Page 99 - Pedagoška vizija / A Pedagogical Vision

The Creation of Online Mini-Takeaway

Lessons as a Reflective Instrument
in Teacher Education

Anja Pirih Silva Bratož
Univerza na Primorskem Univerza na Primorskem
anja.pirih@upr.si silva.bratoz@upr.si

Reflective practice is an essential element of every teacher education pro-
gramme. Through reflective practice, prospective teachers examine several
relevant issues of their teaching practice, from methodological problems to
their own beliefs and perceptions of teaching. We present the results of a
qualitative study aimed at analysing the potential of creating ‘mini takeaway
lessons’ for asynchronous online teaching as a reflective instrument in teacher
education. The participants were 43 primary school teaching students, en-
rolledintheMaster’sprogrammeforteachingEnglishtoyounglearners(TEYL),
who were instructed to design an online English lesson for young learners and
reflect on the process. We were especially interested in exploring the students’
awareness of teaching principles in the process of creating the lessons, the stu-
dents’ perceptions of their own limitations in TEYL and their use of ICT. The re-
sults suggest that ‘mini takeaway lessons’ can be used as an effective tool for
reflectioninteacher education.
Keywords: reflective practice, teacher education, teaching English to young
learners, mini takeaway lessons, asynchronous online teaching

Introduction
In the past few decades, reflective practice has been increasingly conceived
as an integral part of any pre-service teacher education programme, promot-
ingthegeneralideaofateacherasareflectivepractitioner.Asseveralauthors
(e.g. Dewey 1933; Valli 1997; Jay and Johnson 2002; Pedro 2005; Parsons et al.
2018) point out, it is through reflective practice that (pre-service) teachers ex-
amine a number of relevant issues in their teaching practice, from method-
ological problems to their own beliefs, but also moral and social aspects of
teaching. As emphasized by Zeichner and Liston (2013), reflective teachers
not only reflect upon their own practices in terms of what works in the class-
room, but are also able to understand how it works, where, and for whom.
In this paper, we present a reflective instrument based on the concept of the
‘mini takeaway lesson’ (MTL), which integrates the creation of an indepen-

Krmac, N.,S.Hudovernik, M. Rodela,M.Mezgec, M. RadetićPaićinM. Kukanja Gabrijelčič, ur. 2024.
Pedagoška vizija: premikanje izobraževanja od tradicije do inovacij – 50 let razvoja na Pedagoški fakulteti.
Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem. https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-358-6.99-114