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!JURNAL! !!!
SOSAINS
JURNAL SOSIAL DAN SAINS
VOL 2 NO 4 2022
P-ISSN 2774-7018, E-ISSN 2774-700X
AN ENGLISH TEACHER’S REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN ENGLISH FOREIGN
LANGUAGE (EFL) CLASSROOM
Rihali Indra Munggaran
English Education Department, University of Singaperbangsa Karawang, Indonesia
Corresponding Author: Rihali Indra Munggaran
Email: rihalimunggaran@gmail.com
Article Info:
Accepted : March, 28
th
2022
Approved : April, 09
th
2022
Published : April, 15
th
2022
Keywords:
Teacher,
Reflective
Practice, EFL
Classroom
ABSTRACT
The duty of the teacher is not merely transfering knowledge but he/she should be
aware to any students’s difficulties by carry on reflective practice during or after
learning process. Therefore, This study examine how does the teacher reflect the
teaching process in EFL classroom. In this respect, qualitative approach and
descriptive qualitative method are used in this study. The study explored 6 participants
such as one English teacher as primary source and five students as secondary source.
The data were collected via observation, interview and documentation. The
documentation is presented in the form of teacher’s diary which is teacher can express
about his/her feelings, experiences, difficulties and problems in a diary writing. The
findings of the study revealed that the teacher using diary writing as a strategy to
reflect the teaching process after learning activity has finished. The teacher always
helps students, who are difficult to understand the material repeatedly. Reviewing the
material is frequently use to check whether students still remember or forget and
giving some questions related to the material to make students focus on learning
process. The teacher arranged the technology to be used in learning activity to make
students more interest on English subject.
INTRODUCTION
In Indonesia, English as a subject that must be mastered by students because
students will be compete with the wider society to realize the purpose of life. However,
there are found some difficulties in learning English specifically in classroom settings.
English is a languange that is not easy to learn. Therefore, many problems are often found
in every learning process. These problems include the decrease of learning motivation
which make the students are indolent while doing the assignment and studying,
unsatisfactory achievement results and also classroom environment is not conducive.
The figure who can answer the problem is a teacher. A teacher is a key in a
successful learning. As (Shirao, Momanyi, & Anyona, 2020) argue that “The teacher is
the most important ingredient in the effective teaching ...”. Based on Awuor & Chemutai,
it means that a teacher should be able to optimize his/her role because a successful learner
depends on a teacher.
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Rihali Indra Munggaran 519
In optimizing role, a teacher should be able to guide the students to develop their
knowledge and abilities, foster students’ motivation and solve students’ problem during
learning process. It can enhance the teaching quality for the teacher itself. Actually, there
are several ways to clear up the problem found in learning process, one of them is
perform reflective practice. Reflective practice for the teacher is a self-evaluation
regarding what has been taught to the students, observe what happened in the classroom
and find solution to the problems found. In the evaluation process, a teacher should be
able to identify the students, know that students have a problem while learning or not. If
the problem is found, the teacher should be able to find solution so the teaching and
learning has a better progress. If there is no problem, the teacher can continue the
teaching and learning activity.
Reflective practice has become powerful movement for teacher in creating the best
generation in the future. Describe that: “Reflective practice is a process where teachers
think over their teaching practices, analyze how something was taught and how the
practice might be improved or changed for better learning outcome”. Indeed, reflective
practice affect the teacher development and require teacher to improve self-awarness
toward any issues in classroom environment (Lu, 2021).
Although there are not many previous research in this study, it is found under title
Reflective Practice: A Means to Teacher Development. In the study, the researchers
conducted a qualitative research to see the effectiveness of reflective practice in the
development of student (Yu, 2018). The study examines how the educator created
chances for student-teachers to develop their reflective practice teaching sessions. The
result shows that reflective practice give a significant change on students teachers
behaviour and it is also impacted on the teacher’s development and improvement.
Another researchers has been analyzed reflective practice such with the title The
Role of Reflection During the First Teaching Experience of Foreign LanguagePre-service
Teachers: An Exploratory –Case study. The study conducted 2 aspects of reflection:
Reflection-on-action & Reflection-in-action and three levels of reflection. The result of
the study shows that reflective practice helped pre-service teachers to redirect certain
actions in their classroom or to implement necessary changes at improving their teaching
(McCoy & Lynam, 2021).
