ABSTRACT
During their careers, teachers face numerous educational reforms and curricular changes which means they need to constantly re-examine their classroom practices, reflect on their beliefs and consider their roles as teachers. My work here investigates how critical reflection and theorising can affect teachers’ critical questioning of their teaching practices and stimulate their processes of integrating new language learning theories into their teaching. The data consist of 108 reflective texts collected from primary school teachers in English. These texts were analysed inductively and coded descriptively. The results of the codes were converted into themes uncovering the dominant ideas of the data. Four themes appear: Teachers’ competencies, Confirming existing teaching practices, Changes in teaching practices and The value of theory. In conclusion, these teachers taking continuing education courses in English testify to how theorising and reflecting critically on their teaching practices, through input of theory, have contributed to their professional development in the English classroom.
