Preparing Pre-Service Candidates as Effective Reflective Practitioners Using edTPA

Proponents of teacher education preparation advocate that in order for new teachers to be effective in their practice they must acquire skills as reflective practitioners, specifically as it relates to lesson designing and instruction and understanding individual student needs. This study demonstrates the use of edTPA reflective commentary to move teacher education candidates from a superficial professional reflection to becoming a reflective practitioner with an in-depth understanding of reflective practice and evidence-based instruction.

Creative Thinking and Reflective Teaching in Prospective Teachers

Reflective thinking skills are vital for the modern education in schools. Five important reflective thinking skills are identified so far in the scientific literature: Observation, communication, judgment, decision making, and team working. Additionally, creative thinking is becoming more and more regarded as a necessary part of the educational process. In this chapter, an attempt is made to clarify what a sample of prospective teachers in Greece believe about reflective teaching, while at the same time their knowledge and attitudes towards creative thinking are examined. Results indicated that respondents were not fully informed during their formal university education about creative thinking and reflective teaching, while they also lacked hands-on experience and relevant skills. Future research should further focus on cross-cultural differences regarding creative thinking attitudes and reflective teaching in prospective and professional in-service teachers.

Teachers' Reflective Practice in Lifelong Learning Programs

This chapter explores teachers' reflective practice in lifelong learning programs based on a qualitative study of five teachers representing three part-time Master's programs. The theoretical framework for analysis of the interview data is Ellström's (1996) model for categorizing levels of action, knowledge and learning, activity theory (Engeström, 1987) and expansive learning (Engeström & Sannino, 2010). The results show a divergence between what the teachers perceive as the Master students' learning goals and the teachers' goals and objectives. This is highlighted through the teachers' experience with the students' understandings of the theories they are introduced to and how they apply them in relation to their practice context. The insights and the issues raised by the study are relevant for teachers in Higher Education.

Practices and Reflections on Pioneer Service Learning in Higher Education of China

Service learning, as one form of experiential education derived from David Kolb's experiential learning model, integrates service with classroom instruction. It can be applied in primary, secondary and higher education setting. According to its broad definition from National Society of Experiential Education in the United States (1994): service learning is “any carefully monitored service experience in which a student has intentional learning goals and reflects actively on what he or she is learning throughout the experiences”. Under the rapid urbanization and economic development in China, higher education is experiencing great challenges in terms of its mission and pedagogy. I share my pioneer teaching experiences of service learning among undergraduate students at a teaching college in Guangdong, China with insufficient institutional support and community partnership. With the details of my course design, practice, and reflections on students' learning, I conclude that students benefit from service learning in their personal growth, civic learning and academic enhancement.

Tracing the Development of Reflective Competence in Multi-Sited ITE Involving Telecollaboration

This chapter illustrates the process and outcomes of developing reflective competence according to three preservice teachers who participated in a multi-sited learning environment, involving integrated telecollaboration. The learning environment fused together university, virtual and school sites. An ethnographic multiple case study with quantitative measurements was employed to analyse the year-long trajectory of the preservice teachers' learning to reflect. We gathered audio-visual data from beginning to end of the year, indicating participants' growing ability to reflect on their own practices, and leading cognitive change and transformation of classroom practices. By tracing multimodal interactions sequentially, we were able to extract guidelines for creating useful collaborative artifact ecologies in Initial Teacher Education and discuss the relationship between reflection, cognitive development and different personality traits. Based on our findings, we empirically substantiate the argument that reflective competence can indeed trigger transformation in Initial Teacher Education.

Preservice Teachers' Self-Reflection Practices When Integrating Educational Technology in the Classroom

As digital tools become common in the modern classroom, teachers must be equipped with understanding how to create lessons for modern learning. Reflective teaching practices are one such way to help preservice teachers learn quality skills for both creating and implementing digital tools. While working through the six traits of the reflective practitioner (Eby & Kujawa, 1998) over the course of one semester, 29 participants kept a reflective journal detailing their process of creating a lesson using technology. The creation process also included complete lesson plans and a video presentation of the lesson; the video presentation was submitted to an online education technology conference (www.c2lconference.com). Sources of data included reflective journals, lesson plans, self-reflection questionnaires, and conference evaluations. The emergent themes for both the reflective journals and the comments on the self-reflection were aligned to produce three main themes, which were then connected to the six traits.

Developing Reflection with the Use of a Teacher Journal

If the educators are willing to develop their reflectivity on what they have habitually considered genuine, the teaching may transform them into professionals who are vitally open to the students and to the world. For that reason, the first part of the chapter concerns the process of becoming reflective educators whereas the consecutive section introduces teacher journal as a means of developing reflectivity. The next part of the chapter comprises a study which is an attempt to analyze and describe the data gathered from the entries in teacher journals. An additional effort will be made to examine which elements of the classroom interaction are influenced and which are ignored by teachers during the process of reflective development. The chapter ends with conclusions and suggestions for further research directions.

The Role of Pibid in Graduation Courses

One of the greatest challenges of teachers' education is its requirement to ally theory and practice. In Brazil, this scenario fostered the implementation of the Institutional Scholarship Program for Pre-Service Teacher Education – Pibid by a Governmental agency. The core of the program is to offer undergraduate students the opportunity to experience teaching process as they participate in school routine. Although Pibid dates from 2007, it was implemented at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology – IFTO in 2009. This chapter presents the history of Pibid at IFTO and an analysis of its results with regards to fostering reflective teaching. We employed a qualitative research methodology to conduct this case study. Besides the literature review, we analyzed the reports of Pibid and we surveyed graduates who participated in it while attending their graduate courses. Data confirms that Pibid is beneficial to teachers' pre-service and in-service education; it promotes interaction between theory and practice and, most importantly, it helps developing reflective teaching.

Tracing Assessment for Learning Capability in Teachers (TACT)

The focus on assessment literate teachers who know how to construct, administer assessments and communicate learning outcomes on student learning raises questions on how student teachers can develop the necessary skills to assess their students' learning. This is so important since there is evidence that beginning teachers continue to feel under prepared to assess student learning. This chapter presents findings of a study conducted in Denmark with the aim of investigating how student teacher candidates develop the capacities to become ‘assessment literate' over the course of their teacher education program. This chapter presents preliminary survey and focus group interviews data after tracing 21 pre-service teachers over two years. Our findings reflected a picture of Danish student teachers who value in particular formative assessment practices, while summative assessment is acknowledged as necessary but unwanted and perhaps even unproductive process.

Reflective Teaching Methodology in Pre-Service Education

The aim of the present chapter is to gain a deep understanding of how to teach and consequently improve new practices. As teaching becomes a lifelong learning process, teachers' inability to improve their teaching practices is considered an evidence of their incompetence. This vicious circle should be broken. The present chapter solves this problem relying on the reflective teaching methodology highlighting its importance, levels, and models of reflection ending with their pedagogical implications. Moreover, it suggests practical reflective teaching instruments to help student teachers enrolled in educational programs to detect their own teaching performances' strengths and weaknesses. In addition, it sketches carefully a Reflective Training Guide with its specific detailed hierarchical structures that can be adopted by TEFL professors in the pre- service Education Programs. Thus, teaching is not practiced haphazardly but practiced cautiously in an artistic way. The present chapter is an exploration in the field of reflective teaching methodology in pre-service education programs.