A Critical Review of Reflective Practices in Pre-Service ELT Context: The Turkey Case

Abstract

Viewed as a lifelong and holistic process, reflectivity is one of the key competencies to be developed in prospective teachers. In this regard, specific references are made to the notion of reflective practice (RP) in the professional preparation of English as a foreign language student teachers in Turkey. However, no study to date has provided a critical review of existing research on this subject. With the aim of advancing our understanding of RP areas research studies conducted in Turkey primarily focused on in their attempts to develop pre-service English teachers’ reflective capacities, a systematic review method was used. The databases of Eric, Scopus and SSCI were searched for articles and a total of 25 studies were selected for analysis. The findings revealed that the most studied topic was “Bridging principles and practices” followed by “Focusing on leveling taxonomies”, “Investigating the role of reflective tools”, “Examining the value of dialogue for RP-integrated activities” and “Inquiring into pre-service teachers’ inner world and RP”. The results also showed that a number of studies had more than one concern of interest in their questions or purpose statements. Based on the findings, the study contends that the majority of the retrieved articles largely focused on basic issues to structure reflection, particularly when starting to reflect.