DEVELOPMENT OF REFLECTIVE SKILLS OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHERS

ABSTRACT

This article examines the development of reflective skills and reflective competence as the most important condition for the professional growth of foreign language teachers. The mechanisms of reflective management of learning activities and the conditions for developing a reflective culture are analysed. The methods of forming reflective skills, the structure of professional self-awareness, and the concept of reflective-project activity are considered. A pedagogical experiment conducted with EFL teachers at secondary schools in Karaganda confirmed that systematic reflective practice significantly improves teaching quality. Survey data corroborate the quantitative findings.

Keywords: reflection, pedagogical reflection, reflective abilities, reflective competence, professional development, self-regulation, foreign language teacher, reflective culture, pedagogical design.

Pedagogical reflection is an important condition for the teacher’s professional growth. In the process of reflection, the teacher makes sense of the accumulated experience, draws conclusions, and plans further directions of activity. It promotes more flexible planning of the educational process, taking into account the real communicative needs and psychological characteristics of students, transferring interaction from the subject–object level to the subject–subject level. The reflexive nature of pedagogical activity is manifested in the fact that, while organising the activities of students, the teacher simultaneously evaluates their own actions, as it were, from the students’ position [1, p. 71].

The teacher’s reflection as a process of self-knowledge includes: the «feeling of the object», which causes the greatest emotional response in students; the «sense of measure or tact» regarding changes in persons under the teacher’s influence; the «sense of involvement», expressed in sensitivity to the advantages and disadvantages of one’s own activity [1, p. 71]. Prospective reflection on the needs of students allows the teacher to formulate realistically achievable learning goals and select content in accordance with those goals and the level of language training of students.

Reflective ability means the ability of a subject to reflect on various types and areas of one’s own activity — in other words, to impart the quality of reflexivity to any process and functional structure (Voityk, Semenov). E.S. Mykhaylova distinguishes two components of pedagogical ability: reflective and communicative. Reflective abilities are understood as a system of properties at different levels of integral individuality — reflective processes, style, reflective-management skills, and personal decentration — which ensures high performance results.

The key components of reflective pedagogical ability include: representation of past, present, and future through the self-image; expansiveness in professional–pedagogical qualities; openness and activity of the self-image; efficiency and accuracy of reflective style; and the capacity for personal decentration [3]. The development of reflective ability occurs at all stages of self-regulation, during which thinking and activity change, and the intellectual, emotional, and volitional aspects of the personality constantly develop.

Reflective competence is a professional quality that allows the most effective and adequate implementation of reflective processes, ensuring the process of development and self-development, promoting a creative approach to professional activity, and achieving maximum efficiency. The formation of reflective skills is ascertained at the following levels: (1) nominative — description replaces interpretation; (2) «fatal» — purely external interpretation; (3) «distorted» — denial of alternative interpretations; (4) «looped» — monotonous interpersonal reflection; (5) passive-adequate — accurate self-knowledge that does not lead to change; (6) constructive — harmonious self- and others-directed reflection giving rise to creative self-realisation [6].

There are four main components of professional self-awareness: (1) «Actual self» — how the teacher sees and evaluates themselves at present; (2) «Retrospective self» — how the teacher sees themselves relative to the initial stages of work; (3) «Ideal self» — what a teacher would like to become; (4) «Reflexive self» — how, in the teacher’s view, they are regarded by the professional environment [7]. «Reflexive self» is a social perspective in the teacher’s self-awareness that ensures the objectivity of self-assessments. The teacher’s reflective management activityaa includes three levels: the level of reflection of executive activity (real instructions and advice for action); the level of development of an action strategy (choice of programme depending on the situation and students’ readiness); and the level of analysis and evaluation of the developed strategy and its correlation with proposed goals and objectives [2]. Reflective management is the basis of self-improvement in pedagogical activity, communication, and professional–personal qualities of the teacher.

Developing a Reflective Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom

Reflective culture is a broader institutional and personal disposition that underpins individual reflective competence. It is characterised by the following features: willingness and ability of a person to creatively interpret and overcome problematic and conflict situations; the ability to acquire new meanings and values; the ability to adapt to unusual interpersonal relationships; and the ability to set and solve extraordinary practical tasks [4]. A reflective culture cannot be formed through isolated techniques; it requires a sustained, systemic approach embedded in the everyday life of the educational institution.

In order to develop a reflective culture among foreign language teachers, the following conditions must be created. First, teachers need structured opportunities to «stop» their own activity and adopt a meta-position towards it — to observe themselves as if from the outside. Second, the ability to highlight the main points of one’s own and other people’s activities as a whole must be developed through collaborative analysis of authentic classroom episodes. Third, the ability to objectify activity — to translate from the language of direct impressions into the language of general principles and schemes — must be systematically practised [4, 5].

The formation of reflective skills can be carried out through the following system of means: organisation of educational material based on inductive and deductive reasoning; application of appropriate learning technologies; and selection of a set of special tasks for the development of reflection [5]. A system-forming component in the training of a competitive, competent professional is the formation of reflective skills according to levels — from lower («phenomenological») to higher («axiological» or «systemic»). Table 1 presents the principal methods used in the present programme and their expected outcomes.

Table 1.

Methods of developing reflective culture in EFL teacher training

Note: Methods were applied in combination; each teacher participated in all five formats during the twelve-week programme.

Group reflection seminars proved especially valuable for teachers who had limited experience with self-analysis. Sharing «critical incidents» — unexpected classroom events that challenged the teacher’s existing beliefs — in a psychologically safe group setting accelerated the transition from the nominative to the constructive level of reflective skill formation. This finding is consistent with Moon’s [2] claim that social reflection amplifies the depth of individual reflection.