Nevertheless, the researcher is interested to analyze how does the teacher do
reflection in EFL classroom to improve teaching quality based on three aspects of
reflection: reflection-on-action, reflection-in-action and reflection-for-action
(Moghaddam, Davoudi, Adel, & Amirian, 2020). This research is conducted in Junior
High School level with many characteristics of students and various challenges in
learning process. This research is expected to enhance teacher self-awarness toward
students’ difficulties in learning English, improve teacher’s teaching quality and motivate
teacher to be better by doing reflective practice (Lipka, Forkosh Baruch, & Meer, 2019).
Nowadays, the English language is considered as an international language because
there has never been a language so widely spread or spoken by so many people as
English. It has a special role to play in the countries where it has been accepted as the
official language and is being used as a medium of communication (Thorburn, 2019).
Nowadays, we are living in a world which the job market is becoming more and
more dynamic so it is vital that people make adaptations to have better job (Novakova,
2020). Learning to learn is considered a requisite for entry into most professions. It is not
a simple task for defining the quality of a teacher as the criteria because it can vary from
person to person, from one community to another and from one era to the next.
Adults are more interested in learning language and it becomes more important for
good teacher to be able to teach English in an effective and interesting way (Alzeebaree
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& Zebari, 2021). In fact, teachers’ effectiveness can not be assessed in any criteria. In
language teaching, teachers have different styles of teaching and they also can be
classified as native teachers and non-native teachers, unlike teachers of other subjects.
The field of language teaching is subject to rapid changes and language teachers need to
maintain the interest, creativity and enthusiasm in their profession (Whitehead &
Greenier, 2019).
School system effectiveness refers to the extent to which every unit within school
carry out their routine functions that can promote or hinder the attainment of set
objectives (Owan, 2019). School system effectiveness implies a state where activities
within every school are tailored towards students’ development, school growth, and goal
attainment. Insight has been provided as to what constitutes an effective school
(Vongkulluksn, Matewos, Sinatra, & Marsh, 2018). It follows, therefore, that the
judgment of any school depends on five major aspects-the teachers, students, principals
or school leaders, the physical facilities, and the school environment. It is one thing to
understand what constitutes an effective school, as it is yet another thing to measure the
effectiveness of a school (Ilomäki & Lakkala, 2018).
An effective teacher has a high rate punctuality, good time management, good
academic performance of students, good relationship with other staff, respect for rules
and authority, adherence to school norms, effective communication, proper record
keeping, and good professional behavior. The performance shown by the teacher is an
indicator of the effectiveness of the achievement and the success of learning objectives
(Donohoo, 2018). Teacher’s performance is an indication of the success of the teacher in
carrying out institutional tasks and other specific tasks demanded by the nature of the
teacher’s position. Efforts to improve teacher performance can be done by increasing
work productivity, work quality, work efficiency, job satisfaction, work discipline, work
excellent, and work development.
The reputation of the school and its impact on the quality of the educational
institutions depends on the quality of the teachers working in it (Hassan, Mirza, &
Hussain, 2020). Therefore, for school development it requires teachers with high
discipline. Teacher’s performance is, basically, the teacher’s achievement in his work.
Teacher’s performance can be also assessed through the extent to which the learning
carried out, which can give significant effect to students. Specifically, the work target
requires the teacher to formulate learning objectives in the form of behavior that is
transferred to students. This means that learning quality is the main determinant factor of
the success of the learning process (Jackson, Fleming, & Rowe, 2019).
Due to the importance of the role of the teacher’s performance in the quality of the
education and the quality of human resources, it is natural that the reality of the low
human development index and the low quality of the education in Indonesia is a result of
the low teacher’s performance (Jin, Qian, Chin, & Zhang, 2020). Work discipline is an
influential factor of teacher’s performance. Work discipline is a behavior to comply with
all organizational rules in doing work to achieve expected goals (Bakti & Hartono, 2022).
