T1 112012075 Full text

Student-Teachers’ Perceptions towards The Use of Teaching
Journal in a Teaching Practicum Program
THESIS
Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Sarjana
Pendidikan

Retrianti Prasetya
112012075

English Language Education Program
Faculty of Language and Arts
Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana
2016

INTRODUCTION
Reflection is a process in the form of mentally processing and thinking
which are able to fulfill the purpose or to achieve the outcome that has been set
before. Furthermore, in relation to teaching, reflective teaching is an action which
involves critical thinking to find out about teaching techniques, personal goals,
values, beliefs, assumptions about teaching and the teaching context (Minott,
2011). To be able to do reflective teaching, the reflective practitioners in this case

student-teachers must use their desire and willingness to question and think
critically which will come naturally through practice. Just like what Posner (as
cited in Minott, 2011) stated all human beings have the capacity to question and
think critically which help them to develop their ability to be a critical thinker.
This reflection action was done by a reflection practititioner which in this case are
student-teachers who did their teaching program. Furthermore, reflection actions
can be done individually or in group. Reflection that was done indvidually is
usually called as Individual reflections which include writing reflective journals.
Meanwhile, the way student-teachers reflect on the Teaching Journals is usually
based on their practices and by jotting down the daily encounters with challenges
in the classroom which in a form of reflective journal (Loughran, as cited in Sharil
& Majid, 2010). By seeing this, it is understandable that student-teachers are
supposed to become critical of their own practices in order to make the students’
experiencing something dynamic, valuable and meaningful for their lives
(Insuasty & Castillo, 2010).

In English Teacher Education of Faculty of Language and Arts there is a
program called Teaching Practicum which facilitates student-teachers to
experience how it feels of being a teacher. According to Teaching Practicum
Handbook from Faculty of Language and Arts the objectives of teaching

practicum is for students to be able to apply their knowledge related to teaching in
real school environment in order to be a well-trained English teachers. The
objectives from the book were somehow similar with what Mtika has written that
is teaching practicum allows students to train themselves to develop their
professional attitude and shape their beliefs and thinking about teaching (2010).
The purpose of teaching practicum program is to equip future teachers with
necessary tools and knowledge as a mean to become effective practitioners (Sharil
& Majid, 2010). The tools were teaching methodologies, theories related to time
and class management, and also the materials used for teaching in a classroom
(Mtika, 2010).
Besides being able to teach properly, student-teachers must be able to
reflect or take notes of what they have been doing so that they can always
improve their teaching performances. Thus, the student-teachers must write
Reflective Journals everytime they have fnished teaching. Reflective Journal in
the context of teaching practicum program is defined as an exploratory kind of
writing which able to help student-teachers to reflect their experiences, identify
the commitments they made, examine alternatives for future teaching and
construct highly personalized kind of new knowledge (Harmelink, as cited in Alkarasneh, 2014). Shortly, teaching practicum program not only needs

methodologies and another preparation to support the teaching performances, but

they also need reflection which were called reflective journals to increase the
performance of the student-teachers. There were a variety of purposes by writing
reflective journal such as evaluation, assessment, reflection, teaching and to
provide evidence of student-teacher learning to teach (Black & Ammon, 1992 et
all, as cited in Al-karasneh, 2014). Meanwhile, Faculty of Language and
Literature has their own name for reflective journal study which is Teaching
Journal. Teaching Journal contains some aspects that are inside the Reflective
Journal. This research was conducted because in real life there were still many
student-teachers who were not fully aware of the benefits from writing Teaching
Journals and also they still thought that writing teaching journal was only to get a
since it is one of the requirement to pass Teaching Practicum Program. They did
not think of the advantages they might receive from writing the journals.
Considering the advantages of teaching journal that was mentioned above the
researcher came up with the aim of this study which was to see the studentteachers perception which hopefully be beneficial to raise student-teachers’
awareness of writing Teaching Journal in order to reflect and learn on their own
mistakes.

LITERATURE REVIEW
In this Literature review the explanation would start from what is the
meaning of reflective teaching, reflective journal, teaching practicum and also the

relation betweeen reflective journal and teaching practicum.

