The Effects of Teaching Reflection Diaries on In-Service High School Teachers in Japan

Naoya Shibata, Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, Japan

Shibata, N. (2020). The effects of teaching reflection diaries on in-service high school teachers in Japan. Relay Journal, 3(1), 80-99. https://doi.org/10.37237/relay/030107

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Abstract

Although teaching reflection diaries (TRDs) are prevalent tools for teacher training, TRDs are rarely used in Japanese secondary educational settings. In order to delve into the effects of TRDs on teaching development, this illustrative case study was conducted with two female teachers (one novice, and one experienced) at a Japanese private senior high school. The research findings demonstrated that both in-service teachers perceived TRDs as beneficial tools for understanding their strengths and weaknesses. TRDs and class observations illustrated that the novice teacher raised their self-confidence in teaching and gradually changed their teaching activities. On the other hand, the experienced teacher held firm teaching beliefs based on their successful teaching experiences and were sometimes less willing to experiment with different approaches. However, they changed their teaching approaches when they lost balance between their class preparation and other duties. Accordingly, although teachers’ firm beliefs and successful experiences may sometimes become possible hindrances from using TRDs effectively, TRDs can be useful tools to train and help teachers realise their strengths and weaknesses.

Keywords: teaching reflection diaries, teacher beliefs, teacher motivation, Japanese high school

  

Teacher autonomy is essential to develop teaching skills and enhance teacher efficacy. As Reinders and Balcikanli (2011) highlight, “without sufficient knowledge and guidance, teachers are unlikely to develop the skills to be able to foster learner autonomy in their own classrooms” (p. 22). However, by choosing to engage in professional development, teachers, regardless of their level of experience, can enhance their expertise and serve as role models in order to help their language learners to develop their target language skills. Reflective diaries are effective tools that can be used both to enhance learner autonomy and to propel teacher development (Jeffrey & Hadley, 2002). Therefore, in order to visualise their development, teachers need to reflect upon their teaching periodically, for example, by utilising teaching reflection diaries (TRDs).

TRDs are one of the useful tools in teacher training courses and foster teacher autonomy (e.g. Jeffrey, & Hadley, 2002; Ukrop, Švábenský, & Nehyba, 2019). However, as little research has been conducted in Japanese secondary educational contexts, the effects of TRDs on novice and experienced in-service teachers have not been, to the author’s knowledge, uncovered. In order to explore the effect of reflection diaries on teacher development, therefore, the researcher conducted an illustrative case study model of qualitative research aims with one novice and one experienced teacher in a Japanese high school from April 2017 until March 2018, utilising teaching reflection diaries, semi-structured interviews, and class observations.

Literature Review

Teachers’ Beliefs
Teachers’ beliefs (TBs) are knowledge and perspectives teachers have and form through personal and professional experiences (Clark & Peterson, 1986). TBs can also be a significant factor in determining teaching behaviours, approaches and policy to conduct and help learners to develop their language abilities (Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2017; Xu, 2012). TBs has been explored in various contexts. For example, Stergiopoulou (2012) revealed that experienced and inexperienced teachers have different TBs in language use, language learning, and teaching methods. In terms of TBs in language teaching and the lesson plans, experienced teachers believe different activities should be conducted flexibly when necessary, while inexperienced teachers tend to emphasise the importance of sticking to lesson plans. In related research, Afshar and Ghasemi (2017) conducted a quantitative study with 210 Iranian EFL teachers and found there were statistically significant differences between their EFL teachers’ beliefs and their actual teaching practices. Based on these findings, the researchers highlight the importance of teachers having the opportunities to reflect upon TBs and the teachers’ actual teaching practices.

The effects of teacher training on TBs has also been examined; however, generalisability seems to be weak. Faez and Valeo (2012) report that more novice teachers believe that they raised their readiness of teaching and teaching efficacy to classroom whilst having more teaching experiences. Moreover, although the degree of the effect on TBs differed among individuals, teacher training had considerable impact on in-service teachers’ beliefs (Xiong, 2016). On the other hand, in Stergiopoulou’s study (2012), although both experienced and inexperienced teachers reported that teacher training changed their perspectives on teaching and beliefs after taking teacher-training courses, post-questionnaire results indicated that it had no noticeable influence on inexperienced teachers’ beliefs. Accordingly, the comparative studies on the effects of teacher training on experienced and less-experienced teachers need to be further investigated.

