What can a reflective practice look like in schools? What would be required from the school?

• regular meetings among colleagues to discuss puzzles/problems and also good-practice examples in order to grow professionally (TIME NEEDED)
• regularly observing colleagues in their classes and being observed by colleagues when teaching (READINESS AND WILLINGNESS, CULTURE OF COLLABORATION, POSITIVE FEEDBACK CULTURE)
• motivating colleagues to take time for self-reflection (understanding the group of colleagues as a TEAM and not as a group of competiting individuals)

Reflecting on Learning Theories

Especially in educational studies, we focussed a lot on the various learning theories and their implications. However, I cannot tell that I actively decided on applying one of the various approaches on purpose when I taught FLs in my internships. Honestly speaking, I decided on my teaching settings in a rather intentional way based on my experiences as a FL learner at school as well at university. For this, I can only imagine areas of FL teaching in which the behavioral approach and the constructivist approach could be useful. The behavioral approach could be applied when it comes to pronunciation teaching (listen and repeat), while the constructivist approach could be applied in speaking and writing. For example, the teacher could provide the learners with language and content input in order for them to prepare their writing.

When I reflected upon my own teaching competences, I noticed that I am very insecure when it comes to assessments and grading and already quite confident in terms of deciding on teaching methods. Nevertheless, there is still a lot to learn about teaching methods and contexts in which their application is meaningful.