Trying and reflecting: two novice teacher educators’ first attempts at guiding pre-service teachers’ reflection on literacy field experiences

ABSTRACT

In Democracy and Education, Dewey aligns trying and undergoing as experience. Undergoing the consequences of trying by reflecting entails noticing and naming the details of the connections between the activity and the consequences. In this paper, we explore two novice teacher educators’ first attempts at guiding pre-service teachers (PSTs) throughout the reflection process. Using the Framework for Facilitating Reflection as a support for coaching PSTs, we analyse transcripts of 10 Teaching Cycles guided by 2 novice teacher educators in a study abroad programme. Without intentional mentoring, the teacher educators were neither successful with clarifying course content nor creating dissonance leading to the reflective process.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• teacher preparation
• mentoring
• literacy education
• Dewey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.