Teachers’ Motivation
Teachers’ motivation (TM) is a factor in determining “what attracts individuals to teaching, how long they remain in their initial teacher education courses and subsequently the teaching profession, and the extent to which they engage with their courses and the teaching profession” (Sinclair, 2008, p. 37). Regardless of motivational types, TM is variable and influenced by various factors, including teacher beliefs, teaching experiences, and physical and mental conditions. Therefore, it has a prominent role in teachers’ engagement and contribution to teaching (Hiver, Kim, & Kim, 2018) and can stimulate teachers to explore effective and practical methods to facilitate students’ motivation to learn (Han, & Yin, 2016). However, Lamb (2017) maintains that the relationships between teachers’ conceptions of motivation and their teaching practice have not been uncovered fully; accordingly, this case needs to be further explored.

Teaching Reflection Diaries
Teaching reflection diaries (TRDs) have no explicit definition sufficient to indicate which individual teaching or classroom factors TRDs would help teachers to realise. For this illustrative case study, therefore, the researcher defined TRDs as tools that teachers use to retrace their teaching activities, strengths, weaknesses, thinking, beliefs, and behaviours through writing. The writing is thought to reflect on, and possibly understand complex factors within the classroom. The tools are commonly utilised for teacher training, and some studies reveal the positive influence on teacher trainees. For example, Ukrop et al. (2019) maintain that TRDs are applicable in various teaching settings and help to provide valuable input for discussions with novice teachers. That said, few studies of the effects of TRDs have been investigated in Japanese secondary educational contexts. One such study was conducted by Jeffrey and Hadley (2002) in a Japanese high school setting, and though it reported that TRDs are useful for both less-experienced and experienced teachers, it failed to indicate any difference of effects on novice and experienced teachers was not indicated. Furthermore, as teacher trainees take teacher training courses or sessions as compulsory, it might be beneficial to delve into the effects of TRDs on teachers who voluntarily engage in the training. Therefore, the usefulness of TRDs for professional development needs to be addressed in various teaching contexts.

Research Questions

Based on findings and the research issues outlined in the review of the literature, the researcher formed the following research questions.

RQ1: How do in-service teachers perceive TRDs for professional development?

RQ2: Is there any difference between the effects of TRDs on novice and experienced teachers?

Methods

Participants and the Research Context
This illustrative qualitative case study was conducted with two female teachers (one novice and the other one experienced) at a private senior high school in central Japan from April 2017 until March 2018. As per school policy, newcomer teachers need to take one-year compulsory teacher training under a senior teacher’s instruction. The researcher was asked to train one newcomer teacher, Sakura (pseudonym), who was categorised as a compulsory trainee in this study. In addition to Sakura, an experienced teacher, Harura (pseudonym), joined the teacher training voluntarily in order to improve her teaching abilities; therefore, this experienced teacher was categorised as a voluntary trainee.

In the first teacher meeting, conducted on April 2017, the researcher explained the conditions and the purposes of the study to both trainees in Japanese (their first language) and asked them to submit consent forms if they approved.

Table 1
The Brief Profiles of the Participants

	Sakura (F)	Haruna (F)
Speciality	Irish Literature	British Literature
Study/Live Abroad	1 year	2 years
EIKEN	Pre-1	Pre-1
Teaching Experience	None	10 years
Teacher-Training Course	Never	Never
Compulsory (C) or Voluntary (V)	C	V

Consent form collected in April 2017

On the consent form, the participants wrote their preferable pseudonym, gender, their major university, the experience of studying/living abroad, STEP EIKEN level (one of the predominant English proficiency tests taken in Japan), and their teaching experiences. Their brief profiles are listed in Table 1. Although Haruna had ten-years of teaching experience, neither her nor Sakura had taken official teacher training courses, apart from the courses required to attain a teaching license at their universities. Furthermore, neither specialised in English language teaching or any relevant academic fields at their universities. Thus, in regard to revealing the effects of TRDs on teaching and beliefs, these two teacher-trainees would be ideal.

The participants in this study were both assigned to teach English Communication I, which is a class aimed to help first-year high school students develop their reading, speaking, and listening skills. Of the four main courses offered in the school, Advanced, International, General, and Selective Course, the Selective Course was considered as the most suitable course for this case study due to the number of classes held per week. Furthermore, since each course has its own curriculum principle to follow, teacher trainees would be likely to have mutual teaching goals and objectives whilst teaching the same course.

