Exploring initial teacher education student teachers’ beliefs about reflective practice using a modified reflective practice questionnaire

ABSTRACT

The proposition that teaching is a reflective profession is prominent within educational discourse. Theories that underpin reflection are a critical component of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes. This study aims to assess the reliability of the modified Reflective Practice Questionnaire (RPQ) in a population of ITE students; and to compare the study findings to other studies using the RPQ in other professions. This study reports cross-sectional findings for reflective capacity in ITE students undertaking three different ITE programmes, the Bachelor of Arts (Hons) (BA) Education [n=91], Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) Primary [n=209] and Secondary [n=167], in one Scottish university. Findings show that the modified RPQ reliably assesses reflective capacity (Cronbach’s alpha 0.82), which differs depending on the programme of study followed. BA students’ reflective capacity is higher than that of PGDE (P) but is not different to PGDE (S) students. PGDE (P) students differing from BA students in terms of Reflection-in-Action (RiA), Self-Appraisal (SA), Confidence (general) (CG), and Confidence (communication) (CC), whereas PGDE (S) and BA students differ in terms of SA, CG CC and Stress interacting with Pupils (SiP). This study indicates student teachers’ reflective capacity is higher than those found in studies of other professions.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflection
• reflective practice
• initial teacher education students
• reflective practice evaluation
• anxiety
• stress

Introduction

Reflection, as a way of knowing and meaning making from experience is nothing new (Carper, 1978; Eraut, 2000, 2004, 2007). Reflection is a process focused on positive, purposeful action that improves professional practice. In educational terms, reflective practice aims to improve both teachers’ classroom practice, be that pedagogical or socio-cultural in nature, and pupils’ attainment.

The development of student teachers’ ability to reflect on their developing practice, as well as other factors that affect learning in the classroom, is a core element of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes (Russo & Ford, 2006). The discourse surrounding reflective practice within ITE identifies its utility in assisting student teachers to make sense of their practice by helping them to broaden their perspectives, and supports their efforts to address the challenges they face during school placements (McGarr & McCormack, 2014).

Central to the development of reflection is the concept of reflective capacity – an individual’s ability, desire, and tendency to engage in reflective thought (Priddis & Rogers, 2018). As student teachers engage in reflective thought, they appraise their assumptions and beliefs, and those of their pupils, by adopting an open-minded and enquiring stance towards issues encountered in the classroom. This also involves them developing the skills to draw upon a wide range of evidence to frame their professional judgements and shape their action in school with pupils and school-based mentors. Reflection is considered by many to be the most important part of professionalism.

As a practice-based profession, teaching requires (student) teachers to reflect upon the critical incidents they encounter over the course of their working day. We suggest that the way student teachers make sense of these experiences is complex and problematic. Gillies (2016) suggests, when reflective practice is done poorly, without due regard to ensuring that the judgements made are soundly based in terms of attention to wider reference-points, then reflection risks becoming ‘ritualistic’ (Moore, 2004, p. 105), solipsistic navel-gazing, or worse, an exercise in narcissistic self-affirmation.

For reflective practice to promote ITE students’ growing self-awareness of their teaching, it must support their developing ability to gain an understanding their growing pedagogical practice. This requires ITE tutors to develop teaching sessions and support activities that help student teachers develop their reflective capacity. They must also model effective reflection given the complexity of the classroom environment and the numerous sociocultural and micro-political factors which often mitigate against them being able to effectively discern what went well or what went poorly and why that was so.

Research context, rationale and significance

Situated within the context of Scottish higher education this study focuses on exploring final year ITE students’ reflective capacity using a modified version of the Reflective Practice Questionnaire (RPQ). When on school placement, ITE students’ are assessed by their school-based mentor and university ITE tutor against the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) Standards for Provisional Registration (SPR; General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), 2021), which encourages ITE teachers’ to engage in reflective practice. It is imperative that ITE students’ can demonstrate how they meet this standard and verified by school-based mentors and university based ITE tutors. While there have been studies that focus on how ITE students’ demonstrate the ability to reflect (Day, Webster & Killen, 2020) there is little research (within the Scottish context) that focus on students reflective capacity or how effective ITE students’ reflection are in taking forward their developing classroom practice.