Reflective Teaching & Reflective Journals
Reflective teaching according to Teaching Practicum handbook is defined
as one way to reflect on student-teachers teaching for their own teaching skill
development. Meanwhile, in order to be able to do Reflective Teaching studentteachers should involve questioning disposition and develop critical thinking
about their teaching techniques, personal goals, values, beliefs, assumptions about
teaching and the teaching context (Minott, 2011). Furthermore, Minot (2011) also
stated that reflective teaching is simply student’s desire to be able to think
critically about their teaching. Thus, it involves examining, framing, attempting to
solve problems at classroom and asking question about assumptions and values in
the teaching. Reflection is also an action in which the student-teachers
(practitioners) sometimes make a new sense of uncertain, unique or conflicated
situations of practice (Rodriguez, 2008).
Paul (1994) and Halpern (1996) (as cited in Minott, 2011) stated that there are
some important things that should be involved in order to be able to be reflective:
-

Willingness to question

-

Take risks in learning

-

Try out new strategies and ideas

-

Seek alternatives

-

Take control of learning

-

Use higher order thinking skills

-

Reflect upon their own learning process.

In relation with those important things mentioned by Paul (1994) and Halpern
(1996) student-teachers must accomplish what so called reflective behaviours.
One of the example of Reflective Behaviour is to write reflective Journal as one
way for student teacher to reflect on what they have done during the teaching and
learn from that.
Furthermore, Al-karasneh (2014) stated that “Reflective Journals is a kind
of writing that able to help student-teachers to reflect on their experiences,
identify their commitments, examine alternatives and build a highly personalized
new knowledge.” Looking at the definition by Al-Karasneh (2014) it is obvious
that journals are useful learning tools in a variety of adult education settings
especially in relation to student-teachers learning to teach social education (Kerka,
as cited in Al-Karasneh, 2014). Journals are also helpful for the students to find
solution for the problem they feel while doing teaching practicum. Reflection also
encourages students to take ownership of their knowledge and make relations
between the theory and practice of their studies (O’Connel & Smith, 2015).
Meanwhile, there are many kinds of reflective journals such as in a form of

written text, video tape and so on. The reflective journals can be done individually
and in groups. In this research, I only talked about the written form since that is
the form that English Language Education provides for the student-teachers in
order to complete their teaching practicum and for the students to be able to
reflect on what they had done and how to overcome all the problems which arose
while they taught. The term used for the reflection journal in the teaching
practicum environment in Faculty of Language and Arts was called Teaching

Journals which requires the students to reflect individually every time they have
done their teaching.
Teaching Journal in FLA context is an activity that requires studentteachers to reflect on his / her teaching in order to see their own teaching skill
development. The journal should be done right after they do their teaching
session. This journal later was consulted with their mentor to get comment so that
they were able to develop their skills in teaching for the next performances. The
skills mentioned were time management, classroom management, material
development and many more which are include as skills for teaching.

Teaching Practicum
Teaching practicum according to the Teaching Practicum Handbook is a
required course of the Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya

Wacana, which makes the students able to apply the knowledge they got in their
learning time into real school environment. In following the Teaching Practicum
program student-teachers need to do some activities in relation to teaching. The
activities were to observe their mentor teacher and the other student-teachers,
teach at least 6 lessons in 6 different classes, develop their own lesson plan,
develop skills in selection and utilization of educational technology inside the
classroom, develop questioning techniques in individual, small groups and total
classroom situations, assist their own mates and mentor teachers. Based on those
activities there was one activity that requires the students to be able to perform

critical thinking which is develop questioning techniques in individual, small
groups and total classroom situation that is writing a journal. Furthermore, Mtika
(2011) stated that Teaching practicum is integral to train student-teachers
professional development and to create their beliefs and thinking about all things
related to teaching. Since it is teaching practicum program so it is obvious that the
students need to practice teaching based on the theory about teaching they have
got from previous classes such as Introduction to Language Education, Curiculum
and Material Development and also Micro Teaching. Shortly, it is the time for
them to implement what they have learned before. Moreover, student-teachers
also had to develop their creativity and critical thinking in teaching which should

be done in writing reflective journals.
Relation between Writing Reflective Journals and Teaching Practicum
Elia, Khadijah and Faizah (as cited in Sharil & Majid, 2010) stated that by
doing reflective journal the student-teachers are expected to reflect on their
strengths and weaknesses of the lesson and apply what the student-teachers have
learned from the reflections to make a better planning later. They also should be
able to question and investigate their actions to become effective decision makers,
regarding of whether it happened during the time they plan the teaching,
interaction during the teaching or evaluative decision making stage (Sharil &
Majid, 2010). To be able to write effective individual reflections, student-teachers
need to emphasize on the learning process through questions and investigation to
lead to development of understanding which means student-teachers should be
able to investigate “whys” rather than “whats” (Sharil & Majid, 2010). By writing

reflective journals or simply we can say it as Individual Reflection there are some
benefits that can be felt, like what is stated by Al-Karasneh (2014):
-

