What Do the Students Learn in Their Micro Teaching Class?: A Study on The Students' Teaching Reflection Journals

Proceedings The 5th International Seminar 2011 "Teacher Education in the Era of World Englishes", Salatiga, November 21-22, 2011, p. 274-286This paper starts from the idea of promoting reflective practices to students in an English language teaching program in a private university in Salatiga . This is in line with recent developments in teacher education which have led to a renewed interest in the reflective practices (Antonek, McCormick, and Donato, 1997; Pedro, 2005; Ottesen, 2007; Semerci, 2007; Cavanagh and Prescott, 2010). The data gathered from the participants' teaching reflection was used to see how self reflection assissts the them develop critical thinking on the issues raised in their Micro Teaching class, for example in the selection of certain ELT Methods, the use of Ll, the use of feedback and questions. The data was also meant to give an account on the focus of the participants' teaching reflections. The findings revealed that reflective practices contributed to the development of the participants' language teaching skills. This paper concludes that involving student teachers in conducting self reflection is beneficial to help these future teachers become life-long learner