Data Collection
In this illustrative case study, the researcher conducted qualitative research, utilising TRDs, interviews, and class observations. Each teacher trainee had her target class four times per week from April 2017 through to March 2018, and each class lasted 50 minutes.

The participants wrote TRDs about all target classes in Japanese. Depending on their class year schedule, the total number of reflections each wrote during the research term varied (see Table 2). In order to collect their teaching reflection, the researcher collected their TRDs every Friday and photocopied them for semi-structured interviews. However, the researcher did not provide any written or oral feedback on the participants’ TRDs in order to let them reflect upon their teaching freely. The main purpose of TRDs in this research and the teaching training is to raise the participants’ awareness of their teaching methods and beliefs by themselves and develop their teacher autonomy. Moreover, the researcher also thought that the participants, especially the novice teacher, might think they would have to follow written or oral feedback on their TRDs received from teacher trainers or senior teachers (the researcher in this case). Therefore, no written or oral comments on the participants’ TRDs were provided in this study.

Table 2
The Total Numbers of Teaching Reflection Each Participant Wrote

	Sakura (F)	Haruna (F)
The Total Numbers of Teaching Reflections	121	125

Teaching reflection diaries conducted during the 2017 school year

 The researcher observed the participants’ classes once a week in order to understand how each class was conducted and then compare the class activities with the participants’ TRDs. As video-recording classes was not permitted, observation notes were made in order to log class activities, the time allocation for each activity, teacher-talking time, student-talking time, students’ engagement in classes, and languages which teachers and students used. After each class observation, the researcher gave the participants brief written and oral feedback on their classes. The observation notes were also used for semi-structured interviews.

In order to explore their beliefs in the effects of TRDs, interviews with both participants were conducted in Japanese, at the beginning and end of each semester (April, July, September, December 2017, January, and March 2018), six times in total. All interviews were voice-recorded.

Data Analysis
All qualitative data were coded and categorised into groups to explore patterns among the two teacher trainees. Furthermore, as the researcher gathered their TRDs and interview data in Japanese, it was translated into English and an expert English speaker was asked to check the translations for accuracy. Following this procedure, similar ideas and comments were categorised into the same groups, such as teachers’ beliefs, and students’ engagement.

In terms of class observation notes, in order to reveal how teacher trainees and students engaged in class activities and compare it with the content of TRDs, the researcher coded and categorised them into groups, such as teacher/student-centred activities, language used in the classrooms, and instruction/activity types. Following this, findings detected from the class observation notes were integrated with findings from TRDs so as to address research questions.

Results

Teachers’ impressions on TRDs
Interview data indicated that both participants perceived TRDs as beneficial to understand their strengths and weaknesses. They sought to utilise TRDs to review the subject matter and grammatical points they covered in previous classes and rechecked the effects of their teaching approaches. On the other hand, regarding practicality, both positive and negative impressions were revealed. At the beginning of the school year, the less-experienced teacher (Sakura) had slightly negative impressions on TRDs, whereas the experienced teacher (Haruna) had positive impressions on reflecting upon their teaching. However, as time passed, Sakura expressed positive feelings, whilst Haruna sometimes perceived TRDs as burdensome and time-consuming.

The usefulness of TRDs
Sakura and Haruna commented that TRDs were or could be useful tools to realise some strengths and weaknesses in their teaching styles throughout the school year. For example, both mentioned that TRDs could be very beneficial tools to reflect upon what they could and/or could not do in their previous classes.

Haruna: I think teaching reflection diaries can help me to realise the advantages and disadvantages of my teaching style (interview, July 2017)

Sakura: It is very beneficial to reflect upon and write down what I could and/or could not in classes (interview, March 2018)

Therefore, TRDs can provide both less-experienced and experienced language teachers with opportunities to realise and understand their strong and weak points in their classes. Furthermore, Sakura reported that they perceived TRDs as beneficial to realise their teaching development and relearn about students’ behaviours towards their classes.

Sakura: It was beneficial for me to develop my teaching abilities and learn about students’ behaviours (interview, March 2018)

However, they also stated that it took a long time for them to realise the benefit of TRDs and required autonomy sufficient to write and reread their TRDs deeply.