Development of critical thinking activities

-

Development of teaching philosophy

-

Monitoring and assessment tool

-

Source of personal development

-

Source of motivation

-

Development of writing styles and self-expression.
Despite all the positive sides mentioned above, there might also some

negative perceptions uttered by the participants regarding to teaching journals in
their teaching practicum program. According to Landley and Brown (2010),
student-teachers did not have any much time to write all the reflective journals
and they might use the time for a big project or another examinations since they
have class as well.
By seeing all of the benefits and expectations from researchers, my study
aims is to see student-teachers’ opinions regarding to their perceptions toward
writing Teaching Journal and how useful it would be for them later on the work
field.
This study was guided by the following Research Question, which is: what
are the student-teachers perception about Teaching Journal.
By having this question, the student-teachers were expected to be able to
utter their opinion regarding to their perception toward writing Teaching Journal

and how useful it would be for them. This research focuses on the use of reflective
journals which named Teaching Journals in the context of teaching practicum
program in English Language Education Program at the Faculty of Language and
Arts, Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana.
THE STUDY
Context of the study
This study was conducted using a qualitative methodology to probe into
student-teachers’ perceptions towards Teaching Journal especially in Junior High
School context. This study took place in a Faculty of Language and Arts in a
private university in Salatiga. This program provides teaching practicum program
held by the faculty in order to fulfill the requirement to be an English Teacher.
The reason of using Junior High School context was because the researcher were
observed that some Junior High School student-teachers were not really fond of
writing teaching journal. Meanwhile, researcher such as Al-Karasneh (2014)
actually stated that writing journals were useful for teachers especially studentteachers since they were still learning to be a teacher. By writing journals AlKarasneh (2014) further stated that it gave student-teachers tools to develop their
teaching performance.
Moreover, In teaching practicum program, there are some important things
that was needed to be done in order to be better and increase the quality of
teaching. According to the Teaching Practicum Handbook student-teachers were
asked to write a reflective journal in the form of teaching journal for them to be

able to reflect on their teaching so that student-teachers could develop their
teaching skills. So it was obvious that writing teaching journal were useful if we
see the definition and why it should written based on the Teaching Practicum
Handbook. Therefore, this research was later used to see the student-teachers’
perceptions especially to emphasize whether they feel the benefit mentioned by
other researcher or not.
Participants
The participants of this study were 25 student-teachers of the English
Education program, who had done their teaching practicum program. The
participants were selected from 6 different groups who taught in different Junior
High Schools in order to get more variable data so that the result would vary as
well. Previously they did their teaching practicum in SMPN 2 Tuntang, SMPN 1
Banyubiru, SMP Anak Terang (Bethany), SMPN 2 Salatiga, SMPN 7 Salatiga,
SMP Lab UKSW. Three to four participants from each school were selected to be
asked about their perceptions in order to get richer and more various data
compared to only using one specific school, which contains 9 to 10 people. By
having different participants from different schools it was hoped that the result of
the research would vary since between one school and the other might have
different styles and contents in writing the teaching journals.
Data Collection Instrument

The instrument of this study was semi-structured interview which was
developed further from Al-Karasneh’s (2014) study. There were 5 Questions
asked with some follow up questions. The questions asked were:
1. What do you think of your Teaching Journal ?
2. What did you write on your Teaching Journal ?
3. Can you see any benefit from writing Teaching Journal ?


If yes, what are the benefits ?



If no, why there are no benefits ?

4. Did you see any problem in writing Teaching Journal ?


If yes, what are the problems ?



If no, why there are no problems ?

5. Do you think writing Teaching Journal is important in
Teaching Practicum Program ? Why ?
To 8 participants the questions were asked through Facebook & Line app;
the other 17 participants were interviewed.

