How Reflective Practice on Academic Content Feeds Into Professional Practice: A Case Study From Sri Lanka

This chapter focuses on an undergraduate degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at a Sri Lankan university. The degree is offered in combination with Cambridge CELTA, and the pre-service teachers receive both pre-service professional training and an academic degree at the end of the programme. Reflective practice is embedded throughout the degree, on each module, using different means such as post-lesson/project reflections, peer and group discussions, Padlet tasks, presentations, and video fora. Reflective practice is promoted not only in teaching practice-related modules, but also on modules which are academic content heavy. Through this, the programme attempts to create a close link between the academic content that pre-service teachers learn with the professional practices they need to develop as English language teachers. This also helps pre-service teachers to understand how theory/concepts can be understood in terms of contextual realities. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the programme and discuss how reflective practice is included in class activities and in formative and summative assessments. In particular, we highlight how reflective practice activities are used so pre-service teachers can relate academic content to professional practice. We also discuss challenges and barriers associated with promoting reflective practice within this context and highlight the most effective and useful practices. Finally, we provide some insights to academics and professionals in similar contexts on how the lessons learnt from this context can be used to promote reflective practice on similar programmes.