers’ answers. Only in this way can students’ learning initiative and ability of independent learning be cultivated.

3.2 Critical analysis

It is clear that Miss Yu conducts a reflection process of “evaluating teaching- analyzing reasons- obtaining enlightenment” in the above three examples. This kind of reflection process is also a learning process of teachers’ understanding of teaching, developing teaching knowledge and teaching outlook.

Initially, teaching journal shows the characteristics of foreign language discipline, provides a platform for English language teachers to reflect and cultivate their awareness of reflection on teaching. As Jung (2012) proves in his research, reflection tasks such as journal writing serve as a chance for teachers to self-examine themselves, to identify the aspects they needed to improve in teaching practice, and thus to modify their existing beliefs of teaching. For a language subject, English teachers should not only explain the relevant language knowledge, but also pay attention to the cultivation of students’ ability to use the language in terms of ideology, emotion and skills in the whole teaching process, during which many spontaneous collisions and frictions in language, thought and emotion will appear, bringing many unexpected flash points. If teachers do not use the reflection to capture and record in time, they will fade and disappear because of the passage of time. For example, in teaching journal3, students express different words, which is not expected in teaching design but the flash point in class. The reason behind this is worthy of reflecting. By actively reflecting on the teaching behavior, writing and summarizing the teaching journals, teachers can adjust their teaching plan timely, combine the development of society and innovate thinking and teaching, thus effectively foster the reflection awareness and habits.

Additionally, teaching journal itself is intrinsically a kind of reflection, which exercises English language teachers’ ability of reflection and promotes the motivation of reflection. Through teaching journal, teachers are reminded of the aspects that need to notice for suitable adjustment and design of teaching activities for students in the future. For example, in teaching journal1, the teacher reflects on the success and deficiency of teaching, the reasons, the characteristics of students’ learning and so on, and gets the inspiration for later teaching design. Meanwhile, through writing teaching journal, teachers’ thinking and understanding about teaching, for example understanding the complex points of teaching in depth (Degago,2007), and creating connections between theoretical and practical issues, is thus promoted, which leads to teachers to the level of reflection. Also, teachers will make efforts to justify their own views in their teaching journals, as a result of being challenged by other teacher educators’ comments and doubts, then teachers will learn more about how to reflect exactly on issues and support their views.

However, there are certain issues and limitations related to the application of writing teaching journal, for example its limited contributions to teachers’ failure to distinguish the difference of telling and reflecting in their journal writing, to foster their awareness of reflection with writing teaching journal and to achieve higher levels of reflection (Abednia et al.2013). For example, in teaching journal3, Miss Yu uses too many narratives at the beginning, but the reflective content is relatively scarce; the whole article is only a reflection on her own teaching outlook, rather than further on the reasons for students’ such performance in classroom interaction. As teaching journal2, she fails to move much beyond the reasons of students’ poor performance on vocabulary learning in the teaching journal, that is, she does not reflect deeply on how to adjust in the future teaching. Teaching journal should not simply summarize the experience and think the surface, otherwise, it will be meaningless. In addition, it can be found that in these teaching journals, Yu only focuses on her own reflection and summary, and does not mention the communication and learning of reflection with other teachers.

Implications and Conclusions

This part of the paper is implications about how teaching journals can be made more fruitful according to the analysis in the previous section. At last, a brief conclusion is presented.

Implications

Some problems related to the writing journals’ lacking in depth can be attributed to the fact that teachers have not received systematic training in writing teaching journals. Therefore, to begin with, it is necessary for schools to provide training for teachers. Reflection cannot be left to take care of itself, but it deserves to be taught and teachers ought to be trained, so that it could be employed in the authentic context of the classroom (Shadi & Hassan,2019). Also, given to the contributions of different means of teachers’ collaborative reflection to teachers’ professional development have been widely acknowledged (Danielowich,2012), it is a good suggestion to observe peer teaching and participate in peer exchange salon, by which another opportunity will be opened up for teachers to share and read each others’ journals and give feedback, and to expand subjective understanding of issues about ELT and enrich the contents of teaching journal as they can benefit from their peers’ ideas and experiences.

Besides, to increase the proportion of teaching reflection content in teaching journal is also recommended. Only with in-depth and detailed reflection can teachers understand the nature of the problem, and then to correct it. Thus, teachers should write more reflection opinions when writing teaching journals. Specifically speaking, when recording descriptive content, it is better to leave some space to record reflective and evaluative content. On top of that, the most important thing is that teachers must reflect on their behavior in actual teaching timely and attentively, and connect with the past experience to optimize their experience and ideas, so as to get to a new teaching level and height and make the teaching journal no longer limited to the acquisition of piecemeal experience and the solution of local problems.

4.2 Conclusions

This paper tries to explore teaching journal as an effective reflective tool based on authentic sample analysis, and to put forward some implications for further studying and application of teaching journal on reflection. In a word, teaching journal is a true record of the continuity of teachers’ thoughts and behaviors, which is an effective tool for teachers to examine, reflect, analyze and solve their puzzles in teaching practice. Through the teaching journal, English language teachers can grasp the teaching situation in time, find out the teaching ideas and methods that are worth affirming and advocating, and improve them constantly. Although teachers’ teaching journals lack in depth and fail to a perfect proportion on reflection in the journals, they can be promoted by systematical training, peer’s communication and interactive workshops or other awareness-raising activities on reflection.

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