Data collection procedure
There were several things that the researcher did to collect the data,
namely :
1. Conducting pilot testing data instrument to 5 student-teachers from
different schools. Five student-teachers were selected because they had
done teaching practicum and had written teaching journal for their
teaching. Meanwhile, the reason of doing piloting was for the

researcher to check the instruments were able or not to collect the data
needed.
2. Finding 5 student-teachers from each schools that were mentioned
above who was willing to give their opinion regarding to writing
teaching journals.
3. Making an appointment to meet and conduct an interview session.
4. Conducting the interview session by asking the questions one by one
which followed by the follow up questions based on their answers that
could support the data.
5. All participants answered around 5 - 8 questions which consist of some
main questions and follow-up questions related to their opinion and
perceptions toward writing Individual Reflections. The interview was
done in 15-20 minutes.
Data analysis procedure
After having interview session with the participants the recordings were all
transcribed in order for me to see the data collected. Clean transcription was used
to see the important things which had relation to the research. Data in Bahasa
Indonesia were translated to English. After reading and highlighting the result, the
data interpretation was done by grouping the data into some initial themes. After
that, the final themes were written and the result was put into some sub themes.
Finally the conclusion was drawn based on the result of the study.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
The aim of the study was to see the student-teachers’ perception about
writing Teaching Journal during their Teaching Practicum Program. Moreover, it
was about the perceptions the student-teachers uttered about writing teaching
journals. There were two versions of the student-teachers’ answer in response to
this. There were positive and negative sides. For the positive sides, twenty
student-teachers stated that writing teaching journal was very useful for them to
reflect and improve their teaching skills. The improvement is on different aspects
such as knowing their strengths and weaknesses, knowing how to solve problem
in class, and much more. In short, writing Teaching Journal help them to
understand themselves better and deeper in relation to their teaching performance.
The statement that was uttered by student-teachers actually match with the
statement of Al-Karasneh (2014) that student-teachers are able to see their
teaching and learning experiences systematically and comprehensively which
somehow helped them to change their mindset, writing styles and practice. Even
though most of the student-teachers uttered that writing Teaching Journal was
useful, some of them also uttered some negative comments. Here there was only
one point about the negative side since it all belongs to the one big point; that is,
writing teaching journal was a waste of time and was not necessary in order to
complete their teaching practicum program. They mentioned that writing a
teaching journal was only for the sake of passing the Teaching Practicum
Program.
1. Positive Perceptions

From the interviews, it was revealed that most of the participants thought
that Teaching Journal was good to help student-teachers to be able to reflect and
improve their teaching performance. They mentioned that they were able to reflect
on the strengths and weaknesses on their teaching and to improve some aspects of
their teaching such as how they solved the problem, how to fix their time
management, how to see themselves deeper than before and much more.
When the participants were asked about their opinion regarding the use of
teaching journal, twenty of them said that teaching journal was necessary because
they thought that writing teaching journal help them to reflect and improve on
their work. It was good to help them keep track of what they have been doing
while they were teaching. Here are some themes of reflections on improved
behaviors the student-teachers told the researcher.


Source of self-awareness
The result showed that around 20 students said that writing teaching

journals helped them to understand themselves deeper. The statements from the
student-teachers were supported by Ambusaidi (2014), that writing teaching
journals could be a tool for student-teachers to be aware of theirselves. They were
able to know their strengths and weaknesses. They were made aware of what they
might need to be proud of and what they might lack of. Shortly, by writing
Teaching Journal participants were able to see their weaknesses, strengths and
problems which were needed to fix. According to Al-Karasneh (2014), reflective
writing journals as well as Teaching Journal could be used as multi-purpose

learning tool in which the student-teachers were able to look back at their teaching
and learning systematically and comprehensively. It also helped them to develop
or even change the way of thinking, writing and practice in daily life. Here are
some statements stated by the student-teachers regarding to the use of teaching
journal especially those who said that teaching journal was helpful to reflect and
see themselves deeper.
… reflect on what we had done in teaching, what are the
weaknesses, strengths, the problems and what we need to fix.
(Participant 7)
Student-teachers can reflect on how they teach. Whether the
materials and the activities is suitable or not. Whether the
classroom management is good or not, can they handle the
students or not. On my opinion by doing this the strength and
weaknesses can be seen. (Participant 10)
…..teaching journal is helpful for me to reflect on all the
activity that I have done since usually I wrote about my
strengths and weaknesses. (Participant 16).