Teacher’s discipline is very important in carrying out the duties and obligations as
instructors, educators and advisers. High discipline will be able to build professional
performance, because with a good understanding of discipline, the teacher will able to
observe the rules and strategic steps in implementing learning.
Teacher work discipline which includes attendance at school, adherence to
teacher’s work standards, commitment to duties, responsibility for duties, and courtesy
and neatness have gone well. Good discipline reflects the amount of responsibility a
person has towards the tasks assigned to him. Communication and work discipline are
predictors of employee performance. Good discipline reflects the amount of one’s
An English Teacher’s Reflective Practice In English
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Rihali Indra Munggaran 521
responsibility towards the tasks assigned to him. This encourages work passion, work
morale and high work performance.
Work discipline is a form of compliance toward school organizations. The aim is to
motivate teachers and school staff to meet performance target according to the objectives
of the school organization. Efforts to improve teacher work discipline are usually directed
as teacher’s behavior. The purpose of discipline is to improve teacher’s performance. A
person who has high discipline will continue to work well even he is not supervised by a
supervisor. He will not use work time to do other things that have nothing to do with the
work, and he will obey the rules that exist in a work environment with high awareness.
RESEARCH METHODS
The research method uses descriptive qualitative method. The researcher describe
how does the teacher reflect the teaching process in EFL classroom. The aim of this study
is to describe systematically the facts and characteristics of a given population or area of
interest, factually and accurately.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The purpose of this section is to analyse and discuss the gathered data. For the sake
of clarity, the analysis and discussion are presented in three sections. These sections are
related to the research questions listed above. The focus of these sections is as follows:
(1) teacher engagement in classroom research, (2) complexity of classroom research and
its causes and (3) reasons for conducting/not conducting classroom research.
1. Teacher engagement in classroom research
Two questions on the questionnaire were related to the participants’ engagement in
classroom research and their wish to be involved in this kind of professional activity. In
the former question, three participants (n = 3, 3.75%) were always involved in classroom
research, eighteen (n = 18, 22.5%) were very often involved in research and thirty three
(n = 33, 41.25%) were sometimes involved. The other two options were: rarely (n = 22,
27.5%) and never (n = 4, 5%). According to the latter question, ten participants (n = 10,
12.5%) would like to always be involved in research projects, twenty four (n = 24, 30%)
very often, twenty three (n = 23, 28.75%) sometimes, fourteen (n = 14, 17.5%) rarely and
nine (n = 9, 11.25%) never.
There were seventy six participants (n = 76, 95%) who stated that they do research
in the classroom at different levels of frequency. These participants said they took part in
quantitative (n = 29, 38.15%), qualitative (n = 12, 15.78%) and mixed-methods (n = 35,
46.05%) projects. They also added that they used a number of instruments. In descending
order, the instruments used were: questionnaires (n = 45, 59.21%), tests (n = 42, 55.26%),
observation sheets (n = 27, 35.52%), interview guides/question lists (n = 23, 30.26%),
checklists (n = 14, 18.42%), portfolios (n = 9, 11.84%) and diaries/journals (n = 8,
10.52%).
The questionnaire revealed that the majority of the participants believed that
classroom research is important. The participants’ opinions were as follows: very
important (n = 47, 58.75%), important (n = 25, 31.25%), moderately important (n = 7,
8.75%) and of little importance (n = 1, 1.25%). The interview data also support those
Armenian teachers do value classroom research. When asked whether they believed
conducting classroom research is important, two participants stated,
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Well of course it is important. Before MA TEFL I didn’t think so, but after doing
the research, especially the action research, ... I think it is really important; it changes lots
of things. [...] For example, things that you don’t see or you don’t realise - you do it
unconsciously, and then after doing the research you pay attention to things. So I think it
is really important. (Tatev)
Well, I think research in the classroom is important because it enables you to
understand what are the needs for your students and to what extent to enhance the
activities to be given to them to develop their language skills later. (Tanya)
Likewise, the participants felt that EFL teachers should be required to do classroom
research. In this question, however, the frequency distribution was reversed for the first
two items: 47 and 25 vs. 10 and 51. The distribution of opinions in the second question
was as follows: ten of the participants (n = 10, 12.5%) strongly agreed, fifty one (n = 51,
63.75%) agreed, thirteen (n = 13, 16.25%) were undecided and six (n = 6, 7.5%) strongly
disagreed.