The current research aims to explore how final year ITE students’, from different ITE programmes, view reflection as a process by exploring the extent to which the modified Reflective Practice Questionnaire can be applied to education students in terms of the questionnaires’ comparability to other studies using the Reflective Practice Questionnaire. It also aims to assess the extent to which the modified Reflective Practice Questionnaire is a reliable measure of reflective capacity and other related measures in education students.

In addition, we wished to answer the research question Does final year ITE students’ reflective capacity differ depending on their programme of study?

The reflective practice questionnaire

The RPQ was designed by Priddis and Rogers (2018) to assess self-reported reflective capacity where they suggested that the RPQ might be used to compare across professions where interactions with clients occur. Priddis and Rogers (2018) claim that the RPQ sets itself apart from previous self-report measures of reflection by the ability to administer it to individuals working in any service industry (e.g. psychology, nursing, education) allowing research that can compare and contrast reflective practice across different contexts and professions.

The RPQ is designed to measures multiple aspects of reflective capacity (reflection-in-action; reflection-on-action; reflection with others; and self-appraisal), and additional relevant dimensions such as confidence, uncertainty, stress, desire for improvement, and job satisfaction. Given the significance of reflective practice for enhancing teachers’ and student teachers’ professional development, it is important to develop a valid and reliable means for assessing reflective capacity (cf., Rogers et al., 2019). The RPQ has been applied to medical education and found to be a reliable measure of reflective capacity and its related characteristics in medical students (Rogers et al., 2019). When applying the RPQ to mental health professionals and a sample of the general population, Priddis and Rogers (2018) found that the questionnaire contained internally consistent items. Gustafsson et al. (2021) found that the Swedish version of the Reflective Capacity Scale of the Reflective Practice Questionnaire has a degree of reliability and satisfactory validity, indicating that the instrument is useful as measure of reflective capacity in nurses. To date only one study has been done using the RPQ with a population of undergraduate ITE students (Fuertes-Camacho et al., 2021).

Methodology

This study formed part of a larger exploratory, sequential, mixed methods approach to investigate how final year ITE students use multiple forms of evidence as part of their reflective practice funded by the Scottish Government as part of the Scottish Attainment Challenge. The design of the study presented here was non-experimental and cross-sectional.

Ethics

This study adhered to the ethical principles of informed consent, transparency and confidentiality. Prior to conducting this research, the school ethics committee scrutinised and approved the study.

Participant sample

The selection of study participant was purposive, sequential and consecutive. Inclusion criteria were students enrolled in the final year of an ITE programme in one Scottish university at the time of data collection. Six hundred final year ITE students from the Division of Education over three academic sessions were invited to complete the Reflective Practice Questionnaire between November and December 2019–2021. Four hundred and seventy students responded (78.3% response rate). Three of the responses were incomplete, leaving 467 anonymous responses for the present analysis. The age range and genders of the respondents were similar to the student body per programme cohort (See, Table 1). The three ITE programmes chosen for this study were the Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Education [BA4] (n = 91); the Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (Primary) [PGDE (P)] (n = 209); and the Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (Secondary) [PGDE (S)] (n = 167). The PGDE is a one-year programme which graduates from many disciplinary fields can take; leading to qualified teacher status in primary or secondary education; and allows graduates the ability to progress onto the Teacher Induction Scheme, which leads to full registration with the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS). The BA Education programme is an undergraduate programme in primary education, which confers qualified teacher status leading to graduates being able to enter the Teacher Induction Scheme in the same way as their PGDE counterparts.

Table 1. Number of participants (%) in the sample in each age range.

Programme of Study	20–25	26–30	31–35	36–40	41–45	46–50	51–55
PGDE (S)	73 (43.7)	43 (25.7)	16 (9.6)	17 (10.2)	15 (9.0)	3 (1.8)	0.0
PGDE (P)	104 (49.5)	51 (24.2)	22 (10.8)	17 (8.3)	14 (6.7)	1 (0.5)	0.0
BA	78 (85.7)	5 (5.5)	3 (3.3)	3 (3.3)	2 (2.2)	0.0	0.0
Total	255 (54.60)	99 (21.20)	41 (8.78)	37 (7.92)	31 (6.64)	4 (0.86)	0.0

The modified reflective practice questionnaire

As this research is part of a larger sequential mixed methods research study, the questionnaire was part of the quantitative phase of that study and contained three sections, one asking demographic questions relating to gender, age, previous undergraduate degree (only from PGDE (S) and (P) students), and the local authority where their last teaching placement school took place. The second section contained 51 randomly distributed items from 10 subscales related to the dimensions of attitude towards the use of data within teaching practice. The data from this section of the questionnaire is not reported here.

