Reflection

The results of the seven ESL teachers’ reflective journeys through the framework for reflecting on practice have suggested that reflection led to the stabilizing of the teachers’ challenging experiences because they were able to step back for a moment and consider alternatives where possible. The process of reflecting with a facilitator also provided each teacher with a supportive forum in which they could articulate and reflect on who they are, what they do, why they do it, and what the result is for each of them. This shows a real need for early career teachers to be able to reflect on their practice so that they can become more resourceful and resilient in the face of their current and future challenges.

The most optimum point for the introduction of the concept of reflective practice should be when the early career language teachers are in training in their teacher education programs. In a recent review of research of the past twenty years published in academic journals that focused on language teaching, the predominant theme to emerge was the importance and necessity of introducing “reflective habits” in L2 teacher education programs because these lead to professional development (Levi et al., Reference Levi, Salman and Barak2023). However, the authors did not define what they meant by these reflective habits, or the tools they can use to help facilitate their reflections, or how reflective practice can be operationalized. Indeed, this lack of clarity has been a major stumbling block for the successful implementation of reflective practice in second language education programs over the years (see Farrell, Reference Farrell2019b, Reference Farrell2022 for more on this).

Thus, a starting point for all early career ESL teachers should be in their teacher training and education programs and courses where learner teachers are instructed on the various tools of reflection in order to begin cultivating the habits of reflection during their early career years. As Yost (Reference Yost2006) has noted, “In order for novice teachers to become successful, they require the [reflective] tools necessary for coping with challenges they encounter” (p. 61). In a review of 138 journal articles on the practices that encourage TESOL teachers to reflect, Farrell (Reference Farrell2018a) discovered that the teachers used a total of thirty-seven different tools/instruments to facilitate their reflections. The most frequent of these were, in order of use, discussion (including discussions with a facilitator and/or supervisor, and teacher discussion groups), followed by writing, closely followed by classroom observations (self, peer, etc., with or without video/audio). All of these tools were used in some capacity by all seven ESL teachers featured in this book and may be used and/or adapted by other interested language teachers in different contexts.

In addition, learner teachers can be encouraged to use these tools holistically and systematically reflect on their practice using the framework similarly to what all seven ESL teachers featured in this book practiced. Sarab and Mardian (Reference Sarab and Mardian2022) highlighted the usefulness and importance of what they called a “reflective–reflexive” framework, when they pointed out that “one central benefit of Farrell’s framework is its specific, systematic, and holistic nature” (p. 13). As already discussed, this holistic framework focuses not only on the intellectual, cognitive, and metacognitive aspects of practice but also on the inner life of spiritual, moral, and emotional aspects of teachers’ thoughts and feelings.

Philosophy, the first level of this framework, is “considered to be a window to the roots of a teacher’s practice” (Farrell, Reference Farrell2018a, p. 3) because teachers’ backgrounds (ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic background, family, personal values, etc.) influence who they are as language teachers. When teachers write and think about their past experiences as did the seven teachers in this book, they can become more mindful and self-aware of how their past has shaped who they are now as ESL teachers. Next, they can reflect on their principles by examining their assumptions, beliefs, and conceptions of teaching and learning, which in turn formulate their instructional decisions and classroom actions. The third stage is to reflect on theory or “the hidden aspect of teaching” (Farrell, Reference Farrell2018a, p. 8). Reflections at this stage include considering all aspects of teachers’ planning, choice of techniques, activities, and methods for teaching particular skills. The fourth level of this reflection framework (practice) is reflecting on teachers’ observable actions and students’ reactions or non-reactions in the class. They can reflect after teaching (reflection-on-action), while they teach a lesson (reflection-in-action), and/or before they teach a lesson (reflection-for-action). The final stage entails teachers’ critical reflections beyond practice. Here teachers explore and examine the moral, political, and social issues and values that impact their practices both inside and outside the classroom. As Deng and Yuen (Reference Deng and Yuen2011) note, reflection beyond practice leads to great awareness of “social issues, inequitable relationships and generated roles,” thus enhancing “their critical thinking as both teachers and learners” (p. 450). Many of the ESL teachers featured in this book saw themselves as agents of social change, as they maintained that their role stretched far beyond the teaching of English as a second language to where they often advocated for their students’ rights and needs as immigrants as they assimilated within their communities.

