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Critical reflection is, without doubt, the single most important component of the ELF (English as a lingua franca) awareness framework. ELF awareness has been proposed (Sifakis, 2019; Sifakis Sifakis et al., 2022; Sifakis (b) understand the local socio-cultural and even political-economic constraints of their ELT context, namely. those dimensions in the immediate and broader “culture” that will “allow” them to engage in potent ELF-aware instructional interventions (e.g., dealing with the impact of a prevailing testing culture); (c) are cognizant of their own deeper, and often unquestioned, convictions about using and teaching English that inform their instructional practice (e.g., correcting and providing feedback); and (d) are open to transforming those convictions that are dysfunctional and engaging in action research that will prompt them to develop and implement new instructional practices. As a result of such reflection, teachers will establish their own mix of instructional activities and tasks that will be relevant and meaningful for their own specific context, complement existing courseware, and ultimately help their learners raise their own ELF awareness. What these demands imply is that becoming critically reflective within the ELF awareness framework raises various challenges for teacher educators that need to be overcome. In what follows, we present four different levels of reflection, as proposed by adult education theorist Jack Mezirow, and discuss how they can help teacher educators and teachers appreciate the nature and limitations of the different levels of reflection vis-à-vis the above specifications so that they can better navigate through their journey to becoming critically reflective and ELF aware. We then discuss genuine examples of teachers' reflections from a teacher education program and deliberate about implications for teacher education and pedagogy. Mezirow drew on both Dewey and Schön, and specifically built upon the model developed by Boud, Keogh, and Walker (1985) that perceives reflection as follows: (a) returning to experience to notice previously unobserved details, (b) analyzing feelings related to it, and (c) re-evaluating it, by associating new insights to what we already know and integrating, validating and appropriating these insights in a way that makes sense to us. To clarify this process, Mezirow (2000) suggested that the building blocks of an individual's meaning-making system are (a) habits of mind, that is, sets of socially acquired predispositions that act as a filter for interpreting experience, and (b) points of view, namely, specific beliefs, feelings, and attitudes that result from these habits of mind and shape one's action. Habits of mind, he argued, are so powerful that we uncritically take their validity for granted (as in the process of ideological hegemony—Gramsci, 1971). In our case, ELF awareness addresses what we may call a ‘native-speakerist habit of mind’, which manifests itself through a range of relevant points of view (e.g., that English ‘belongs’ to its native users) and subsequent practices (e.g., the pursuit of native-like competence in ELT). For Mezirow (1991, 1995, 2000) what may empower us to mitigate the influence of dysfunctional habits of mind on our everyday practices is to focus on the points of view that stem from them and engage in reflection. He then defined four levels of reflection that differentiate the extent and depth of analysis that points of view can be subjected to (Figure 1). For Mezirow (1991), most of our everyday life is engaged in habitual action, that is, in mechanical action that we automatically perform with little or no conscious thought, as when we absent-mindedly ride a bicycle or drive a car. Taking place “outside of focal awareness” (Mezirow, 1991, p. 106), habitual action does not entail any observation on personal or others' experience and, therefore, does not lead to any change. In a much-cited study on non-reflection and reflection in educational contexts, Kember, Mckay, Sinclair, and Wong (2008) conclude that habitual action can be observed in adult learners' written work. It appears, as they state, in responses that seem to have been given without any attempt to achieve an understanding of the issue at hand or to form a view of it; such responses, they add, typically look like reproductions of random or seemingly relevant materials they have found (e.g., online) and have summarized, paraphrased or copied word for word, without making any real sense of them. Thoughtful action differs from habitual action in that it actually entails thinking, including higher-order cognitive processes, that may lead to useful “judgments, analyses and evaluations” (Mezirow, 1991, p. 106). In this regard, thoughtful action may indeed be critical, but it is not necessarily reflective. It implies that we draw on prior learning to identify our points of view (e.g., synthesizing second language acquisition theorizing to justify native speakers' roles as ‘ideal’ users in ELT) or make factual observations about our own or others' experience (e.g., employing ELF-related negotiation strategies or, when it comes to emotions, feeling ashamed in front of native speakers, in what Mezirow calls introspection). Still, our thinking remains non-reflective, unless we “assess the reasons or assumptions” that support our claims (Mezirow, 2006, p. 37). For Kember et al. (1999), most of the ‘book’ learning fostered in formal education falls under this category: we are urged to understand, analyze, apply, or evaluate what is often called ‘theory’ (e.g., about ELF, in what has also been termed ‘ELF-informed teaching’—see below) or create new knowledge on this basis, but rarely to re-create our prior learning. Thoughtful action becomes reflective when we try to confirm or disprove the appropriateness of our points of view in relation to any practices they may result in (Mezirow, 1991). Then, it can become transformative, if these practices are found to be inaccurate and need to be reframed or revised. This validity testing process, Mezirow argued, is what content, process, and premise reflection is about and should be prioritized in adult education, preferably via reflective discourse (e.g., with a mentor or other course participants—cf. Mezirow, 2003). Content and process reflection, which Mezirow (1995) calls ordinary reflection, focuses on problem-solving and is equivalent in level. Content reflection refers to questioning “what we perceive, think, feel or act upon” to evaluate the actual nature of our points of view based on experience, while process reflection refers to assessing “how we perform these functions” and the effectiveness of our tactics in this respect (Mezirow, 1991, pp. 107, 108; emphasis in the original). Such reflective practices imply, as Cranton (2013, p. 270) puts it, asking ‘What is happening?’ (e.g., in our case, ‘What do I think about a native speaker?’, ‘What elements show that?’, ‘What do I do or feel, as a result?’) and ‘How did I get to this place?’ (e.g., ‘How have I arrived at such thoughts about a native speaker?’, ‘How do they relate to my personal and others' experiences?’, ‘Have I considered all relevant parameters, e.g., about English?’). What distinguishes reflection, therefore, is its focus on self-critique based on useful associations between, rather than mere descriptive observations on, our own and other's experience, while also creatively exploiting other useful information (e.g., on ELF). In this respect, although all reflection is inherently critical, critical reflection, as the highest type of reflective thinking, essentially refers to premise reflection (Mezirow, 1991, 1995, 1998, 2006). Premise reflection is grounded in problem-posing and involves, as its name shows, identifying and challenging the premises upon which our points of view are predicated, namely the assumptions underlying “why we perceive, think, feel, or act as we do” (Mezirow, 1991, p. 108; e.g., why we idolize native speakers), apropos of their ideological origins (e.g., native-speakerism), driving forces (e.g., the ELT world) and impact on us. Thus, with ordinary reflection, we may create a new point of view, change an existing one (elaborate it, after affirming its validity) or transform it (negate it and replace its false aspects), but it is only via premise reflection that a habit of mind can gradually transform, leading to praxis, that is, truly self-authored action (Kegan, 1994; Mezirow, 1991). In light of the above, the usefulness of Mezirow's conceptualization of reflection in understanding and, by extension, in fostering, ELF awareness lies in two central areas. First, by clarifying the qualitative differences among critical thinking, reflection, and critical reflection, it illustrates that overcoming one's dependence on the native speaker and then integrating ELF in one's practice requires more than criticizing dominant native-speakerist narratives; it involves identifying how and why such narratives have been delimiting our way of thinking, feeling and acting and constructing a revised interpretation of our role within our broader social context. This is a sine qua non-condition for determining afterward the relevance of ELF to our particular teaching situation, including, for example, the need for helping our learners develop their communicative capability in ELF, in what Seidlhofer and Widdowson (2019, 2020) define as ‘ELF-informed pedagogy’. Secondly, it indicates that this process is fundamentally internally oriented, contingent on the extent to which we are ready and willing to take a deep look at ourselves. In practice, this implies that understanding, analyzing, and even critically evaluating ELF-related research (e.g., what makes ELF communication ‘tick’) is only the first step toward raising one's ELF awareness, as such cognitive processes require thoughtful yet non-reflective action. Likewise, expressing ‘ELF-compatible’ ideas (cf. Dewey & Pineda, 2020) and even trying to apply them in our practices does not necessarily mean we have undergone a transformation. In order for our engagement with ELF to have a long-lasting effect, we need to explore such ideas in more depth to define how they relate to our and others' (e.g., our learners') experience, in what Mezirow described as content, process, and premise reflection. This undeniably goes beyond, for instance, a factual description of our points of view or a simple narration of events we have experienced in the past. On that basis, Mezirow's levels of reflection offer a comprehensive framework for gauging teachers' engagement with ELF, which may help a teacher educator: (a) determine how far along teachers are in the critical reflection process and what could be done to help them reflect more deeply (e.g., through group discussions), and (b) in the end, evaluate the overall quality of their reflective attempts and reach meaningful conclusions about the occurrence of change each time. In that sense, Mezirow's levels of reflection serve as a way of ‘measuring’ reflection to gain a deeper understanding of the process of change in ELF awareness, as Rose, McKinley, and Galloway's (2021) suggest about the need for systematic teacher education research basically imply. I cannot really understand all that fuss around who ‘owns’ English. And I do not see the reason I should ‘own’ it because I can just communicate in it. I've always tended to associate certain languages to certain peoples. There should be an effort to keep languages unspoiled. It's inevitable that some changes will occur as the language is alive but an effort should be made so that it's not totally altered. (T1) English is the language of commerce, literature and science and as such it belongs to all who use it to communicate, think and express themselves regardless of their origin. It is a universal tool used to bring people together and a language that has escaped ethnic boundaries, one that belongs to its worldwide users, out of the control and restrictions of the lands where it originated. (T2) I find it rather contradictory to consider the language your own and call it ‘foreign’. What does this mean though? I believe no one possesses a language except natives but the fact that it's spoken throughout the globe means that non-natives possess a part of responsibility. What I'm saying sounds contradictory (at least to my ‘ears’). I'm still thinking about it. My mind is all messed up. I am not sure about anything anymore. Perhaps we shouldn't even call it ‘foreign’. (T3) I'm not a native speaker. This can probably mean that the language many times is associated with my mother tongue, and I can see that happen to my students. I wonder … The way I see it now, this differentiates English in Greece from English in the UK, Spain, etc. The matter is, can it be associated with a particular nation? The answer was simple (yes, British) but perhaps there's no clear-cut answer. We may set a starting point when it was strictly bound to a nation, but it evolved and can no longer be confined to specific boundaries. (T4) English has become global and that means there are non-native speakers that have made it their own. The more I think about all this, the more sense it makes. The question is why hadn't I seen it before? Was I blind or something? I think I kept going ‘by the book’, to be the perfect non-native ‘native speaker’ for my learners! It's not what I'd like to go on doing. (T5) I think the majority of Greeks associate English with England and look down on everything else! What I mean is that it's connected in people's MINDS … It's the misunderstanding that anything in English is from England that we've been brainwashed to religiously believe since we were born. But we teachers shouldn't stay there … Perhaps we should associate it with the person who speaks it at that time only. (T6) T5 and T6's responses manifest the highest level of reflection, according to Mezirow, namely critical or premise reflection. T5's observations on the global function of English culminate in a profound realization about an assumption driving her teaching practices: that she had unconsciously been trying to resemble an ‘ideal’ native speaker, prompting her learners to emulate that standard. Then, T6 astutely characterizes that deeply ingrained assumption as an orthodoxy that society has ‘taught’ them to uncritically take for granted. In this way, she essentially describes the nature of the socially induced native-speakerist habit of mind underpinning her prior points of view and practices. In the end, both teachers call for transformative action within their contexts, perhaps, as T6 notes, by associating English with the person using it each time. That self-defined appreciation of the need to change while unearthing what had been shaping one's perceptions and, subsequently, one's teaching practices is precisely what the ELF awareness process intends to bring about. It is on that basis that they may eventually be empowered to determine how exactly they can integrate ELF in their teaching, so that it can become relevant and meaningful, inspired by the diverse suggestions put forward in the ELF research literature, as another trigger for reflection on their experience. In this article, we have argued that the promotion of critical reflection, as the most important component of the ELF awareness process, primarily entails understanding what it is, what it is not, and what demands it places on a teacher (and, by extension, a learner or any other ELT stakeholder). To that end, we have discussed four progressively deeper levels of reflection, as described by adult education theorist Jack Mezirow, showcasing their qualitative differences through a range of genuine examples of teachers' reflective attempts. Our analysis has sought to highlight that the reflective process is inherently intrinsic—it requires focusing on ourselves and our role within our broader and immediate social environment to address dysfunctional convictions that may have been driving us. This analysis also clarifies another equally important issue about the motive underlying our preference for the term ‘ELF-aware’ instead of ‘ELF-informed’: while the latter is used to indicate a “focus on promoting the application of an ELF way of thinking about language and communication” (Dewey & Pineda, 2020, p. 429), we use the former to highlight that we focus on the process whereby, in view of ELF, an individual may develop personally and professionally. This eventually includes the ‘application of an ELF way of based on rather than The confirm that we have no of Sifakis is a of English for specific in the of English and of the and of He has on ELF awareness, communication and language teaching education, adult education, and teacher is a at the the transformative of ELF teacher has several research in and research teacher education, the of ELF, transformative and critical reflection.
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