Scenarios as springboards for reflection on practice: stimulating discussion

Abstract

Increasingly there is an expectation that new graduates will have developed, prior to their induction into teaching, sound theoretical knowledge in relation to practice. However, in Australia, many pre‐service teachers have insufficient time in the field to develop reflective practice and to observe how experienced teachers enhance their own knowledge through reflection on practice. In this article we discuss one way to introduce teacher education students to the notion of reflective practice. We explore the potential of scenarios to develop reflective thinking in pre‐service teacher education students and highlight the processes and requisite criteria for developing scenarios that capture the rich and complex experiences of classroom practitioners. The scenario presented here has been fashioned from a pre‐service teacher's story of classroom practice collected from her during an interview for a research project. While the scenario was intended for use only with pre‐service teachers in order to increase their knowledge‐base and analytical skills, when it was trialled with a group of experienced teachers in order to ascertain its suitability for novice teachers, an unexpected outcome was that it resonated with the teachers in ways that enabled them also to reflect more deeply on their professional practices. We speculate that the processes of scenario construction may also be valuable in other settings where reflective practice is a professional requisite.

Keywords:

• teacher education
• pre‐service teachers
• scenarios
• cultural diversity
• reflective practice

Notes

1. In Victoria, for example, the Australian state where the research project that informs this article was located, pre‐service teachers must be in schools for a minimum of 80 days over the course of their degree programs.

2. Santoro and Allard (2003). This project was funded by a Deakin University Quality Learning Research Priority Grant.

3. Allard and Santoro (2004). This project was funded by a Deakin University Quality Learning Research Priority Grant.

4. Pseudonyms have been used for students and schools.