However, in order to operationalize reflective practice in the manner outlined here, early career ESL teachers will need to be supported in some manner to achieve optimum results – as outlined in the section that follows. For example, all seven ESL teachers featured in this book engaged in reflective practice in their own time with the aid of a facilitator (this author), and this may not be optimum for most, if not all, early career language teachers. Thus, school administrators will need to consider the type of time they are able to generate for their early career language teachers to reflect with or without a mentor (more on this later). For sure, early career language teachers will need some protected time to be able to systematically reflect on their practice while using the various tools of reflection outlined here. They will also need time to be able to process the results of their reflections. Providing and negotiating such time with their early career language teachers is in the interests of schools, in that reflective teachers may be more willing to stay in the profession if they think their school has generated such time for their professional development.

Overall engagement with early career ESL teachers’ inner lives, personal histories and values, assumptions and belief systems, as well as their practices and critical reflections beyond practice as outlined earlier, are all key facets of holistic reflective practice that can be a catalyst for the development of flourishing teaching careers. In this sense, early career ESL teachers as reflective practitioners are never satisfied that they have all the answers as a result of graduating from their initial teacher education programs. Rather, they recognize that they must continuously challenge themselves to examine and define their identity development, their assumptions and beliefs, as well as their planning and teaching so that they can be the best that they can be for their students. As such, the cycle of reflection through the framework outlined here is continuous and lifelong so that ESL teachers will not just survive but thrive throughout their teaching careers. The fact that all seven ESL teachers were engaged in reflecting intensely on their own practice may have been a major reason why they were able to develop survival skills when things were going badly (Howard & Johnson, Reference Howard and Johnson2004). Although Candice left after her fifth year, she nevertheless saw a deep value in reflection, and it may even have helped her come to a decision about her future. As Candice remarked: “Reflective practice gives you more knowledge about yourself which can always be harnessed to better your professional and personal skills. It is also a useful exercise to witness how far you’ve come in your career, depending on when you do it, and help you navigate where you’d like to go next.”

Support

As already mentioned in Chapter 1, in order to make transition into a teaching career smoother, novice teachers should be supported sufficiently with induction programs and mentorship during their first year (Ingersoll & Strong, Reference Ingersoll and Strong2011). Indeed, if novice teachers do not receive sufficient support during this important first year, many may decide to leave the profession (Perryman & Calvert, Reference Perryman and Calvert2020) and their students may suffer from less effective teaching if their teachers lack such support. Thus, support with more formal induction programs and mentorship can and should be instituted for all first-year ESL teachers. This support should include the basics such as “sufficient resources and constructive, supportive feedback in a school environment that is positive, participatory and collegial” (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, Reference Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy2007, p. 946). Teresa, in her first year, did not seem to have much official school support throughout that year, probably because of the sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and her sudden pivot to an online format, for which she was not trained. Perhaps this was the case for most ESL teachers during the pandemic, and so Teresa was just another unfortunate victim of less than ideal world circumstances. That said, and because she was in her first year of teaching, she could/should have probably received even more support from the school than if she was just starting out in a face-to-face teaching mode, where she could have physically met colleagues and asked them for help (I address what schools can do to support all early career ESL teachers later in this chapter).

