Thomas S. C. Farrell is an Irish-Canadian applied linguist and Professor of Applied Linguistics at Brock University in Ontario. For more than two decades his central subject has been reflective practice in language teaching — what it actually consists of, how teachers can do it without it collapsing into either self-help or self-criticism, and how it interacts with teacher cognition and career development.
Farrell's contribution has been to turn a fashionable term into a usable framework. His "Framework for Reflecting on Practice" (philosophy, principles, theory, practice, beyond practice) has become one of the most borrowed structures in ELT teacher education. He writes in a mild, persuasive register that belies the persistence of the programme behind it.