Based on the statements above, it was clear that student-teachers thought
that by writing teaching journal they could understand themselves better than
before. It somehow drove them to get used to being critical thinkers. As AlKarasneh (2014) stated on his journal that Teaching Journal could be an
encouraging tool for the development of critical thinking about experiences and
action in teaching. By having critical thinking behaviour they were made aware
of themselves and what they were going to do to improve their teaching later. It
also encouraged them to develop their skill and becoming a better teacher for
their students.


As a tool to improve the teaching quality

Around 15 student-teachers said that apart from being able to see
themselves and being aware of their own skill, by having teaching journal they
were also able to improve their teaching quality. After they saw themselves fully
by knowing their strengths and weaknesses, the student-teachers were able to
improve their weaknesses. The statement above were supported by Savage and
Armstrong (as cited in Al-Karasneh 2014) that critical thinking was used to
examine ideas and to be brave in trying out new ideas. As the student-teachers
uttered at the interview section:
….it would give us more ideas on our teaching as we reflect
and get more ideas on what should we do to improve our
teaching. (Participant 7)
…reflection help me to develop my performance in every
teaching. By writing this journal I would be able to reflect on
what I have done, what is my lack and knowing my strength
(Participant 25)
I can improve from the comments that my mentor gave me
even though it is not much. It is not really important but it
can be a comparison between the first and the next teaching
performance. (Participant 20)

Furthermore, they also said that by writing teaching journal, they were
able to keep track of their cases that appears on their teaching so that they knew
what they should do for their betterment. As supported by Boyd & Boyd (no year)
that one way to see the benefit from writing Teaching Journal is simply to record
in it material covered in class because no one will use the same illustration,
exercise or even use the same jokes and story. Furthermore, by writing teaching
journal student-teachers can select appropriate technique for the performances in
the next teaching. Generux (2016) stated that by writing teaching journal student-

teachers can be selected about the information of the techniques they were going
to use. By writing Teaching Journal, it prevents the student-teachers from doing
repetition in teaching, e.g., using the same materials or the same techniques used
for some teaching sessions.


As a tool to overcome problems
Those twenty participants also said that teaching journal was important

because it helped them to reflect on what they have performed. They also said that
by writing teaching journal they were able to keep track of what they have done
so that they could always make good improvement. By writing teaching journal
they were also able to overcome the problems that might arise at the classroom
while they were teaching.
… it reflects to any actions that I took, my strength and
weaknesses. From teaching journal I could make a solution
for any problems that I have encountered. Moreover, if in the
future I encounter the same problem, I could use my teaching
journal as a reminder. (Participant 14)
… we can see from the case, if there is a special case in a
specific class then we can use the problem solving at the
same class. But if it is a general case that mostly happen in
all class, we can implement the problem solving to any other
classes. (Participant 6)
.... in my opinion, problems from each class are mostly the
same. That is why I try to use almost the same problem
solving for each class. (participant 23)

Student-teachers emphasized that having teaching journal helped them to
develop their teaching performance. They were able to differentiate between one
problems with another. For example when they were required to teach in a

specific class and they found a problem that only happen in that class they would
be able to find problem solving which later can only be applied in that class.
Moreover, if they found general problem which may happen in every class, they
could just use the same problem solving for every class.


Development of writing styles and self-expression
By writing teaching journal

student-teachers were also

given

opportunities to improve their skill in writing. Two participants stated that when
they wrote teaching journal right after teaching they felt that they could monitor
their style on writing and were also able to express themselves. According to AlKarasneh (2014) keeping journals were able to help student-teachers develop their
writing styles as well their self-expression. It was somehow different from the
result if they wrote it after several times teaching.
.... it helps me develop my skill in writing since we are the
students of English Department which requires us to write
with good and understandable English. (Participant 1)
.... it improves my ability in writing skills in English and
how to use it wisely, and it also made me aware of the
grammatical mistakes after reviewing it. (Participant 25)