However, none of the other early career ESL teachers from year two to year five had any official support from anyone beyond their informal relationships with their colleagues, and despite their heavy workloads, their supervisors and administrators were for the most part not fully invested in their development throughout that year, which may have led some to consider a different career. Such a consideration corresponds with a recent survey of 1,343 early career teachers of all subjects in Canada by Kutsyuruba et al. (Reference Kutsyuruba, Walker, Matheson and Bosica2022), which discovered that teachers in their second and fourth years did not feel supported as much as those in their first year, who generally undergo some kind of induction program. In addition, Kutsyuruba et al. (Reference Kutsyuruba, Walker, Matheson and Bosica2022) found that after year three, because they are more familiar with the profession, early career teachers become more critical of the challenges they face and the lack of support they feel they still need, and as a result many consider leaving the profession between year three and year five. This was also the case for the five early career ESL teachers portrayed in this book. Teresa, in her first year, reported that she had a limited induction program provided by the school, which consisted of one week of shadowing a teacher, followed by a school appointed mentor “for a week or two.” However, during COVID-19, she said she had a difficult time making connections with them to ask about anything. Amanda, in her second year, Peter in his third year, and Rachel in her fourth year also reported a lack of support from the school, and, as Amanda noted, “we were completely abandoned.”

Nevertheless, all three early career ESL teachers decided to stay in the profession, mostly because of their passion for teaching and helping their students, their deeply held personal morals, and their high levels of intrinsic motivation for teaching. Unfortunately, and more often than not, it is quality teachers who are leaving the profession, as Smith and Ingersoll (Reference Smith and Ingersoll2004) have noted, and this was the situation for Candice, who unfortunately decided to quit teaching at the end of her fifth year because she was dissatisfied with her working conditions, low salary and benefits, and poor future career prospects. For the two ESL teachers in their seventh and tenth years, it seems that their high levels of intrinsically motivated and altruistic behaviors, as well as their personal integrity, seems to have overridden the issues they reported with their administrators relating to working conditions. However, it may be individual factors rather than universal factors that are keeping them in the profession; the worry is that more ESL teachers will not make it beyond their fifth year.

So what can we do to better support early career ESL teachers? Most of the research literature suggests that schools have an induction program and/or appoint school mentors (who are given sufficient time to mentor). However, the schools and institutions where the early career ESL teachers were employed (and the other two ESL teachers as well) did not have any formal or informal induction programs or any mentorship support beyond the sketchy programs for teachers in their first year. To this end, results from this detailed set of case studies (and indeed Kutsyuruba et al.’s (2022) mass survey of early career teachers in Canada) suggest that school administrators should not give up on supporting the early career ESL teachers even when they have passed through their first year of formal induction and mentoring. Rather, these programs should be continued, but in more nuanced ways and based on each early career teacher’s needs. For example, Amanda (second year), Peter (third year), and Rachel (fourth year) all reported they “yearned for supervisory and collegial support” but did not receive any, something Candice (fifth year) also experienced. Thus, schools can and should encourage furthering mentorship ideas in these later early career years such as critical friendships. team teaching, peer coaching, and/or teacher reflection groups, to mention but a few.

Schools can provide support by forming critical friendships, team teaching, and/or peer coaching (of course these three types of support could also have been introduced in the teacher education program’s set of reflective practice tools discussed earlier) with all novice teachers in their first year and all early career teachers up to year five. As Useem (Reference Useem2003) notes, career teacher support is not a one-off event, but rather a sustained program initiated by the school throughout early career years. Such teacher induction programs have been shown to be an effective strategy in reducing new teacher attrition and increasing retention, in many instances pointing to some kind of supervision in the form of mentoring to support early career teachers (Avalos, Reference Ávalos, Loughran and Hamilton2016). Assuming that the early career ESL teachers have been adequately trained in the habits of reflection during their teacher education programs (see reflection earlier), they can use this training to become more proactive decision-makers throughout their early career years. For example, early career ESL teachers in the same school can enter into a critical friendship to give voice to each other’s thinking, just like looking into a mirror, while at the same time being heard in a sympathetic, yet constructively critical manner (Farrell, Reference Farrell2018b). As Fanselow (Reference Fanselow1988) notes, teachers should observe each other without judgement and see themselves; he continues, “Here I am with my lens to look at you and your actions. But as I look at you with my lens, I consider you a mirror; I hope to see myself in you and through your teaching…. Seeing you allows me to see myself differently and to explore variables we both use” (p. 115).