Sakura: Since the beginning of the school year, I had thought that TRDs would be effective to develop my teaching skills. However, it took a long time to get used to using TRDs effectively. In order to raise the effects of TRDs, I had to write my teaching reflection really deeply and make time to read and reread them sufficiently enough to understand my strengths and weaknesses. Without teachers’ active engagement in reflecting upon teaching, TRDs might not be as useful as they should be. (interview, March 2018).

Regarding this comment, Haruna also agreed with the necessity of teacher autonomy and active engagement in teaching reflection in order to maximise the benefit of TRDs on teacher development. Therefore, the practicality of TRDs in this specific teaching context would be essential to consider.

The practicality of TRDs
Another main reason why the trainees found TRDs were to be useful or useless came from practicality, especially depending on their daily workload and the familiarity of the subject. For example, Haruna reported that TRDs helped them to review what they had done in classes and consider some teaching issues they encountered. English Communication I was the English subject she had taught before; thus, she already had decided her teaching method and prepared class handouts.

Haruna: I found it very useful to reflect upon my teaching in classes because I can recheck what I did well and what I did not well before the next class. I taught this subject last year, so I know the content and what to teach. However, I can decide what to review at the beginning of the next class (interview, April 2017).

On the other hand, Sakura commented that they had difficulty in writing TRDs for every class and using them effectively to understand their strengths and weaknesses and develop their teaching skills because they had so many things to do, including overseeing club activities (i.e., after school activities), and creating class handouts.

Sakura: I need to write my teaching reflection as concisely as possible in order to spare time for other duties, such as taking care of club activities and creating activity sheets and documents for students and their parents. I do not really reflect upon my teaching in classes and the content is very shallow. Thus, for now, while I am swamped with work, I do not think TRDs are useful to improve my teaching (interview, April 2017).

Regarding practicality of TRDs, Haruna also commented that writing teaching reflections were time-consuming and burdensome when she had many things to do, especially in July 2017, December 2017 and March 2018, when each semester was about to end. Therefore, she sometimes had difficulty in making the right balance between teaching and other duties. These excerpts indicate that experience as teachers and the familiarity of subject matters to teachers initially have noticeable factors in judging whether TRDs were useful or not. However, as the time passed, regardless of experiences, duties were likely to increase and prevented teachers from reflecting upon their teaching deeply. Accordingly, each teachers’ daily workload can be a hindrance to keeping in-depth teaching reflections.

The Effects of TRDs on the Participants’ Teaching Approaches and Beliefs
TRDs and classroom observation notes indicated that while the novice teacher (Sakura) gained their self-confidence in their teaching, formed their beliefs gradually, and changed their teaching approaches and perspectives, the experienced teacher (Haruna) sometimes tended to maintain teacher-centred viewpoints and selected teaching approaches familiar or less-burdensome to them.

Sakura’s Case
Sakura had a low self-esteem in regard to her teaching and struggled to manage her classes during the first semester. On the 12th of April 2017, when she taught the first class as a senior high school teacher, they reported that:

I completely lost my confidence in teaching. The students did not listen to me at all even though I tried to tell them off when they were very noisy. I lost my concentration on teaching, so I forgot what I wanted to cover in the class and sometimes had difficulty in providing background information regarding the first chapter well. (Sakura, TRD, the 12^th of April 2017)

As the first teaching reflection indicates, Sakura did not have a positive start. The class observation notes which were written during the first semester also illustrates that she sought to provide students with some pair work activities, such as sharing their ideas about given topics and brainstorming activities, whilst integrating meaning-focused instruction and the Grammar-Translation Method in only Japanese. However, due to Sakura’s little voice and low confidence in her teaching, students did not seem to understand their instructions and started to have confabulations irrelevant to the subject matters in Japanese, such as their favourite songs and films. This situation lasted throughout the first semester, and Sakura’s TRDs illustrated that her motivation to teach noticeably declined. For example, on the 6th of June, she wrote:

I have a low motivation to teach English in this class these days because I can neither manage classes nor provide essential information about the subject for students. I would like to overcome this difficulty and develop my teaching skills, but I am not fully motivated now. (Sakura, TRD, the 6^th of June 2017)

Sakura encountered many challenges in teaching and hoped to address them during the first semester. However, her noticeable shift in teaching approaches was not revealed in class observations, whereas her unsuccessful teaching experiences were demotivating.

