Reflective practice and three TESOL teachers in Japan

The purpose of this study was to show how reflective journals and interviews have enabled three TESOL teachers in Japan reflect through the four stages of reflection as presented in the literature: engaging issue, reassessment of the engaging issue, "concrete evidence" and new metaphors/orientation and what aspects of their teaching practice did teachers focus on when writing reflective journals. The theoretical framework of this study has been based on the key concepts of reflection developed by John Dewey (1933) and Donald A. Schon, (1983). Data were collected through journals and in - depth interviews during a four month period and the qualitative analysis was applied to analyse the data. In spite of the small sample, rich data was yielded from the analysis, the findings have shown that writing reflective journals is indeed beneficial for reflective practice however not all participants have shown evidence of reflecting through all the phases of reflection even though a couple of them made respective changes in their teaching practices and professional development.