Most of the early career ESL teachers who feature in this book have suggested that their isolation (some of whom were in forced isolation because of the COVID-19 pandemic) left them feeling more vulnerable; however, if they had had the opportunity to form critical friendships to support each other, they could have reduced their sense of isolation. Such collaboration and mentorship can also be accomplished through the use of team-teaching dyads. These are similar to a critical friendship, where two or more teachers cooperate as equals as they take responsibility for planning, teaching, and evaluating a class, a series of classes, or a whole course (Richards & Farrell, Reference Richards and Farrell2005). Yet another form of mentorship can be achieved through the use of peer coaching, where two teachers collaborate to help one or both of them improve some aspect of their teaching. Here one teacher adopts the role of coach, offering a special skill they are willing to teach the other teacher, and provides feedback on how the process of such collaborative learning is going (Richards & Farrell, Reference Richards and Farrell2005).

One final form of mentorship that should be considered for early career ESL teachers is where their past teacher-educators play a mentorship role by maintaining contact after the learner teachers have graduated. In other words, the original preservice or learner teacher education model is expanded to include the early career years into a period of novice-service TESOL teacher education (Farrell, Reference Farrell2021a). Such an expansion allows teacher-educators to continue mentoring early career ESL teachers as “reflective colleagues” beyond the practicum, and includes the school administrators/supervisors throughout their early career years. In such a manner, they can help mitigate the inevitable reality shocks of teaching in real classrooms and ensure early career teachers thrive, not just survive, throughout their teaching careers (Farrell, Reference Farrell2016). In addition, teacher-educators can learn a lot about the lived experiences of their graduates and feed such information back into their teacher education courses.

Other methods that early career ESL can use to support each other include forming teacher reflection groups (see Farrell, Reference Farrell2016 for details on how to set up novice ESL teachers’ reflection groups). Such early career ESL teacher reflection groups can be part of an official induction program or can be formed independently. Indeed, when schools do not have an induction program (as was the case for the early ESL teachers reported on in this book), these reflection groups become especially important because they provide a forum to talk about experiences. and problem-solve in a supportive environment. Thus, in a general sense, early career ESL teacher reflection groups can be considered “communities of practice” (Wenger, Reference Wenger1998, p. 6). Along with the reflection and support outlined earlier, early career ESL teachers can also be encouraged to become resilient, as was the case for all seven ESL teachers featured in this book.

Resilience

All five early career ESL teachers remained passionate and resilient throughout their respective year of teaching despite the formidable adaptation challenges each faced in terms of their employment conditions (e.g., sufficient salary, reasonable working hours, more support (see Support section), future career prospects). As Hiver (Reference Hiver, Mercer and Kostoulas2018) noted, such resilient teachers “exhibit greater altruism and sense of purpose in life and have positive self-perceptions and a generally optimistic disposition” (p. 236). This was no doubt helped by the fact that they engage in systematic reflections with the aid of a facilitator during the year. Such reflections allowed each teacher to “see” their challenges clearly and use this vision to try to generate solutions to whatever problems they encountered. Such willingness to reflect and face their challenges led the teachers to be able to build resilience to get through their year. As Huisman et al. (Reference Huisman, Singer and Catapano2010) have pointed out, “problem-solving through reflection is crucial to building resiliency and leading to success” (p. 490).

