Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
TO BE OR NOT TO BE A GREAT EDUCATOR, Riga, Letonya, 29 - 31 Ağustos 2022, ss.176-187
Pedagogical reasoning enables student-teachers to better understand their own teaching
practices, analyse what, why and how they teach, and become aware of their teaching
practices. This case study aims to understand student- teachers’ decisions and the pedagogical
reasoning behind these decisions in lesson plans in an English language pre-service education
programme. Three third-year English language student-teachers enrolled in a pedagogical
content knowledge course “Teaching English to Young Learners” (TEYL) participated in this
study. We collected qualitative data from lesson plans, reflection notes on these performances
and plans, and interviews with student-teachers in the TEYL course. We used Shulman’s
model of pedagogical reasoning and action as a conceptual model to explore the complexity
of learning to teach English to young learners. Data were analysed iteratively through content
and thematic analysis. The results indicated that student-teachers made decisions mainly in
the transformation and instruction stages, and that their pedagogical reasoning emerged from
the theory of TEYL and their assumptions about the characteristics of very young and young
learners. More opportunities should be provided to increase their self-consciousness, selfknowledge and sense of agency through reflective tasks, action research projects and teaching
practice. The study has implications for student-teachers who need guidance and motivation to
prepare reflective lesson plans and for teacher educators who need to raise student-teachers’
awareness about decision making and pedagogical reasoning.