From the second semester, although some difficulties in their classes were still reported, Sakura gradually increased positive comments on her teaching in her TRDs. For example, on the 13th of September, she reported that she was glad to see a few students engaging in pair and group activities in English even though the instructions provided were only in Japanese.

I think this class went well. Some students did not stop chatting in Japanese, but they were engaged in group works to teach each other about the target grammar, the present perfect tense. Besides, a few students tried to retell each other about the unit content in English. I still have many things to improve, but I am happy. (Sakura, TRD, the 13^th of September 2017)

The class observation notes also highlight that Sakura’s voice was not loud enough for all the students to hear clearly but sought to establish scaffolding for them to conduct pair and group activities in Japanese. Furthermore, Sakura sometimes brought and read her TRDs at the beginning of class. Regarding this action, they reported that TRDs helped her to understand and recheck what she did (un)successfully in previous classes. Their positive reflection on teaching was lasting and her motivation to teach also appeared to increase. By the end of the school year, March 2018, the class observation notes illustrated that Sakura confidently conducted meaning-focused instruction in both Japanese and English whilst providing students with many pair and group work activities. Furthermore, based on her teaching reflection on the 7th of March 2018, her students asked her many questions about environmental issues, and she was happy about their positive participation in her classes.

I was so surprised that students asked me so many questions about the unit content to elicit my opinions about environmental issues. They also tried their best to speak English in pairs. I had no confidence in conducting classes in English because of my poor English skills or encouraging students to speak English, especially in April. However, I think I can do it now. (Sakura, TRD, the 7^th of March 2018)

More importantly, Sakura compared between her confidence in teaching in her earlier TRD entries and her later entries. By doing so, she felt that her teaching abilities developed and gained confidence in her teaching. Evidently, Sakura appeared to have formed her teaching beliefs through reflecting upon her teaching.

Haruna’s Case
At the beginning of the 2017 school year, the first class observation entry reported that Haruna seemed to have enjoyed teaching her class, conducing the integration of theme-based instruction and the Grammar-Translation Method. Their first TRD also articulated the reason why they shifted her language from English to Japanese.

I really enjoyed teaching the first class. However, although I wanted to conduct class activities in only English, most of the students did not understand my instruction. Thus, I shifted to use Japanese about 20 minutes after the class had started. Through teaching reflection diaries, I want to find out possible solutions to deal with the challenges. (Haruna, TRD, the 12^th of April 2017)

This reflection demonstrates that Haruna observed her students in their classes well and judged reasonable ways to teach them efficiently. Based on this reflection, she seemed to have respected students’ perspectives and comprehension. Furthermore, she also wrote down her resolution for the school year to improve which was to improve her teaching skills. Therefore, in April, it seems that their motivation to teach and develop their teaching abilities was noticeable. During the first term, April until July, their positive attitudes to teaching were indicated frequently, while the number of problems and solutions reported in TRDs decreased. For example, on the 7th of June, they wrote that:

Today’s class went very well. Students shared their ideas about a given topic in English for three minutes. I was also able to teach the target grammatical point conducting the Focus on Form approach. It seems that students enjoyed having conversations using the target grammar. (Haruna, TRD, the 7^th of June 2017)

For this point, Haruna reported at the interview that she did not find any problems in her classes because students seemed to enjoy activities. Furthermore, while rereading her TRDs, she became happy to realise that she rarely wrote about problems they encountered in her teaching.

At the beginning of September, she commented that she reread through her TRDs written during the first semester and prepared for the second semester. However, according to her first teaching reflection in the second term, written on the 13th of September, they were not satisfied with their students’ engagement in class activities.

The class went fine, but some students became lazier that before. They participated in the activities but not actively. Maybe the topic is not interesting for them. But, it is covered in the textbook, so they have to read and discuss the topic with their classmates to accomplish the tasks co-operatively. (Haruna, TRD, the 13^th of September 2017)

The class observation note also indicates that Haruna conducted their classes with the theme-based instruction and the grammar-translation method as she did during the first semester. She also shifted from English to Japanese when she judged it necessary. However, as she reported, about half of the students seemed reluctant to engage in class activities. For example, Haruna had to repeatedly provide students with instructions until the class followed directions to conduct certain activities. Both class observation notes and their TRDs indicated that this phenomenon lasted for quite some time.