The participants were also asked whether or not they agreed that classroom
research should be made compulsory for all EFL teachers. According to the gathered
data, twenty three participants (n = 23, 28.75%) were undecided about this statement, In
general, the participants admitted that classroom research is difficult. Forty five
participants (n = 45, 56.25%) agreed with this statement, whereas thirteen (n = 13,
16.25%) were undecided, twenty one (n = 21, 26.25%) disagreed and one (n = 1, 1.25%)
strongly disagreed. The participants also clarified what makes classroom research
difficult for them. The most common issues were: designing research tools (n = 33,
41.25%), handling ethical issues (n = 29, 36.25%), formulating proper research!questions!
(n" =!27,!33.75%),!analysing!data!(n"=!25,!31.25%)!and!collecting!data!(n"=!13,!16.25%).!The!
results!are!presented!in!Figure!1!belo w.!
Figure 1. Areas that make classroom research a complex task
Well, I find it interesting actually, neither difficult nor easy.... Every teacher’s
motivation is to know their target audience and what are their expectations. So, it’s
difficult if you have very different ideas and you are going to research individual students
during the course; it makes things hard. And it also makes your work easy because you
An English Teacher’s Reflective Practice In English
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Rihali Indra Munggaran 523
know exactly what to do during the course and how to work with every single student to
satisfy them.
I wouldn’t say it is difficult or easy. It depends on your knowledge of how to
conduct research. If you are aware of what are the things you need, how you need to, for
example, write the research questions, use instruments, and then collect data and analyse
it, it is not going to be so difficult. But the real difficulty that I had was analysing the
data. I think, and I have also heard it from my peers, that it is the worst part because you
deal with numbers, especially if you are doing quantitative research. Then to analyse
them, and sometimes also generalise them.
2. One participant noted an advantage of classroom research from her experience:
No, no [classroom research] is easier actually, because sometimes when you go and
do research on others, for example with other teachers it’s hard. Maybe teachers are busy
or some of them are not very open. In Armenia, especially, I think the research idea is not
really working well, because teachers are very Interestingly, several participants noted
that doing research was neither difficult nor easy. They offered some unique perspectives
about the act of doing research and highlighted a few challenges.
3. Action research was great. I would do action research in the future
Overall, Armenian teachers consider classroom research to be a difficult part of
their practice. In particular, the teachers reported that they have problems with basic
elements of pedagogical research, including formulating proper research questions,
designing research tools or analysing data. Another interesting finding was that Armenian
teachers had difficulty in collecting data in the classroom. In reality, an active search for
data is not necessary as classrooms abound in data. However, teachers rarely regard their
students’ tests or written assignments as research data that can be examined both
qualitatively and quantitatively. On the other hand, some teachers considered the simple
act of collecting test scores, student feedback and student assignments to be research,
without any organised approach to analysis of the data. Hence, it is advisable that
teachers be informed that systematic data collection in the classroom, with appropriate
analysis, performs a pivotal role in boosting learning and keeping track of student
progress as well as in “identify[ing] patterns through which a holistic image of teaching
can be created”.
CONCLUSION
Based on the research problem, the overall result of this research can be
summarized that English teacher using diary writing as a strategy to reflect the teaching
process after learning activity has finished. The teacher expresses her experiences,
feelings, difficulties and problems in the diary and try to find solution of the problems.
The teacher always helps students who are difficult to understamd the material by explain
the material repeatedly. Reviewing the material is frequently use to check whether
students still remember or forget and giving some questoins related the material to make
students focus on learning process. Role play method is effective to build students’
confidence and spirit. The teacher sometimes invites students to singing together when
they look bored. The teacher has arranged the technology to be used in learning activity
to make students more interest on English subject. Students feel enjoy and easy to
understand the material. They pay attention on learning process and complete the
assignments. Only a few students have difficulties to understanding the material.
However teacher always explain the material repeatedly and motivate them to be braver.
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Furthermore, students want the teacher to be more assertive and able to rise the
voice volume.
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