Becoming Reflective Practitioners: A Case Study of Three Beginning Pre-service Teachers

ABSTRACT

This case study examined three pre-service teachers’ reflection processes during their first teaching practicum. During the six-week practicum, the pre-service teachers reflected on their own as well as their peers’ teaching in group mentoring meetings several times a week. Unstructured stimulated recall facilitated pre-service teacher-initiated reflection on their teaching. As a result, they were able to frame and reframe their understanding and implement that understanding in their next lessons. Each pre-service teacher, however, went through an individual developmental process in learning to reflect. In their developmental path, turning points were identified that were important for transition into a deeper level of reflection. Our results show that it is important for teacher educators and mentors to recognize the process of development from the very first teaching practicum.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom practicum
• reflection
• beginning pre-service teachers
• stimulated recall
• peer-group mentoring

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Outi Tiainen http://orcid.org/000-0002-9630-0651

Riitta-Liisa Korkeamäki http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7064-5777

Mariam Jean Dreher http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7325-0380

Notes

1 In Finland, in the context of pre-service teachers’ practice, the terms supervisor and adviser are commonly used instead of mentor and mentoring. Peer-group mentoring is known as a method for mentoring newly qualified teachers together with more experienced teachers (Heikkinen, Jokinen, & Tynjälä, 2012). We chose to use the term mentor and mentoring due to the approach used in guiding the pre-service teachers in our study.