Innovation in Language Learning

Teachers’ beliefs, assumptions and knowledge are three main components that underlie teachers’ cognition and decision-making about teaching and learning. Experienced teachers think differently from novice teachers as the experienced teachers were reported to have more complex yet precise thoughts about teaching and learning as they have been exposed to the real context for a duration of time. Hence, their experience has become one of the main contributing factors in underlying their thinking about teaching and learning. In contrast, novice teachers were reported to have less complex thoughts and their lack of experience made them reflect on their beliefs and knowledge about teaching and learning. This paper presents the reflection by pre-service ESL teachers in Malaysia on their teaching experience during 14 weeks of practicum. The reflection focuses on exploring the pre-service teachers’ beliefs, assumptions and knowledge that led to their decisions to incorporate ICT in the teaching and learning process and in the selection of the ELT materials to be used in their respective classroom context. During teaching practice, teachers were given the freedom to choose and decide the media and materials they would use to enhance their teaching. The teachers can choose whether to use the textbook, worksheets or implement technology in the teaching by using video, animations and others. This study investigates whether the teaching experience altered the teachers’ conceptions about teaching and learning based on their retrospective comments after each lesson taught. Examining the pre-service teachers’ reflection and comments provide invaluable insight into the teachers’ underlying conceptions about the usage of ICT in teaching and learning of the English language. The findings from the study highlight how the pre-service teachers’ made instructional decisions based on the contextual factors and how the experience created tensions in their instructional decisions.