The Language Teacher
05 - 2002

Balancing Intuition with Insight:
Reflective Teaching through Diary Studies

David Jeffrey and Gregory Hadley

Niigata University of International and Information Studies

Introduction

At the beginning of a teaching experience in a new culture, the language teacher's interpretations of what occurs in the classroom are frequently based more on intuition than insight. Because perceptions of the learners and the culture can have far-reaching effects on the motivation of language teachers and the affective nature of their classroom instruction, it sometimes is necessary for teachers to pause and reflect upon the validity of their personal assumptions. The question for many, if not most language teachers, however, is how to embark on a journey of professional self-reflection while maintaining their typically busy schedules. One possible answer to this dilemma may be found in keeping a focused, short-term journal, or diary study.

Diary studies have had a long history of use in English teaching (Maneekhao & Watson Todd, 2001; McDonough, 1994; Thornbury, 1991; Lowe, 1984). They are usually personal accounts of teaching a language (in the case of a teacher) or of learning a language (in the case of a student). Bailey (1990) states that diary studies are "documented through regular, candid entries in a personal journal and then analyzed for recurring patterns or salient events" (p. 215). Diaries have wide ranging applications. Nunan (1992) remarks "they have been used in investigations of second language acquisition, teacher-learner interaction, teacher education, and other aspects of language learning and use" (p. 118). Bell (1993) adds that they are "an attractive way of gathering information about the way individuals spend their time.... [T]hey can provide valuable information about work patterns and activities" (p. 102). Jarvis (1992) explored the use of learner diaries with in-service teachers in a short methodology course in order to help teachers become aware of the importance of self-reflection for pedagogic innovation. She summarized the experience by saying that "those who succeeded in reflecting on practice, seem also to reveal a heightened sense of their own responsibility for their learning and for changing their teaching. They seem to have more confidence in their own ability to act" (p. 142).

In this paper, we will explore the benefits and difficulties of undertaking a diary study, based upon our personal experience. Readers will notice a shift between I and we during the narrative of this report. The first person singular indicates David Jeffrey, who was the classroom teacher and kept a diary of his teaching experiences over a two-week period. The first person plural signifies the inclusion of Gregory Hadley, whom Jeffrey sought early in the project because of his expertise in diary studies and knowledge about methods of analysis. We begin by describing the setting of this project.

The Setting

This study took place in our university's Communicative English Program (CEP), a semi-intensive English as an International Language (EIL) program that encourages students to speak English in a relaxed, confident manner, and focuses on Japanese issues as they relate to the international setting. Small classes of 22 learners are streamed into six distinct levels of language proficiency, and meet once a day from Monday to Friday where they study courses that focus on oral communication, listening and reading skills. The diary study concentrated on the oral communication classes taught by the first author.

The Diary Study

Although I had taught in English language schools, I had difficulties in adjusting to CEP's coordinated curriculum and in relating to university students. I often worried that the students perceived my classes negatively. Tired of wondering if things were really the way they appeared to be, I decided that a diary study, based on honest reflections, seemed an interesting avenue of inquiry. Perhaps a less time-consuming method to look at my teaching, such as videotaping, would have been appropriate, but I also wanted to take a thorough route and truly begin to understand more about my teaching environment and myself.

To set the diary process in motion, we devised a checklist for use in the classroom that would keep my thoughts focused and help me write down short notes to assist with the writing up of entries after the class. The checklist was comprised of the following categories:

I wrote the diary entries immediately after each class, and tried to focus not only on my emotions, but also on what I actually witnessed during my lessons. I wanted to put some distance between me and my emotions to find out if the affective issues in my classes were truly as poor as I thought they were, and also to determine if what I was seeing in class came from concrete observations or simply from my own suppositions.

I accepted the importance of substantiating my diary assertions as much as possible in order to "support reflective comments with examples from class sessions or actual language data" (Bailey, 1990, p. 221). I included as many specific examples of my own responses and classroom events. This was to ensure that the later analysis would be based on clear and open personal reflections. We first undertook a two-week pilot study to establish the workability of the diary study and the method of analysis. We did not find any issues that needed to be modified. The WordSmith Tools program (Scott, 1997) was tested using the data from the pilot study. This program is normally utilized in creating concordances as an aid to studying corpora (Johns, 1994), but we found that it could be an ideal tool for analyzing the prominent features of my diary, which was a corpus of my thoughts and reflections of what took place in my classes. During the pilot study, however, only the second author had access to the pilot study analysis, because my knowledge of this data might bias my observations during the actual project.

The Results

From the program, the main keywords in my diaries were feel, good, enjoying, trying, happy, conversation, satisfied, confidence, and motivation. Looking at concordances of sentences and paragraphs where these most frequent words occurred paved the way for several insights into my teaching and interaction with my learners.

Affectively, the diary entries suggested that there was a good atmosphere in all the classes. I had been concerned about this, as I had not been sure whether my students were trying to look happy in order to please me, or if they genuinely were so. The diary seemed to provide more evidence that the learners were pleased with the quality of the classes. Space will allow for only a few excerpts from the diary:

I saw this class face quite a hurdle today, with the new challenge to allow for even more conversation time.... I acted merely as a facilitator and put things more in their hands, but I was very impressed to see their determination to succeed.... It was good to see them enjoying what they were doing too--lots of smiles and laughter, but with all the necessary discipline.