Compared to the first term, Haruna tended to record only problems and challenges she encountered in her classes; with no solutions or motives to explore possible ways to address such issues. Furthermore, she also used the expression “it is covered in the textbook” or “students need to co-operate each other to complete assigned tasks”. Concerning these repeated phrases, Haruna commented that:

Haruna: I thought my teaching approaches and my balance use of English and Japanese were appropriate in order to fulfil the course principle. In fact, they were successful during the first semester. Furthermore, I could not come up with any reasons why more students were demotivated to study English or any ideas to motivate students to engage in activities. Thus, although I knew I had to do something to address these problems and tried to find out some factors while rereading my reflections, I could not help writing these phrases. (interview, December 2017)

Haruna’s comment in the interview illustrates that she had a noticeably strong beliefs in her teaching approaches because of her successful experience in the first semester. She reread her TRDs to understand possible causes of the students’ demotivation to learn; however, she could not find anything noticeable in them. Therefore, she could not flexibly shift her teaching beliefs or approaches for students and tended to write that students needed to change their learning attitudes towards their English classes.

At the beginning of the third semester, in January, Haruna reported that she reread her TRDs written between April and December in order to explore her teaching approaches as well as her successful and unsuccessful teaching experiences. In the first class in January, observed by the researcher, Haruna retold students that the instruction would be conducted mainly in English, and that they would have various pair/group activities to share their ideas about the target themes. Furthermore, Haruna also emphasised the importance of learning reflection while talking about her TRD. The TRD, written after this class, reported that she believed that students engaged in class activities actively and presented their ideas and opinions in class. Moreover, Haruna also wrote that some students had difficulty in pronouncing some target words and found it necessary to have pronunciation drills. Since then, she had reported some problems and challenges students seemed to encounter in her TRD.

Nevertheless, from the middle of February until March, she had difficulty in managing time to prepare for class and conducting other duties, including club activities and her homeroom teacher duty.

These days, I cannot prepare for the class due to club activities and homeroom teacher duty. It is easier to explain grammar and translation to students in the class. However, students tend to get bored. I think I will need to manage time more effectively. (Haruna, TRD, the 9^th of February 2018)

Due to the imbalance between teaching preparation and other obligations, Haruna noticeably shifted the integration of teacher- and student-centred approaches into the extreme teacher-centred approaches. In addition, she stopped speaking English in class, apart from reading aloud reading passages, and conducted only the grammar-translation method because this teaching method was less burdensome for her. However, as the above excerpt indicates, she also perceived the heavily teacher-centred lessons as problematic because students tended to express boredom in classes. This phenomenon in her classes and the content in her TRD lasted until the end of the 2017 school year.

Haruna’s TRDs also illustrated that her perspectives varied depending on her unsuccessful and successful teaching experiences, beliefs, and situations. Her motivation to develop her teaching abilities and teach English was somehow stable. Furthermore, while rereading her TRDs, she sought to explore her strengths and weaknesses and address problems in class. However, her fixed teaching beliefs and successful experience sometimes hindered them from observing classes and writing her reflections from the students’ perspectives. As a result, Haruna was sometimes afflicted with the obsession with of her teaching beliefs and had challenges in understanding the causes of students’ demotivation to learn English in her class. Moreover, although she believed that the heavily teacher-centred lessons demotivated students to engage in classes, she continuously conducted teacher-centred lessons when she lost the balance between classes and other teaching duties. Therefore, although TRD was beneficial for Haruna to develop her teaching skills and performance, she sometimes had difficulties in using and writing her TRDs effectively due to her teacher beliefs and time management.

Discussion

The first research question addressed how in-service teachers would perceive TRDs whilst writing their teaching reflection for 12 months. This finding might be consistent with Stergiopoulou (2012)’s research findings because TRDs were utilised as tools for teacher training in this illustrative case study. Both the less-experienced and experienced teachers reported that TRDs were useful tools to retrace their teaching activities, strengths, weaknesses, beliefs as well as behaviours, and explore challenges in their classes. They also reread their TRDs during holidays in order to prepare for upcoming semesters and aimed to develop their teaching abilities. These findings attest Ukrop et al. (2019)’s argument that TRDs can help provide valuable input. However, when they were overloaded due to other teaching duties, e.g. club activities and homeroom teacher duties, they considered TRDs as burdensome and time-consuming. Furthermore, they also commented that TRDs require sufficient autonomous attitudes towards teaching and teaching development to utilise effectively. Thus, in order to maximise the benefits of TRDs, other methods, such as coaching and teaching portfolio, to stimulate teacher autonomy would need to be explored and integrated with TRDs.