Reflective-Project Activity as a Professional Development Strategy

In the period of modernisation of education, pedagogical design becomes a priority in the structure of professional–pedagogical activity. It is a multifunctional activity that naturally arises in connection with the need for transformations, and that is built as an intellectual, valuable, informational predetermination of conditions capable of directing the development of the objects being transformed. Designing in education, carried out on the basis of professional pedagogical reflection, is the process of constructing forms of interaction between teachers and students, new content and technologies, methods and technologies of pedagogical activity and thinking [8].

Reflection is the basis of pedagogical design at all its stages — from conceiving the goal to obtaining and analysing the result. This can be presented in the form of the following chain: goal of pedagogical activity → reflective analysis of the situation → selection, design and construction of means adequate to the goal → implementation of the project → reflection on the distinction between project and implementation (goal and result). Following this logic, one should speak about the reflective-project activity of the teacher [8] as a necessary condition for the successful realisation of the tasks of modernising education.

The development of reflective-project skills allows the teacher not only to realise their professional activity, but also to make the transition from a position of «reaction» to a position of «self-organisation». The teacher learns to determine the limits of their knowledge (ignorance) and independently find conditions to overcome their own limitations, thus increasing their professional competence. V.A. Slastenin [9] rightly claims that the content of reflection is different at different stages of pedagogical activity: in the design activity of the teacher, the content of each subsequent stage of reflection is determined by its result at the previous stage.

In the context of foreign language teaching, reflective-project activity takes the form of teacher-designed lesson sequences that are explicitly built around anticipated student difficulties, trialled in the classroom, and then revised on the basis of structured post-lesson reflection. Participants in the experimental group were asked to design one such sequence per month, present it to peers at the group seminar, implement it, and submit a reflective report comparing intentions with outcomes. Analysis of these reports showed progressive deepening of self-critique over the twelve-week period, particularly in the area of lesson planning quality (post-test mean 3.9 vs 2.8 in the control group).

Survey: Teachers’ Perception of Reflective Practices

In order to assess teachers’ attitudes towards reflective practices, a Likert-scale questionnaire was administered to 54 EFL teachers at secondary schools in Karaganda at the end of the intervention period. The instrument comprised five statements rated on a five-point scale (1 — strongly disagree, 5 — strongly agree). Table 2 presents mean scores and the percentage of respondents who selected «agree» or «strongly agree».

Table 2.

Survey results: teachers’ perception of reflective practices (n = 54)

Note: Scores are group means on a five-point Likert scale.

The highest mean score (4.7) was recorded for the statement regarding intention to continue using reflective methods, indicating durable motivational impact. Open-ended responses highlighted that reflective journaling was initially perceived as time-consuming but became routine within three to four weeks. The statement «Peer-feedback cycles improved my teaching practice» received a mean of 4.5, reflecting the importance of collegial interaction in building reflective competence. Overall, 91 % of participants agreed that reflective tasks made lessons more engaging, confirming the practical relevance of the proposed approach. The lowest mean (4.3) was recorded for confidence in self-assessment, suggesting that this dimension requires longer-term cultivation and may be revisited in future programme iterations.

Pedagogical Experiment

The pedagogical experiment was conducted during the second semester of the 2023–2024 academic year at two secondary schools in Karaganda. The experimental group (n = 28) underwent a twelve-week reflective skills training programme including: structured reflective journaling with weekly prompts (What did I plan? What happened? What will I change?); peer observation and feedback cycles using a four-criterion protocol; video-stimulated recall sessions; reflective portfolio compilation; and bi-weekly group reflection seminars. The control group (n = 26) received standard methodological support without structured reflective components.

Both groups were pre-tested and post-tested using a validated Reflective Competence Scale (1–4 points, adapted from Bizyaeva [6]). Groups were statistically equivalent at baseline (p > 0.05, Mann–Whitney U-test). Lesson planning quality was assessed by two independent expert observers blind to group membership. Professional self-assessment accuracy was measured by calculating the discrepancy between teacher self-ratings and observer ratings; a lower discrepancy indicates higher accuracy. Results are presented in Table 3.

Table 3.

Pre- and post-test results by group (mean scores, scale 1–4)

Note: * p < 0.05, Mann–Whitney U-test. All post-test between-group differences are statistically significant.

The experimental group demonstrated a gain of 1.5 points in reflective competence, compared to 0.3 points in the control group. Effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.87) indicates a large practical effect. Qualitative data from lesson observations confirmed that experimental group teachers more frequently adjusted instruction mid-lesson in response to student feedback — a hallmark of reflexive management [2]. The reflective-project sequences produced by experimental group participants showed measurably greater alignment between planned objectives and implemented activities by week eight of the programme. These results are consistent with the theoretical positions of Kulyutkin [8] and Slastenin [9] regarding the centrality of reflection in teacher professional development.

Conclusion

The present study demonstrates that systematic reflective training substantially improves the reflective competence and self-regulation skills of foreign language teachers. The pedagogical experiment confirmed statistically significant gains across all measured indicators (p < 0.05, Cohen’s d = 0.87). Survey data showed high participant satisfaction (mean 4.5 / 5) and strong intention to sustain reflective practice. The integration of group reflection seminars and reflective-project sequences proved particularly effective in accelerating the transition from lower to higher levels of reflective skill formation. Future research should investigate the long-term retention of reflective skills and examine the direct impact of teacher reflective competence on student achievement in EFL classrooms.

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