ESL teacher resilience as an adaptive process for early career ESL teachers is best facilitated through engaging in holistic reflective practice using the methods outlined in this book by all five early career teachers. This deduction corresponds with the findings of studies on teacher resilience in general education that also highlight the important role reflective practice plays for teacher adaptation (e.g., Beltman et al., Reference Beltman, Mansfield and Price2011; Le Cornu, Reference Le Cornu2009; Howard & Johnson, Reference Howard and Johnson2004; Huisman et al., Reference Huisman, Singer and Catapano2010; Leroux & Théorêt, Reference Leroux and Théorêt2014). As Yozenawa et al. (Reference Yonezawa, Jones and Singer2011) have pointed out, engaging in reflective practice is a “key characteristic of resilient educators” (p. 917). All seven ESL teachers not only took “ownership in solving the situation,” but they also continued “to look for and solve situations” as they arose (Huisman et al., Reference Huisman, Singer and Catapano2010, p. 486). Indeed, even though Candice, an early career ESL teacher in her fifth year ultimately decided to leave the profession, she nevertheless demonstrated her resilience throughout her five years of teaching ESL despite her serious doubts about her future career as a language teacher.

Thus, and as outlined in the Reflection section, language teacher-educators should not only train learner language teachers how to develop the habits of reflection (Levi et al., Reference Levi, Salman and Barak2023), but also proactively raise awareness of the types of resilience that is required during these important early career years. For example, teacher-educators could attempt to raise their learner teachers’ resiliency through appropriate strategies, such as those initiated by Amanda, Peter, and Rachel when setting boundaries in their relationships with their students, in addition to confronting the administration, when necessary, as Rachel did when she lost trust with the administration in her school. In such a manner, learner teachers’ resilience that was developed in initial teacher education can be further cultivated and supported in the school in which they teach.

In addition, many of the challenges that the early career ESL teachers faced are in fact alterable, examples being reflection (see Reflection section), sufficient salary, reasonable working hours, more support (see Support section), future career prospects, well-being (see Well-Being section), so that we can retain such excellent ESL teachers in the profession. Indeed, all seven ESL teachers (including Candice before she quit) showed that they were not victims of their circumstances, but instead they took charge (Patterson et al., Reference Patterson, Collins and Abbott2004), and found “ways to handle stress” (Huisman et al., Reference Huisman, Singer and Catapano2010, p. 484). That said, in order to retain excellent ESL teachers (such as Candice and Damien) so that they do not quit the profession prematurely, we must be prepared to pay them a sufficient salary to enable them to stay in one job rather than moving around different part-time positions. In addition, they should be able to expect reasonable teaching hours and reasonable support during these important years.

Well-Being

As mentioned earlier, teachers can become more resilient through the use of reflection along with sufficient support from teacher-educators and school administrators. In addition, the more resilient they are, the greater the chance they have of higher levels of well-being (Hiver, Reference Hiver, Mercer and Kostoulas2018). In addition, Talbot and Mercer (Reference Talbot and Mercer2018, p. 427) have suggested that “Teachers who enjoy high levels of well-being are likely to be successful teachers, more engaged with their language teaching practice, and better able to face challenges that occur along the way.” Although it has been pointed out that language teaching has been noted as a stressful profession (MacIntyre et al., 2020), since the onset of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 adapting to their new circumstances has become even more demanding for teachers (Farrell, Reference Farrell2021b). As Farrell (Reference Farrell2021b) has noted, some ESL teachers have adapted better than others who still struggle to deal with the many challenges they face such as difficulties with the technology itself, heavy workloads, difficulties adapting materials, and even their own personal life stressors. Such additional and unique stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic can be detrimental to early career ESL teachers’ sense of self-worth and thus their overall well-being. Indeed, as MacIntyre et al. (Reference MacIntyre, Ross, Mercer, Talbot, Gregersen and Banga2019, p. 26) maintain, the “risk of burnout may be even more severe for language teachers as they suffer from additional unique stressors such as language anxiety, frequently unstable job contracts, and insecure working conditions.”

In the study reported in this book, Candice, in her fifth year of teaching, was concerned with her own well-being because her excessive workloads over the years had taken their toll, and more especially since moving to online teaching. In addition, she had lost hope regarding her future job prospects in the field of ESL teaching, so she finally decided at the end of her fifth year that she had had enough and that a career change would be a better option for her. Her sense of personal fulfillment had taken her this far, but it seems that a combination of several factors, including poor salary, lack of support, overwork in terms of hours, minimum possibilities of growth within the profession, and the value society places on an ESL teacher’s work, all led her to quit the profession for her future well-being. Indeed, Mercer (Reference Mercer2021) has identified a number of factors known to affect teacher well-being such as “pay, job security, societal status of teaching, workplace culture, leadership styles, professional resources, collegial support, administrative responsibilities and workload, opportunity for teacher autonomy, and interaction with learners” (p. 18).

