Abstract:

Teachers’ evaluation policy with its primary focus on assessing and improving teachers’ quality has become one of the key components of the Mexican education reform in both primary and secondary education levels. In order to improve teacher quality, Mexican government has introduced a more rigorous evaluation process coming in force in the academic year 2015/2016. As a consequence of these changes, school teachers face a new and difficult challenge, since they are required to fulfill stricter criteria and maintain their teaching standards at a higher level than in previous years. For this reason, new strategies need to be adopted in order to answer to this demand. Self-reflection has been considered as one of the main factors that can positively affect teachers’ skills in both pre-interactive and interactive phases (Schön, 1983). Many authors consider the ability to analyze and reflect upon one’s teaching as the key to successful learning (Picci, Calvani & Bonaiuti, 2012), as well as it contributes to the development of one’s teaching expertise (Putnam & Borko, 2000), and self-efficacy (Arsal, 2014).

The use of video-based analysis has become a powerful tool and a prevalently used strategy in teachers’ professional development. Using videos gives teachers the possibility of scrutinizing one segment of a lesson after another, and analyzing them from different critical points of views - e.g. students’ interaction, engagement, instructions, or content knowledge (van Es, Tunney, Goldsmith & Saego, 2014). As Tripp & Rich (2012) suggest, using video analysis leads us to improve the ability to evaluate our own teaching, since it draws attention and comprehension to different patterns in our teaching practice, and thus it results in effective teaching behavior. Other studies have demonstrated that video analysis also helps teachers articulate their tacit assumptions and purpose regarding teaching and learning (Powell, 2005), assess strengths and weaknesses of teaching, i.e. identify problem areas in teaching (Rich et al., 2007). Several studies also reported that by means of video analysis teachers re-evaluated their question-asking strategies (van Es, Tunney, Goldsmith & Saego, 2014).

Thus, in the first phase of our study, the objective was to analyze the ability of self-reflection using a video annotation tool in teachers of English as a second language (ESL) without following any rubric or framework. Our main interest was to understand whether and what do teachers see when reflecting upon their teaching practice without any guidance. The study was carried out at a bilingual primary school in Guadalupe, Nuevo Leon (MEX). 15 ESL teachers were recorded and asked to reflect upon their practice without following any rubric. Our results showed that the majority of teachers looked mostly at superficial features and behaviors of their own teaching, i.e. what they perceived they did well or poorly, rather than investigating their students and their student’ needs. Based on this results, in the second phase of the study we are going to compare the changes in teachers’ self-reflection abilities after receiving a protocol and professional guidance.

Keywords:

ESL teachers, video annotation tool, self-reflection.