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ABSTRACT
The importance of promoting reflection and reflective practice in teacher education programmes is widely acknowledged. This exploratory study describes how a revised B. Ed initial primary teacher education programme created a renewed focus on reflection and reflective practice to support students in becoming reflective practitioners The work on developing the new programme was a collaborative effort of staff, both at the planning and implementation stages. This paper reports on an evaluation of Year 1 of the B.Ed programme in which 440 undergraduate students and 24 staff were involved. The results were mainly positive, indicating that the changes in the programme have been largely successful in their goals. However, the results also show that further work needs to be done in this area with more in-depth research and analysis of the ongoing work being needed.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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Notes on contributors
Catherine Mulryan-Kyne
Dr Catherine Mulryan-Kyne is an Assistant Professor in Education at the School of Policy and Practice at the DCU Institute of Education, St Patrick’s Campus, Dublin, Ireland. She started her career as a primary school teacher before moving to primary teacher education. Catherine’s undergraduate teaching has been in the areas of Early Childhood Education, Mathematics Education, Communication and Presentation Skills and Teaching Studies. Her postgraduate teaching has been in the areas of Teaching Methodology and Professional Practice. She has been actively involved in School Placement preparation, coordination, supervision, and team leadership. Catherine’s research has been mainly in the areas of mathematics teaching, multi-grade teaching, collaborative group work, and teaching methodologies. She has made a significant contribution to the improvement of primary mathematics education and multi-grade teaching in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Tanzania in particular, through her work with Irish Aid and the World Bank. An important focus of Catherine’s work over the past few years is promoting and supporting reflection and reflective practice among undergraduate and post-graduate student teachers. In this context, she has played a key role in the adoption and development of an e-Portfolio platform across her university to support this work.