The third section contained the modified reflective practice questionnaire (RPQ). The RPQ was designed for use across different professions by replacing the term ‘clients’ y with the normative term to describe ‘clients’ of the service. In the present study, we used the term ‘pupils’. This 40-item self-report instrument provides measures for reflective capacity via the sub-components, reflection-in-action, reflection-on-action, reflection with others, and self-appraisal. Additional sub-scales form parts of the RPQ that aim to assess a range of other theoretically relevant constructs. A desire for improvement sub-scale gauges one’s inclination to further one’s expertise. Confidence in one’s general ability is measured via a confidence (general) sub-scale, and confidence more specifically related to communication is assessed via a confidence (communication) sub-scale. Uncertainty and stress interacting with pupils’ sub-scales are also included. Finally, the RPQ contains a general job satisfaction sub-scale. All these sub-scales were found to correlate with Reflective Capacity by Priddis and Rogers (2018). The RPQ uses a six-point Likert scale; (1) Not at all, (2) Slightly, (3) Somewhat, (4) Moderately, (5) Very much, (6) Extremely. The 40 items of the RPQ were randomly mixed to ensure that each item of the 10 sub-scales did not follow each other (see appendix).

Sampling procedure

The research team approached potential participants in the late November/early December of each academic session. This was timed particularly for the PGDE Primary and Secondary group to come after their first major teaching practice in schools. One week prior to the questionnaire being issued, the study team approached ITE students in each group. In this meeting, students were given an overview of the research, a participant information sheet to take away and read, and were given an explanation that participation was voluntary and that they could ask to withdraw their responses at any point as each questionnaire was given a unique identifier. For the 2018/19 and 2019/20 cohort, the questionnaire was presented to the participants as a paper and pencil. For the 2020/21 cohort the questionnaire was converted to an MS Form as a result disruption to the PGDE and BA cohorts teaching and learning (which was blended) due to the Scottish Government COVID-19 restriction. The link to the form was emailed to participants one week after they were approached by the research team. Participants were given 40 minutes to complete the paper and pencil questionnaire as part of a data literacy workshop. In the case of the 2020/21 cohort the participants were able to complete the form in their own time which led to a reduction in participation rates in comparison to the previous paper and pencil questionnaire participation. The average completion time according to the MS Forms analytics was 24 minutes.

Questionnaire analysis

Upon submission, participant questionnaires from each programme were checked for completion, checked for pattern or spoiled papers and processed by hand using a double entry system on an Excel spreadsheet by two researchers. The data was then sorted into programme groups and then from the random order that each item was presented into groups of items relating to each subscale. The data was transferred to SPSS for downstream descriptive and inferential statistical analysis.

Descriptive statistics are expressed as means ± standard deviation (SD). Bivariate analysis was performed to compare the subscales using t-test/ANOVA or the non-parametric Mann–Whitney/Kruskal Wallis test, depending on the characteristics of the data. Normality was tested using the Shapiro–Wilk normality test. The p values for pairwise comparisons were adjusted for multiplicity using the Bonferroni correction. The significance level was set at 0.05.

Reliability was evaluated using the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and inter-item correlations. According to Nunnally and Bernstein (1994), the Cronbach alpha coefficient measures the internal consistency of a set of items and marks the average of all split-half reliabilities. Measuring inter-item correlations supports the analysis of internal consistency reliability by assessing the extent to which scores on one item correlate with scores on the other items. The inter-item correlations provide an indication of item redundancy and the extent to which items within a scale measure the same content. It also provides an indication of the appropriateness and consistency of individual items. We conducted a Pearson inter-correlation among RPQ sub-scales for the ITE student samples and a series of one-way ANOVAs with follow-up Bonferroni adjusted comparisons to compare the RPQ sub-scales across samples (see, Table 4).

Table 2. Means, standard deviations (SD), and Cronbach’s alpha values for the RPQ sub-scales derived from initial teacher education students.

