English Language Classroom Research through Diary Studies : A Case of an Experienced English Teacher' s Diary

A Diary study is a first-person account of a language learning or teaching experience, documented through regular, candid entries in a personal journal and then analyzed for recurring patterns or salient events (Bailey 1990). It can provide teachers and student teachers with excellent opportunities for their professional development. In their previous article, Fukazawa and Nozawa (1995) analyzed the daily classroom reports written by 11 student teachers during their two-week teaching practice and suggested the importance of adopting this research method in in-service teacher education. The present project aims to analyze a diary written by an experienced high school English teacher. Using the four classroom observation viewpoints developed in the previous study, his seven-days diary was analyzed, and salient and recursive entries were extracted and reviewed for further analysis. In consequence, the experienced teacher's diary was found to focus on more global aspects of classroom procedure and to be more concerned with problem-solving aspects than student teachers' diaries