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The Creation of Online Mini-Takeaway Lessons as a Reflective Instrument in Teacher Education

1. Planning the MTL: The students select the target grade and the topic
theyplan to teach with theMTL,afterwhich theywriteadetailedlesson
plan. The plan is supposed to include the standard elements (such as
lesson objectives, materials and resources to be used, vocabulary and
grammar that will be introduced, the sequence of activities, and time
reference for individual activities) as well as the necessary teacher talk
and scaffolding.
2. First consultation with supervisor: The students then discuss their les-
son plan individuallywith theirsupervisorwho istheuniversitylecturer
in charge of teaching practice.
3. Designing the MTL (e.g. in the PPT format): Designing the lesson tak-
ing into account the basic principles and strategies of TEYL and asyn-
chronous online learning and applying effective digital tools of their
choice.
4. Second consultation with supervisor: In the second reflective discus-
sion with their supervisor, students review the lesson design process,
focusing on the use of relevant strategies and digital tools.

Participants
The participants in this study were 43 Master students enrolled in the study
programme Primary School Teaching with English at the Faculty of Educa-
tion of the University of Primorska, Slovenia. The students are trained to be-
come generalist teachers but with an additional qualification for teaching
English to primary school pupils from Grade 1 to Grade 5 (ages 6 to 11). The
TEYL module consists of TEYL methodology courses and teaching practicum.
Despite the attempts to give the students enough exposure to teaching En-
glish in real-life classrooms, students typically report feeling insecure and
frustrated because, as they put it, they have only a very vague idea of them-
selves as teachers of English and thus do not know what to expect during the
TEYL teaching practicum. This issue was further intensified during the COVID
pandemic, when students were unable to take part in micro-teaching or the
teaching practicum. Lesson observations, which took place in the autumn
of 2020, were also conducted online since primary and secondary schools in
Slovenia were forced to organize mergency remote teaching (Hodges et al.
2020).

Data Collection
Data for this study were collected in the spring terms of the academic years
2019/2020 and 2020/2021. The first data set was collected within the reflective
practice itself during individual reflective discussions. Two discussions were
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