Search results

The purpose of this chapter is to identify the pedagogical approaches that foster critical reflection using video among the pre-service teachers during tutorials.

The research is situated in a school-based teaching programme in which pairs of pre-service teachers taught small groups of primary aged children over a period of seven weeks. Volunteer pre-service teachers videotaped their lessons and selected video excerpts to share with their peers in the tutorial. The educator guided the pre-service teachers’ reflection using the video. A case study drawing on interviews with pre-service teachers and audio recordings of tutorials, charted the development of pedagogical decisions made by the educators to promote reflection.

The pre-service teachers had difficulties undertaking deep reflection of their own and peers’ teaching practice. The response by educators was to promote collaboration among pre-service teachers by discussing specific aspects of the teaching in small groups and to use a jigsaw approach. This enabled a deeper analysis of particular elements of the lesson that were then integrated to produce a more holistic understanding of the teaching. The video data are most suitable for reflection and provide valuable evidence for pre-service teachers to develop their practice.

For pre-service teachers to develop effective skills to analyse their own practice they need to experience teaching in a safe but challenging environment, over a sustained period; have opportunities to develop a shared understanding of what constitutes quality teaching; have opportunities to critically analyse their teaching in discussion with peers and educators and be able to be guided by a framework of reflective strategies.

This chapter explores the benefits of reflective practice in learning environments and discusses the conditions that can impede and facilitate reflection for teachers and teaching assistants. Various strategies and tools to support teaching teams to reflect collaboratively are discussed and recommendations about how to introduce reflective practice are outlined.

To describe how combining a working definition of reflection with a framework for applying this definition can lead to a greater consistency in the manner with which reflection instruction is implemented in educator preparation programs.

Cultivating the habit and practice of reflection has been a long-standing goal of educator preparation programs. However, much of the research literature indicates a lack of consistency in the way that reflection is defined and taught in these programs, particularly in the context of video-reflection. This chapter examines how a workable definition of reflection based on Dewey’s phases of reflection can be used to make reflection instruction more consistent and meaningful for pre-service teachers.

The authors discuss the video-reflections of four different pre-service teachers, providing examples from their reflections to demonstrate how a workable reflection definition can assist teacher educators in developing the reflective capabilities of pre-service teachers.

By instituting a workable definition of reflection consistently across an educator preparation program, teacher educators can increase the likelihood that pre-service teachers will be prepared to engage in meaningful reflection when they begin to lead a classroom on an extended basis.

To explain how digital video editing can help foster reflective pedagogical thinking for pre-service teachers (PSTs).

PST education has emphasized reflective thinking, particularly through the use of video as a means to view teaching vignettes. As the process of editing videos involves recursive viewings and numerous multimodal choices in representing the raw footage, this chapter outlines two disciplinary PST courses (English and science) where they used digital video editing to create narratives of and reflect on their teaching lesson.

PSTs who edited their teaching promoted reflexive thinking about their content learning, provided a means to critique their teaching context, pedagogy, and assessment, and served to shift their attention from PST as learner to student as learner.

Using digital video allows teachers, through the recursive process of editing their footage, to emphasize reflection on content area learning, planned and enacted pedagogy, and context-based and learner-centered approaches to teaching.

To explain how an innovative practice-based approach to teacher preparation called the Adaptive Cycles of Teaching utilizes video reflection as part of multiple cycles of teaching across high impact literacy practices.

The faculty research team adopted a design-based research approach to develop and test the ACT model through iterations of design, implementation, analysis, and redesign. The chapter outlines the curriculum and findings from the initial iteration of design.

Teacher candidates experiencing the ACT model developed a strong knowledge of core literacy practices and were able to implement them with children. They continued to need additional scaffolding with respect to the quality of their instructional discourse and the gradual release of responsibility.

Continued research on the ACT model will allow us to refine the ways in which video use can enable preservice teachers to reflect and analyze their teaching and learning.

To describe how a defined video reflection prompt for preservice mathematics teachers shaped their reflective writing, which was examined using academic reflection as a genre model.

Academic reflection as a genre model was used to unpack the reflective processes evident in preservice teachers’ written reflections on a practicum teaching experience in the context of a methods course assignment, prior to any formal instruction about reflective genre. This chapter examines how the quality of participants’ reflective writing corresponded with two promising products of reflection – the accuracy of participants’ claims about the effectiveness of instructional tasks used during teaching and the quality of suggested revisions to the lesson.

The findings indicate that the extent to which participants engaged with the required parts of the assignment corresponded with the accuracy of their claims about the effectiveness of instructional tasks and the quality of revisions they suggested to the lesson. The authors discuss the writing produced by the participants, providing examples from their reflections to demonstrate preservice teachers’ initial competencies in using genre.

Informed by the nature of writing produced by the participants, the authors extend the model of reflection as a genre and suggest how it could be used to teach preservice teachers to effectively structure reflective writing. Furthermore, the authors offer recommendations for how to define the video reflection prompt to serve as a more effective scaffold of preservice teachers’ analysis of student learning.

The Chinese system of education is shifting from an examination orientation to a more creative approach in order to increase educational quality. The New Curriculum in China requires not only changes in content and form, but also sets higher expectations for teachers’ instructional strategies and quality course design. Against this policy backdrop, China developed and implemented the School-Based Instructional Research (SBIR) model to improve teachers’ professional knowledge and development. In this ISATT anniversary chapter, our discussion revolves around the theme of SBIR, including its origin, progression, process, elements, and methods. To end, we summarize the expectations and prospects for SBIR in the Chinese educational context.

The person of the teacher is an essential element in what constitutes professional teaching and therefore needs careful conceptualisation. In this chapter the author argues for this central thesis, presenting a wrap up of his theoretical and empirical work on the issue over the past decade. These studies have been inspired – both conceptually and methodologically – by teacher thinking-research as well as the narrative-biographical approach to teaching and teacher development. The result is an empirically grounded conceptual framework on teacher development and teacher professionalism. Central concepts are ‘professional self-understanding’ and ‘subjective educational theory’ as components of the personal interpretative framework every individual teacher develops throughout his/her career. This personal framework results from the reflective and meaningful interactions between the individual teacher and the social, cultural and structural working conditions constituting his/her job context(s). As such the framework is the dynamic outcome of an ongoing process of professional learning (development). Furthermore, it is argued that the particular professionalism or scholarship of teachers is fundamentally characterised by personal commitment and vulnerability, which eventually have consequences for the kind of reflective attitudes and skills professional teachers should master.

This chapter focusses on the role of reflective practices within initial teacher education courses and the context of the practicum and the role that school-based mentors have in helping student-teachers to learn the skills of ‘reading’ the classroom. It will also discuss how lesson study can support student-teachers and their school-based mentors in their collaborative planning, execution and discussions so that their reflections can be used to further their professional development. Finally, suggestions will be made to support the reflective development of student-teachers.

This chapter considers teacher learning in inclusive co-teaching contexts, specifically the moral dimensions embedded within it. The chapter draws data from a study focusing on teachers’ perceptions of their learning during co-teaching in inclusive classrooms, and salient moral features embedded in co-teaching situations. Data from joint stimulated recall interviews conducted with three co-teacher pairs illuminate that teachers perceived both possibilities and challenges in key learning situations during co-teaching in inclusive classrooms. In these situations, it is possible for teachers to articulate and extract their guiding beliefs toward salient moral aspects in inclusive teaching in order to extend their understanding and revise their inclusive teaching practices. This chapter suggests that co-teaching is a promising practice for promoting inclusive classroom communities where teachers and students can learn together.