Sub-scale	Alpha	PGDE (S) n = 167	PGDE (P) n = 209	BA4 n = 91
Reflective-in-action (RiA)	0.75	4.36 (0.83)	4.27 (0.73)	4.56 (0.71)
Reflective-on-action (RoA)	0.76	4.90 (0.74)	4.81 (0.66)	4.95 (0.68)
Reflective with others (RO)	0.80	5.06 (0.65)	5.01 (0.66)	5.13 (0.60)
Self-appraisal (SA)	0.60	4.92 (0.62)	4.89 (0.59)	5.08 (0.57)
*Reflective Capacity (RC)	0.82	4.89 (0.60)	4.74 (0.53)	4.93 (0.53)
Desire for improvement (DfI)	0.61	5.09 (0.72)	5.03 (0.75)	4.86 (0.70)
Confidence – general (CG)	0.84	3.42 (1.04)	3.23 (1.04)	4.13 (0.84)
Confidence – communication (CC)	0.72	4.91 (0.59)	4.86 (0.62)	5.10 (0.50)
Uncertainty (Unc)	0.81	3.85 (0.92)	3.78 (0.87)	3.91 (0.95)
Stress interacting with pupils (SiP)	0.89	3.24 (1.05)	3.36 (1.03)	3.57 (1.20)
Job Satisfaction (JS)	0.71	5.12 (0.75)	5.15 (0.74)	5.17 (0.70)

Notes: *Reflective Capacity is a combination of the RiA, RoA, RO and SA sub-scales

Table 3. Statistical comparison data between the PGDE (S), PGDE (P) and the BA4 Cohorts of ITE students.

Comparison between	PGDE (S) and PGDE (P)				PGDE (S) and BA4				PGDE (P) and BA4
Subscale	Z	U	p-value	Z		U	p-value	Z		U	p-value
Reflective-in-action	1.185	15,990	0.237	−1.941		6524	0.053	3.243		7288	0.001*
Reflective-on-action	1.221	15,941	0.223	−0.562		7277	0.575	1.686		8157	0.093
Reflective with others	0.705	16,975	0.481	−0.927		7103	0.355	1.536		8603	0.126
Self-appraisal	0.552	16,677	0.581	−1.981		6593	0.049*	2.594		7786	0.010*
Reflective Capacity	2.03	4691	0.043*	−0.461		4461	0.644	−2.51		3928	0.013*
Desire for improvement	0.678	16,766	0.498	−2.401		6114	0.017*	−1.840		7984	0.067
Confidence – general	1.762	15,769	0.079	−5.590		4502	0.0001*	7.261		4825	0.0001*
Confidence – communication	0.842	16,481	0.400	−2.566		6259	0.011*	3.240		7308	0.0001*
Uncertainty	0.716	16,566	0.475	−0.546		7282	0.586	1.175		8647	0.241
Stress interacting with pupils	−1.142	16,413	0.254	−2.282		6423	0.023*	1.505		8532	0.133
Job Satisfaction	−0.352	17,064	0.726	−0.515		7474	0.607	0.242		9439	0.809

Note: *p-values <0.05 are considered to be significant.

Table 4. Pearson inter-correlations among RPQ sub-scales for the initial teacher education student sample.

	RiA	RoA	RO	SA	DiF	CG	CC	Unc	SiP	JS
RiA	1
RoA	0.45**	1
RO	0.43**	0.63**	1
SA	0.53**	0.64**	0.63**	1
DiF	0.22**	0.42**	0.48**	0.42**	1
CG	0.24**	0.07	0.01	0.13**	− 0.29**	1
CC	0.46**	0.43**	0.49**	0.51**	0.13**	0.34**	1
Unc	0.26**	0.27**	0.192**	0.22**	0.42**	− 0.05	− 0.07	1
SiP	0.24**	0.20**	0.07	0.14**	0.18**	0.05	− 0.02	0.60**	1
JS	0.15**	0.34**	0.40**	0.36**	0.24**	0.05	0.47**	− 0.16**	− 0.36**	1

Notes: RiA = reflective-in-action; RoA = reflective-on-action; RO = reflective with others; SA = self-appraisal; DfI = desire for improvement; CG = confidence (general); CC = confidence (communication); Unc = uncertainty; SiP = stress interacting with pupils; JS = job satisfaction. **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed);

Findings

Participant sample demographic data

The participant sample draws on three ITE programmes, PGDE (S), PGDE (P) and BA. The Female to Male ratio of the total participant sample is 4.37 (380 Female to 87 Males). The majority of males in the sample come from the PGDE (S) programme (65.5% of males) with 24.2% males from the PGDE (P) programme and 10.3% of males coming from the BA4 programme. In terms of the proportion of females in the sample, 29.5% come from the PGDE (S) programme, 48.4% come from the PGDE (P) programme and 22.1% come from the BA Education programme. Table 1 describes the age profile of the participant sample per programme of study.

