Developing Teacher Trainees' Autonomy through Self-Reflection

Self-reflection has recently been used to refer to professional teacher development. Our study aims to describe and illustrate how Romanian student teachers in English language can become more aware of their teaching through reflection by giving an example of a teacher's dossier which can help teacher trainees to acquire and develop attitudes and skills essential for self-direction and self-control in teaching English. The data we describe here was collected in Romania during the Methodology of Teaching English course. The course is required of pre-service teacher-education programs, offering theories of teaching, language teaching methods and approaches, and teaching practice. Our conclusion after the study is that, in order to make progress in trainees' teaching, they need to follow three steps: plan (lesson planning), perform (teaching practice), and reflect (self-observations). It is sef-reflection that enables teachers consider their teaching objectively, find different ways of teaching, and design more contextually relevant lesson plans. Self-reflection makes teacher exploration possible in a plan-perform-reflect cycle.