The second research question explored whether there was any difference between the effects of TRDs on less-experienced and experienced teachers. Similar to Faez and Vaelo (2012) and Xiong (2016), the integration of qualitative data collected from TRDs and class observation notes revealed that the less-experienced teacher benefitted more from TRDs than the experienced teacher. Although the less-experienced teacher had low self-esteem in their teaching abilities at the beginning of the school year, they gradually raised their confidence in their teaching and motivation to teach their students while writing and rereading their TRDs to retrace their teaching experiences and understand strengths and weaknesses. Through these activities, the less-experienced teacher gradually shifted their teaching approaches from teacher-centred to student-centred. On the other hand, the experienced teacher sometimes tended to maintain their teaching beliefs and successful past teaching experiences, which resulted in an unwillingness to shift teaching approaches even when they believed that they needed to address possible causes of problems in classes. These findings were inconsistent with Stergiopoulou’s (2012) research finding. However, when the experienced teacher wrote about possible reflections on their classes, they kept a higher motivation and self-confidence in teaching. Accordingly, TRDs might have both positive and negative influences on teachers depending on their current mindset. Hence, as Xiong (2016) mentions regarding the influence of teacher training on TBs, the effect of TRDs would vary among individuals. Nevertheless, TRDs would have a noticeable impact on in-service teachers’ beliefs and performances.

Limitation and Conclusion

The research findings revealed that both less-experienced and experienced teachers perceived TRDs as useful tools to reflect upon their beliefs, teaching skills, and development. Both participants reported that TRDs helped them understand the advantages and disadvantages of their teaching approach; however, TRDs could also be time-consuming and burdensome especially at the end of each semester, compared to the beginning of the semester. Therefore, effective time management would be the key of using TRDs for teacher development successfully.

Qualitative data collected from the participants’ TRDs and class observation notes revealed that less-experienced teachers tended to benefit more from TRDs than experienced teachers, consistent with Faez and Vaelo (2012) and Xiong (2016)’s research findings. For example, less-experienced teachers gradually became more aware of students’ behaviours and attitudes and started to integrate communicative activities and traditional activities based on their TRDs. Furthermore, whilst writing and rereading their TRDs and admitting their strengths and weaknesses, they formed their beliefs and identities as teachers and raised their motivation to teach. Conversely, the experienced teacher also wrote and reread their TRDs to understand their classroom complexities. However, they sometimes tended to sustain their teaching beliefs and successful teaching experiences. As a result, their teacher-centred viewpoints in TRDs did not change noticeably, and their noticeable change in teaching approaches was not detected in class observations even when they believed that they had to change something in their classes. This outcome might indicate that fossilised teaching beliefs or approaches are not exactly set in stone. Accordingly, this illustrative case study offers in-depth perspectives and contributes to the research field relevant to teacher development through TRDs.

This particular case study provided detailed discoveries as to the effects of TRDs on in-service teachers’ behaviours and beliefs in teaching. Nevertheless, for future research, it would be vital to consider the various limitations, including methods of collecting and analysing data. This investigation was conducted with class observation notes instead of video-recorded classes. Therefore, as the researcher had to rely on their classroom notes in each class, they had no opportunity to rewatch each teachers’ classes and note taking. TRDs and interviews compensated for some drawbacks and assisted the researcher in understanding how each participant conducted classes and perceived the effects of TRDs on their teaching in this study. Furthermore, although TRDs and interview data illustrated some factors in self-confidence and motivation shifts, more critical qualitative analysis and pre- and post-questionnaires based on Stergiopoulou (2012) might reveal more explicit variables. In order to address this limitation, sociocultural theoretical perspectives could be an effective viewpoint to analyse qualitative data.

This research was administered in order to reveal the effects of TRDs for teacher development and training in a Japanese upper-secondary school setting. In this specific set of circumstances, the research findings revealed a positive impact on a less-experienced teacher, but not on an experienced-teacher. These research results will hopefully be valuable for teacher trainers in senior high school contexts.

Note on the Contributor

Naoya Shibata is a part-time lecturer at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies and Nanzan University in Japan. He is also an Ed.D in TESOL candidate at Anaheim University. His research interest includes EFL writing, content-based instruction, language testing, learner beliefs about language learning, and teacher development.

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