Increasing Student Autonomy and Investment in Discussions : Journaling to Reflect on Teaching Practices

Journaling can assist teachers in reflecting on their teaching practices by providing a low-pressure way to consider the relationships between classroom incidents, teaching practices, and theory.While journaling about my experience of teaching English discussion skills to an uninspired class of Japanese university freshmen, I reflected-on-action that occurred in the classroom and reflected-for-action that I could take to better my teaching practices in future lessons (Murphy, 2014).Through this process, I was able to meaningfully engage with theory and discover ways to alter my teaching practices to increase opportunities for meaningful learning and to enhance students' cognitive and affective investment in discussions.