Facilitating Pre-service Teachers' Reflection Through a School-based Teaching Programme

This paper was designed to uncover student teachers' reflection and to study how it can be enhanced through a school-based teaching programmes. Six student teachers taking the pre-service teacher training at the Faculty of Education, Monash University, were selected to be the subjects of the study while they were involved in a nine-week school-based teaching practicum. The methodology employed an interview-video-interview cycle which involved pre-lesson interviews, post-lesson interviews and while-viewing video interviews held after lessons, and all the interviews involved were conducted and transcribed by the researcher. A model, based on Schon's framing and reframing, was used to recognize student teachers' reflection. There were three major findings: (1) reflection was prompted by issues or concerns which changed over time during the school-based teaching period; (2) reflection was characterized by the nature of reframing which occurred over time throughout the nine-week school-based practicum; and (3) pre-service teachers' reflection was facilitated by the specific nature of a school-based teaching programme as more time, opportunities and support were made available to them. Implications of the study included: (1) the extended teaching practicum allows pre-service teachers to articulate better perspectives of 'seeing' their pedagogical practice; (2) school-based teaching programmes of this form need to be carefully considered in teacher education programmes; and (3) by learning from, and learning through pedagogical experiences, pre-service teachers may gain professional growth in pedagogy. To sum up, pre-service teachers are able to learn about, and learn through, reflection in a school-based context.