Observations such as these began to help me to get personal satisfaction from teaching the classes. I became aware that when I felt confident while teaching, it would seem to instill confidence in the students, who appeared to perform better. This in turn would contribute further to my motivation as a teacher (an issue much ignored in the literature). I started to realize that teachers and students, far from being separate entities, have a more synergistic relationship than I had previously thought. As one excerpt reveals:

I really noticed today how many students speak much better English now than they did at the beginning of the year, and with the necessary confidence too.... I'm always smiling, encouraging them and behave in a happy and confident manner, and it seems to motivate the students.... We have grown together in confidence through this experience.

There seem to be fewer barriers now between my learners and me, and our energies now seem more focused on the task of language learning. While engaged in the pressures of day-to-day teaching, my progress and that of the learners seemed to be static, but the diary gave me a chance to realize that we all had come a long way.

The diary also highlighted considerable room for improvement on the practical side of my teaching by bringing to my attention the need to concentrate more on the management of activities in the classroom:

I concentrated a lot on my technique, especially the transitions between activities. I've noticed that I can cut down a lot on time here too, and especially on my talking time, but it is a hard thing to achieve in practice and I suppose it takes time to get it right. Easy in theory, but hard in practice! So I want to concentrate on trying to refine these activities more and more in the next lesson and in the lessons that follow after that.

Not only did I need to cut back on the amount of time I spent in explaining tasks to learners, I also needed to become more of a facilitator during class activities. Upon further reflection, I also accepted the fact that some experience is acquired over time, and that I needed to be patient. Many of my colleagues have been teaching for over ten years, and often I was feeling bad for not being able to do what they could. The diary study helped me reconsider my situation, and to relax.

For the first time, the impact of my teaching style and my relations with the students became clearer. When I was not overly identifying my self-worth with the responses of the students, my classes seemed to go better. I came to the realization that it is best for me to keep things simple in the classroom, but set achievable standards for the students during the lessons. Success for me seemed to lie in guiding the learners to completing several simple language tasks well, rather than creating more unnecessary work through complexity.

The focus of the diary study also helped me to see interesting student behavior that had previously gone unnoticed. I became aware that many of the learners would subtly reflect back to me my facial expressions. I purposely changed facial expressions several times during the lesson, and noticed that roughly half the students copied and changed as I did. I concluded that I had more influence on the students than I had thought, and was reminded that teaching English entails more than merely the transfer of a skill or knowledge.

Diary Drawbacks

Diary studies take a lot of dedication because they are not as simple as one might believe; they are time-consuming and can become laborious. Bailey adds that "in order to really learn from the record, the diarist should re-read the journal entries and try to find the patterns therein" (1990, p. 224). It would also be a mistake to believe that diary studies are an easy substitute for conventional research methods. While the writing up of a diary is less demanding than preparing and undertaking questionnaire research, Henderson, Morris, and Fitz-Gibbon (1987, p. 31) point out that a diary takes much longer than conventional research methods to interpret properly once it has been written up. Although WordSmith Tools (Scott, 1997) was a great help in finding the regular patterns within the diary, the overall process was still time-consuming. Language teachers considering undertaking a diary study should not overlook these limitations.

Despite these drawbacks, however, it does seem that the advantages ultimately outweigh the disadvantages, so long as the writers of the diaries are dedicated to examining what they have written. Doing so may reveal aspects of their teaching that can lead to a deeper understanding of themselves and their students. Writing and analyzing my diary was a motivational experience for me. It helped me develop a better self-awareness and gave me the confidence needed to experiment with new teaching techniques, and also heralded a powerful transformation in my thinking and in my attitudes towards my students.

Conclusion

There are many methods teachers can use to analyze and reflect on their work. Recording thoughts on tape for brief periods in and out of the class, taking videotapes of lessons, or simply talking with a sympathetic colleague are all helpful methods available to language teachers. Teachers should find what works best for them, as what works for one person does not necessarily work for another. Based upon the experiences of this study, however, we would suggest that taking the time to put one's thoughts down in writing seems to be one of the most practical and beneficial means of language teacher self-analysis. We feel that focused, short-term diary studies may provide a rewarding experience for new and experienced teachers alike. Although the process can be time-consuming, diary studies can help language teachers better understand themselves and their learners, and foster greater understanding of the complex dynamics within their classrooms.

References

Bailey, K. M. (1990). The use of diary studies in teacher education programmes. In J. Richards & D. Nunan (Eds.), Second language teacher education (pp. 215-226). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bell, J. (1993). Doing your research project: A guide to first-time researchers in education and social science. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Henderson, M., Morris, L., & Fitz-Gibbon, C. (1987). How to measure attitudes. London: Sage.
Jarvis, J. (1992). Using diaries for teacher reflection on in-service courses. English Language Teaching Journal, 46(2), 133-143.
Johns, T. (1994). From printout to handout: Grammar and vocabulary teaching in the context of data-driven learning. In T. Odlin (Ed.), Perspectives on pedagogical grammar (pp. 293-313). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lowe, T. (1984). An experiment in role reversal. English Language Teaching Journal, 41(2), 89-96.
Maneekhao, K., & Watson Todd, R. (2001). Two kinds of becoming: The researcher's tale and the mentor's tale. In J. Edge (Ed.), Action research. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
McDonough, J. (1994). A teacher looks at teachers' diaries. English Language Teaching Journal, 48(1), 57-65.
Nunan, D. (1992). Research methods in language learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scott, M. (1997). WordSmith tools 2.0. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thornbury, S. (1991). Watching the whites of their eyes: The use of teaching practice logs. English Language Teaching Journal, 45(2), 140-146.


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