The statements uttered by the student-teachers above was actually very
clear. It stated that both of them were able to increase or develop their ability in
writing and understand their own writing styles. Since writing journal were done
multiple times, student-teachers can also learn by their own to be aware of any
grammatical mistakes that they made. As Al-Karasneh (2014) stated that by

writing teaching journal regularly and keep the track the student-teachers were
able to develop their writing style as well as their skill in writing.
It was also shown that student-teachers said that writing the journal after
teaching right away was more helpful rather than writing it after several weeks
after the teaching. They said so because they were still able to remember what was
needed to be written. They realized if they wrote the Journals couple days or
couple weeks after several teaching, they could not give their best because they
had already forgotten the detail of the performances. Yet there was one participant
saying that by writing the journals after several teaching sessions, he could
increase their ability in writing. He thought that by writing it together, he could
show a good grammar in writing rather than those journals he wrote after teaching
even though the memories still fresh.


Self-monitor
By writing teaching journal student-teachers were able to monitor

themselves. Monitor here means that the student-teachers were able to see
themselves just like what is stated at the first point and they were also able to
control what they have been doing. The way they monitor themselves vary. For
example monitoring about the classroom management, materials and activities,
teaching aids and many more. This was supported by the theory of Al-Karasneh
(2014) that student-teachers were able to look at their teaching and learning in a
systematic and comprehensive way.
…..reflect on how they teach. Whether the materials and the
activities are suitable or not. Whether the classroom
management is good or not, can they handle the students or
not. (Participant 10)

I reflect on what I have learned and what would I do if I had
the opportunity to teach in the same circumstances.
(Participant 5)

This result was explained by the fact that student-teachers were trained to
be able to understand themselves. As Cunningham and Zeichner (as cited in
Minott, 2011) stated that by writing teaching journals could lead student-teachers
to self-understanding and self-improvement which could help them become
better teacher, which later facilitates necessary changes in their own self, others
or even for working environment.

2. Negative Perspectives
Even though most student-teachers uttered positive statements regarding
the use of teaching journal in teaching practicum program, around 5 studentteachers mentioned that they could not get any advantages from writing Teaching
Journals. Five of them said that writing Teaching Journal was tiring and added up
their job. They said so because they were working for their Thesis proposal at the
same time they were doing Teaching Practicum Program and they also still
needed to do other assignments from other classes. Here are the themes from the
negative side of this research.


Tiring and time-consuming
Despite all of the positive statements mentioned above, there were 5

participants who thought that it was only a requirement so they were not willing to
make the journals. They submitted the journal because it was necessary for them

to get a good grade and passed Teaching Practicum Program. Those who thought
that Teaching Journal was not necessary said that they were having a very hard
time on making it because they did not put their soul to it. Thus, writing Teaching
Journals were not helping them much. Furthermore, they said that it was very
tiring and too much work for them since they have to wrote journals after
teaching, made materials for the next teaching and wrote individual as well as
group reflection. For the reason mentioned before, the student-teachers emphasize
that they were confused of which one should they do first. This problem makes
writing journal not really useful for them since they did not do it well. Moreover,
there was one participant who said that she and her friends just copied and pasted
the journals from the previous journals from previous year students. In this case
this type student did not learn from her reflection but she wrote it for the sake of
requirements.
I think my main problem is my reluctance to write the
journal itself. Especially after teaching we have to do other
things, such as writing down their score or making new
lesson plan for the next teaching.(Participant 21)

The statement uttered by the participants were supported by Landley and
Brown (2010) that most student-teachers stated that writing reflective journal as a
thing that make them even busier. By being even busier the student became lazier
to write the journals because on their opinion they did not have much time to
write journals since they had to do something else. Besides writing the journals
they had to do other important things to support their teaching performance such
as making another lesson plan for the next teaching performance or even more
they still had to prepare another subject as they were still having some class at

college. This was what the student-teachers uttered as the reason for their
becoming lazy and thought of the teaching journals as unimportant matters.
In conclusion, despite the 5 student-teacher’s statements that writing
Teaching Journal was not necessary, the result underlined that writing Teaching
Journal helped student-teachers to understand deeper about themselves in terms of
teaching. It gave them opportunity to know and analyzed their ability and teaching
so that they were able to develop it for their betterment later on the workfield.

