Language Teacher Identity Reflection Framework

by Suzanne Barry | Jun 19, 2022 | Education Articles, Uncategorized

*Piloted in 2022 at the MLTAQ Conference in Brisbane and BCE education staff (get in touch for more details!)

KARDS Model from Language Teacher Education for a Global Society (Kumaravadivelu, 2012, p. 125).

Instructions for use

1. Modelled Discussion to be led by instructor
   • Discuss these questions with reference to *Emilie’s story. How did her story address these aspects of her ‘becoming’? Be a critical friend debriefing after a difficult day at school. How did Emilie work (or forget to work) with her knowing in this case? Imagine you are with Emilie, what might you say if she told you this story?
   • Preservice teachers/workshop participants to share in pairs or small groups and then share in group forum
   • Record reflections in a shared document to revisit later
2. The mirror: Self-reflection phase
   • Have participants write or record an experience they’ve had during supervised practical experience or teaching.
   • Ask participants to apply the same process to their own story
   • Follow the same process as in the modelled phase.
   • Note: A possible variation is for the whole mirror to be conducted in pairs and have participants workshop the experience together (dependent on comfort levels of participants to share)

Knowing: Informing, managing, and inspirational leadership

Professional Knowledge: How am I (working with my) knowing about the language form, how we use it, and how it mediates power? How am I (working with my) knowing about how languages pass between speakers and embed themselves in hearts and minds? Did I bring myself wholly to this interaction? What did I share/hold back? Why? How did that work out?

Procedural Knowledge: How am I purposefully managing the class? How am I causing my students to learn? How am I connecting with them in class and organising their learning?

Personal Knowledge: How am I leveraging my wisdom and tacit knowledge about life, language and people, to enable my goals and enrich my practice?

Analysing: Empowering and liberating by ‘tuning in’ to our learners’ realities

Learner Needs: How will what I am offering empower my students? How have I conducted (formally or informally) a ‘wants analysis’ for my students (so I know there will be ‘buy-in’)?

Learner Motivation: How am I connecting with the ‘context dependent, multi-faceted, and dynamic’ motivations of my students?

Learner Autonomy: How am connecting students with their intrinsic desire to grow? How am I developing self-regulating behaviours — to liberate them from external agendas? How will they be transformed (even in a small way) by what we do together?

Recognising: Interrogating the teacher ‘self’

Teacher Identities: How am I transforming into my teacher self? (How am I constructing the complex intersections between individual, social, national, and global realities?)

Teacher Beliefs and Dispositions: How do my beliefs about the world and my learners affect how I teach? How does my (intercultural) disposition shape my practice?

Teacher Values: How do my values and moral views affect how I teach, plan, make decisions, respond (for example, to observer/learner perspectives of me)?

Doing: Teaching is a reflexive activity

Teaching: How am I maximising learning opportunities? Am I mentoring personal transformation? If so, how?

Theorising: How am I developing theories (through considering methods, testing theories, & problem-solving) about teaching and learning through and from my own practice?

Dialogising: How am I engaged in continual, critical, reflexive practice? (i.e., How am I talking honestly to myself about my own practice?)

Seeing: (Seeing, Seeing-as, Seeing-that) Considering the interrelated perspectives in classroom discourse and interaction

Learner Perspective: How am I seeking to understand how my students are engaging with (affective), and making sense of (cognitive), my teaching? What tools am I using to ensure I am open to constructive learner feedback?

Teacher Perspective: Acknowledging my influence, how am I evaluating the impact of my teaching, reflecting on what I see, and allowing it to inform my practice?

Observer Perspective: How am I seeking, processing, and applying the impressions of an observer (a ‘critical friend’)?

*Framework developed by Suzanne Barry as part of a PhD study, with reference to Language Teacher Education for a Global Society – A modular model for knowing, analysing, recognising, doing, and seeing (Kumaravadivelu, 2012).

Originally developed in 2022, the Language Teacher Education Reflective Framework is the first of two KARDS Professional Becoming Resources. It supports reflection on the knowledge, identities, beliefs and contexts shaping teachers’ practice and can be used when mentoring a preservice teacher, examining your own professional development or working with a colleague as a critical friend.

A companion resource, the KARDS Professional Stories Analysis Tool, emerged from my narrative research. It supports educators to examine professional stories through the dimensions of Knowing, Analysing, Recognising, Doing and Seeing and formed the basis of my workshop at the 2025 AFMLTA International Languages Conference.

This resource is available here: Professional Stories Analysis Tool

Together, these resources have been used within Brisbane Catholic Education professional learning, by school principals and in initial teacher education. They remain developing resources, and I welcome feedback from educators who use or adapt them in their own contexts.