Abstract
Teachers’ perceptions of their own classroom experiences and the way they are reflected upon and interpreted constitute a significant factor in the evolution and re-structuring of teachers’ initial beliefs about teaching and learning. This paper discusses diary writing as a thinking process and one of the best tools for developing reflective thinking, which can be employed in a variety of teaching and learning contexts, for both experienced and inexperienced/pre-service teachers. Diaries are instances of teacher narratives which can contribute to constructing professional knowledge, as they record and interpret teachers’ stories in a systematic fashion and are contextualized within the teacher’s working environment. The paper demonstrates the value of diary writing for the professional development of teachers by presenting a selection of diary studies implemented either in teacher training programmes or carried out for independent research purposes. These studies elaborate on a whole variety of focus areas in teacher development, such as lesson effectiveness, self-assessment or affectivity, which are important teaching concerns during the various stages of a professional career and, most important of all, on the development of reflectivity. This article is based on a more detailed description of diary use in the pre-service teacher education to be found in Gabryś-Barker (2012).
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Gabryś-Barker, D. (2014). Teacher Narratives in Teacher Development: Focus on Diary Studies. In: Pawlak, M., Bielak, J., Mystkowska-Wiertelak, A. (eds) Classroom-oriented Research. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00188-3_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00188-3_16
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