Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research

Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research

EFL Teachers’ Reflective Journal Writing: Barriers and Boosters

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 Bu-Ali Sina University
2 Bu-Ali Sina University, Iran
Abstract
The study examined the extent to which Iranian EFL teachers were familiar with reflective journal writing (RJW), the possible contribution of a consciousness-raising interactive workshop to the participants’ individual and collective journal writing, and their perception of the barriers to RJW. The study enjoyed a qualitative design employing interviews and journal writings for data collection. Thirty Iranian EFL teachers sat a face-to-face interview. They were also asked to write two reflective journals, (one individually and one collectively), before, and two others after attending a consciousness-raising interactive workshop on reflection which adopted Richards’ (1995) framework on teacher reflection and Soodmand Afshar’s (in press) journal content guide. The grounded-theory-based content analysis was employed to analyze the data collected. The results indicated an improvement in participants’ familiarity with RJW after the event. Furthermore, the barriers to RJW were identified as ‘institutional issues’, ‘teacher issues’ and ‘educational system issues’.
Keywords

Volume 7, Issue 3 (Special Issue)
October 2019
Pages 71-90

  • Receive Date 02 March 2019
  • Revise Date 04 August 2019
  • Accept Date 01 September 2019