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How Student Teachers Appropriate Communicative Teaching Ideas from Reflective Dialogue #1105

Post-lesson reflections are a staple of TESOL practicums to promote professional development. But we know little about how reflections with supervisors help student teachers appropriate ideas to develop their emerging practice. This paper presentation addresses this knowledge gap through a qualitative study of the recorded post-lesson reflections of four Chinese student teachers that I supervised in an American TESOL practicum. Analysis focuses on how we sought solutions to problems of practice that interfered with student communication. It identifies ideas that we discussed and then traces how student teachers appropriated these ideas for implementation in successive lessons. The study finds that the student teachers needed supervisor assistance in identifying problems that interfered with student communication and that this assistance proceeded through stages of dialogue. Analysis identifies how student teachers exercised two principle dialogical moves that worked to change conceptions of TESOL practice and drive appropriation of new ideas for CLT implementation.