CONCLUSION

The aim of the study was to see the Student-Teachers Perception about
writing Teaching Journal during their Teaching Practicum Program. There were
two versions of the student-teachers answers in response to this. There were
positive and negative opinion that the student-teachers uttered. Some of the
positive opinions were student-teachers were able to know their strengths and
weaknesses, know how to solve problem in special case or in general case,
monitor themselves to be a provide better service as a teacher, and much more.
Those aspects mentioned above were somehow emphasized that writing teaching
journal is very useful for them to reflect and improve their teaching skills. In
short, writing Teaching Journal helped them to understand themselves better and
deeper in relation to their teaching performance. It somehow matches with the
statement of Al-Karasneh (2014) that student-teachers are able to see to their

teaching and learning experiences systematically and comprehensively which
somehow helped them to change their mindset, writing styles and practice.
Furthermore, the result of the research showed that all of them covered all the
seven ideas about reflective journal written by Al-Karasneh (2014) in his case
study which were development of ability to reflect, being a critical thinkers,
development of teaching philosophy, monitoring and assessment tool, source of
personal development, source of motivation, development of writing styles and
self-expression and the last is the negative side that he also stated which is the
source of stress and anxiety. The statements of the participants somehow agreed
with what Paul and Harpen (as cited in Minot, 2011) as the example were
mentioned above.
Meanwhile, for the negative sides around 5 student-teachers said that they
did not think that writing teaching journal was necessary. It was for requirements
only so that they were able to pass Teaching Practicum Program. It was also
supported by the statement from Landley and Brown (2010) on their journal
Perceptions of the use of Reflective Learning Journals in Online Graduate
Nursing Education.
Despite the negative perceptions, most of the student-teachers were
actually aware of the advantages from writing teaching journal. It could be seen
from the answers uttered by 20 students that said the writing journals were useful
for them as reflective practitioners. The findings mentioned has important
implication in developing awareness of the student teachers in writing teaching
journals. As Boyd and Boyd (n.d.) mentioned that the student-teachers referred to

journals not only as something that needs to be completed but also as a tool for
them to see through themselves which were support the findings that were
previously discussed.
The limitation of this study is that it was held only in small scale which
only using some student-teachers from Junior High School. A study with wider
scope were suggested here. Further study may include wider range of participants
since the participants of teaching practicum program were put into some other
schools such as in senior high school or elementary school. Furthermore, this
study also does not provide enough information related to the way or strategies
that student-teachers use to be able to reflect on themselves. The researcher came
up with strategic questions for future research: how does Teaching Journal help
student-teachers to get to know themselves which lead to their betterment? So the
research will explain more thoroughly about the processes that the studentteachers did until they were finally able to see themselves. Another possible
question is: how writing Teaching Journal help student-teacher to develop their
writing styles and critical thinking? Here, the research will focus on analyzing the
journals and having short interview related for the development of their writing
styles.

Acknowledgement
Big Thanks for my beloved Jesus Christ for His guidance through these 6
months. He never left me even one seconds and never let go of me when I have no
strength to keep writing this thesis. It is HIM who makes me able to finish this
thesis.
My very special gratitude for Mam Victoria Usadya Palupi, MA-ELT for
being my super patient and wonderful Supervisor and Dr. Joseph Ernest Mambu
for his help as the examiner for my thesis.
Special gratitude also for my beloved parents R. Triwahyo Dyatmiko and
B. Retno Kristiyani who never get tired of supporting me, sending me lots of
prayers every day. My beloved cousin Werdani Sulistya Hadi and my
grandparents who always encourage me to do my best in writing this thesis.
My beloved bestfriends and brothers Julius & Wisnu who always
encourage me and sending me lots of motivation words just for me to get through
this thesis difficulties.
My super BS Gank Oviera, Novi, Yiskaningtyas, Luky as well Kevin,
Avinda, Sekar and Annisa for every prayers they send me and every motivation
and courage they always gave to me. Thanks as well for Intan for being my
partner in crime during my struggles to finish this thesis. Especially Tia for being
my proof reader before I sent my thesis to both Supervisor and Second Reader.
Thanks as well for my boarding house’s sisters, Regina and Yemima for being
such a wonderful sister who always cheering me up. Lastly, I want to thank

Sandy, Sita, Galih, Kresna and all Sunday School Teacher at GKJ Salatiga for
never leave me even one second and always encourage me no matter what
happen.

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