Candice cannot be faulted in any way for making her own informed decision, and nor can Damien (introduced in Chapter 1) be faulted for making a similar decision to quit the teaching profession after a lot of soul searching in previous years. However, the result of their leaving is that future ESL students will no longer be able to receive Candice’s excellent and dedicated instruction as demonstrated in her fifth-year reflections (outlined in Chapter 7) or Damien’s (outlined in detail in Farrell, Reference Farrell2022). The other four early career ESL teachers were also concerned that their well-being was being compromised by the challenges they were facing, and as a result said that they had trouble focusing on their teaching at times. Nevertheless, they were still conscientious about fulfilling their students’ needs, so they persevered and continued to teach through the challenges they faced regardless of whether they fully enjoyed it or not. However, one wonders what may have occurred in these early career ESL teachers’ lives if they had not had the opportunity to discuss their experiences through reflective practice with a facilitator, considering they said they were not prepared for the realities of teaching by their teacher education programs.

Therefore, in order to enhance early career ESL teachers’ well-being, language teacher-educators can prepare learner teachers in their courses, and mentors in the schools can inform them about the realities of what they face – and to prepare them for the fact that teaching is a psychologically demanding job (Derakhshan et al., Reference Derakhshan, Dewaele and Azari Noughabi2022). As Derakhshan et al. (Reference Derakhshan, Dewaele and Azari Noughabi2022) put it, language teachers need to have a “psychological equivalent of a black belt” for their own well-being, so that they will be able to “cope with both expected and unexpected challenges” while “remaining alert but also relaxed and optimistic.” They suggest also that school administrators also have a role to play by encouraging a sense of emotional support in their staff, as this was absent for all five early career ESL teachers portrayed in this book.

Thus, it seems that language teacher well-being is linked not only to early career ESL teachers’ resilience, but also to the kind of support they receive (both emotional and resources), as well as to space to be able to reflect on their practice. If early career ESL teachers perceive that they have maintained their sense of well-being, there is a good chance they will enjoy their careers. This can also be extended to in-service ESL teachers because these early career teachers will inevitably move into such positions, just as Alice in her seventh year and Sarah in her tenth year have experienced. Only Alice reported that she had had some support that enabled her to persevere and become more resilient as an ESL teacher. Sarah reported that she did not have much support over the years and was in fact driven to persevere as an ESL teacher to help others like her parents who had experienced many difficulties learning English as a second language and assimilating into a new culture and country.

In addition, it seems that all seven ESL teachers benefited from the cathartic effect of being able to reflect on the amount of support they received or did not receive, their resilience (although they did not use this term) maintained through deep moral and altruistic reasons to continue to help their students, as well as their overall well-being expressed as maintaining a work–life balance by Peter and Rachel in particular. It is highly probable that the individual tools of reflections that were used such as dialogue, writing, and/or classroom observations had a cathartic effect on the teachers that may have also enhanced their well-being. Again, if all of these reflective tools are introduced by language teacher-educators in their programs and courses to learner language teachers, they can continue to use them in their early career years for promoting their well-being as well as resilience, thus expanding their level of awareness and self-reflections. Indeed, as Peter noted in Chapter 10, he was surprised how journal writing helped him to not only document his experiences, but also gave him new perspectives on his experiences after he reread his writing. Writing can be so powerful because it has this built-in reflective mechanism where the writer must consider what to write first, which entails thoughts must be organized and then written. The writer will then “see” their own reflections and, like Peter and the other six ESL teachers, be able to reflect on their reflections; this is called reflective writing (for more on this, see Farrell, Reference Farrell2012b).