Almost all recordings of post-lesson reflections began with me asking the student teachers how they thought their lessons went. My language and tone could be characterized as warm, open, and receptive. To begin our first reflection, I asked Liying, “Well, how do you think it went?” Receptive questions like these allowed the student teachers to open our reflections with whatever thoughts were foremost on their minds.
These thoughts are what I refer to as opening assessments or open assessments. An assessment is a broad category of opinion on a lesson that could include observations, evidence, evaluations, teacher thinking, applied principles, and reasons for occurrences. With their opening assessments, the student teachers were choosing dialogical text to which we could react and share thoughts to begin collaborative processes.
In opening assessments, student teachers were forthcoming and shared at least a
paragraph of thought. They voiced their thoughts passionately, showing there was much that they
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wanted to discuss about their stimulating experiences. This is evident in Dilin’s opening assessment of our first reflection, which began after we finished reflecting on Feng’s lesson.
K:…Let’s focus a little more on your lesson. We talked about it a little bit. Tell me some more of your thoughts that have come up.
D: My lesson didn’t work out as I think. It, um, I think I didn’t plan it very well, especially for the vocabulary part. I didn’t have a very good lead-in, even though I present them with this menu that they can refer to, they have no idea what the word means. And the menu will be too
complicated for them. I should have adapted to make it a little bit easier. Because I’m picking, I’m choose the menu that is a Mediterranean restaurant, which a lot of them, they haven’t been there. So there’s a lot of kind of text on the menu, you know. I can see that when I give them the menu everybody’s kind of get bogged down to the menu. And there was kind of, you know, asking each other, or trying to check it online, check it on the internet to figure out what does that word mean…
K: Um huh.
D:…You know it’s kind of become a distraction from what I really want them to know, because I just want to use the menu as realia, you know, as we read it from the textbook. Just they can turn to use that thing to help facilitate my, kind of prompt to help my activity. But they kind of become a distraction for them.
K: I see, so you’d adapt it and…
D: I should have adapted it…
K:…and made it a little bit simpler.
D:…simpler. It’s too complicated.
K: Okay.
In his opening assessment, Dilin focused on the obvious problem that students didn’t know the many foreign words on the Mediterranean restaurant menu. He offered observations, evidence, evaluations, teacher thinking, an applied principle (realia), and reasons for this occurrence.
He successfully identified an obvious CLT problem that had a general effect on his whole lesson. He also offered a general solution which I agreed upon by empathetically stating, “I see.”
This example shows how it was possible to accomplish reflective purposes quickly with limited
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dialogical text. But I found that this was only the case with obvious and general problems and not less obvious problems in distinct parts of lessons.
Dilin represented the sample of participants in immediately addressing a problem in his opening assessment. In most of the 12 opening assessments, student teachers began our
reflections by talking about perceived problems, even when no CLT problems existed in their lessons. In Reflection 2, Liying immediately addressed a vocabulary teaching problem though I thought her practice was sound. The sample’s focus on problems was a curious circumstance because in orientation, the practicum was presented as a positive opportunity to implement TESOL program learnings.
Student teacher opening assessments in all seven lessons with CLT problems began with their identification of at least one problem. This suggests that they had awareness of serious communicative problems affecting their lessons. However, they identified either minor problems which had little effect on the lesson or obvious and general problems that were evident
throughout the lesson (see Table 9). They usually did not identify problems in specific lesson parts. This necessitated our progressive, collaborative dialogue through stages to identify these less obvious problems and then search for solutions. The step-by-step progression through the stages allowed them to follow my references and foreign TESOL conceptions so that they could slowly come to deeper realizations without getting lost along the dialogical path
124 Table 9
Problems that Student Teachers Discussed in Opening Assessments Student Teacher
Reflection ST Discussed Problem/s Type of
Problem
Chaoxing Ref. 1 “answering questions immediately.” Minor
Jun Ref. 1 “Lecturing…little communication…Some of them…are used to [the] words. And some of them didn’t get it.”
Obvious and General and Minor Dilin Ref. 1
“didn’t plan it very well, especially for the vocabulary part… didn’t have a very good lead-in…Mediterranean Restaurant menu was “too complicated…they have no idea what the word[s] means.”
Obvious and General on 2 counts
and Minor Liying Ref. 1 Fred took the projector down; couldn’t use it for directions. Minor
Dilin Ref. 2 No lead-in to the activity. Abrupt beginning. Minor Dilin Ref. 3 “Awkward” beginning: “Don’t really know how to lead the
students in.” Minor
Chaoxing Ref. 3 Molly couldn’t copy and print 10 pages of vocabulary
words for each student Minor