Making Sense of Core Qualities to Sustain Professional Development through Core Reflection Practice

Abstract Professional development in sustainable teacher education has recently shifted to focusing on pedagogical practice rather than theoretical knowledge. Given that, reflection practice can have an effective role in identifying undiscovered potentials of prospective language teachers. Hence, the current study was an attempt to examine the potential core qualities of Iranian prospective language teachers in a way to sustain professional development through merging theoretical knowledge and pedagogical practice. To that end, core reflection model, which is a concept in the context of sustainability, was practiced by ten prospective language teachers through drawing on their reflective journals, focus group discussions, and field notes collected over a four month period. Analysis of the obtained data revealed several core qualities on the three scales of feeling, thinking, and wanting. These qualities appeared to have been developed through interaction of both theoretical knowledge and pedagogical practice. This demonstrates the value of reflection practice as a way toward more development in making sense of teachers’ core qualities. Thus it can lead to positive changes in shaping teachers sustainable professional identity.