Promoting Self-Reflection of Foreign Language Teachers through Professional Development: An Action Research Dissertation

This explanatory mixed-method action research describes how a social constructivist professional development program impacts self-reflection of foreign language teachers at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). The problem is that traditional professional development for foreign language teachers does not improve self-reflection. Despite their individual differences and qualifications, most teachers receive traditional in-service professional development (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, Gardner, & Espinoza, 2017) on a specific topic and have no time to reflect on their existing practices, newly presented concepts, or students\u27 responses to instruction. The effectiveness of such professional development is questionable (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Penuel, Gallagher, & Moorthy, 2011; Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, &; Shapley, 2007; Wei, Darling-Hammond, & Adamson, 2010). Therefore, the purpose of the study is to guide teachers to incorporate reflective teaching practices into their routines through a social constructivist professional development program. The program was adapted from Hall and Simeral (2015) and was tailored to teachers\u27 initial self-reflection tendencies. Eleven foreign language teachers participated in the study. Teachers\u27 self-reflection tendencies and frequency of reflection were measured using two parameters: (a) pretest and posttest surveys (quantitative data) and (b) teachers\u27 responses to prompts in their final reflective journals (qualitative data). Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were used to describe the changes in teachers\u27 self-reflection tendencies and frequency of reflection. Findings showed that the social constructivist professional development program increased the self-reflection tendencies and frequency of reflection for nine of DLIFLC participating teachers. Two participating teachers showed a decline in their self-reflection tendencies. The findings guided the development of the action plan to explain the role of the teachers\u27 supervisors and trainers as servant leaders (Liden, Panaccio, Hu, & Meuser, 2014) and builders of teachers\u27 capacity for reflective teaching (Hall & Simeral, 2017). Suggestions for future studies are provided