Critical Reflection, EFL Education Reforms, and the Role of EFL Teacher Education

This study presents critical reflection as an effective and practical means EFL teacher education programs in Korea must embrace in their efforts to deal with issues caused by the mismatch between grammar-focused, reading-based, and teacher-centered beliefs held by Korean (prospective) EFL teachers and fluencyfocused, communicative-activity-oriented, and student-centered teaching practices recommended by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology’s (MOE’s) Communicative-Language-Teaching-based reforms. The study starts with a brief historical overview of the increasing interest in reflection as a means of dealing with complexities and challenges teachers face in their teaching practices. This overview is followed by an analytic review of previous studies that evidence the integral role that teachers’ beliefs play in educational reforms. The study also attends to studies that provide empirical evidence for the conflict between beliefs held by Korean (prospective) EFL teachers and demands of EFL education reforms initiated by the MOE. The study then argues for critical reflection as an effective (perhaps the most effective) solution for the conflict and discusses what critical reflection is. The study concludes by emphasizing that EFL teacher education programs in Korea must invest time and resources to develop carefully structured and guided procedures if they want to prepare their students to be practitioners of critical reflection.