Statistical analysis of student responses to the RPQ

The descriptive statistics and Cronbach’s alpha values for the RPQ subscales are presented in Table 2. Cronbach’s alpha is a widely used indicator of internal consistency among survey items, and Acock (2014) provides guidelines that values about 0.70 are ‘adequate’ and above 0.80 are ‘good’. In Table 2, all Cronbach’s alpha values for the RPQ subscales are 0.6 or greater. Means for all sub-scales are greater than 3 (the number 3 equals ‘somewhat’ on the response scale).

The data in Table 2 indicates that all subscales with the exceptions of Self-appraisal and Desire for Improvement are adequate [≥0.70] (RiA, RoA, CG, JS) or good [≥0.80] (RC, RO, CG, Unc and SiP). When the data for the PGDE (S) cohort is compared to the PGDE (P) cohort, we found no statistical differences between these two groups of ITE students. When we compare the PGDE (S) cohort with BA4, we see statistically significant difference between them in the Self-appraisal, Desire for Improvement, Confidence – General, Confidence – Communication, and Stress Interacting with Pupils’ subscales as seen in Table 3. In contrast, when we compared the PGDE (P) cohort with the BA4, there was statistically significant difference in the Reflection-in-Action, Self-appraisal, Reflective Capacity, Confidence – General and the Confidence – Communication subscales. These findings suggest that there are differences in the way ITE students respond to items in the RPQ.

On closer inspection of the direction of the statistical difference between the three groups of ITE students, we found that BA4 student teachers are generally more confident than PGDE (P) and PGDE (S) students are. They are also more confident in communication than PGDE (S) and PGDE (P) students are. In addition, BA students report higher responses to the questions in Self-appraisal subscale items compared to PGDE (S) and PGDE (P) students. Interestingly, BA students report higher responses to the items in the Reflection in Action subscale than PGDE (P) students report but show no statistical difference to the responses in this subscale compared to the PGDE (S) students. However, we note that the p-value is tending towards significance (Z = .-1.941, U = 6524, p = 0.053). By way of contrast, BA students’ response suggest that they are stressed when interacting with students compared to PGDE (S) but not PGDE (P) students. Across all subscales of the RPQ, there is no significant difference between the responses of PGDE (S) students compared to PGDE (P) students.

When we consider the data relating to Reflective Capacity, the data indicates that there is a statistically significant difference between PGDE (S) students and PGDE (P) students (Z = 2.03 U = 4691, p = 0.043). The data also shows that there is a significant difference in Reflective Capacity between PGDE (P) and BA4 students (Z = −2.51, U = 3928, p = 0.013). Whereas there is no difference in Reflective Capacity between PGDE (S) and BA4 students. These findings indicate that there are differences in Reflective Capacity dependent on the programme of study. Table 4 outlines the inter-correlation matrix for each subscale in the RPQ.

Discussion

The findings gained from this study have reflected usefully upon the aims of the research and the research question posed. The aim of this study was to explore the extent to which the modified Reflective Practice Questionnaire might be applied to ITE students in terms of the questionnaires comparability to other studies using the Reflective Practice Questionnaire. It also aimed to assess the extent to which the modified Reflective Practice Questionnaire is a reliable measure of reflective capacity and other related measures in initial teacher education students. The research also responds to the question does final year ITE students’ reflective capacity differ depending on their programme of study?

In this final section we reflect upon what the findings from this research suggest, relating our remarks to other studies using the RPQ in teacher education and other professional settings, the current literature on reflective practice in terms of research and policy, and how the findings usefully align with the stated aims of this research and research question.

Comparison with others using the reflective practice questionnaire

The present study explores the relationship between three different groups of ITE students’ perceptions of reflective practice to see if there are differences in student teachers’ reflective capacity dependent on their programme of study. This is the first study carried out in Scotland using a modified version of the Reflective Practice Questionnaire. There has only been one other study using the RPQ focused on exploring ITE students’ reflective capacity to-date. That study focused on three cohorts of Spanish undergraduate ITE students (Fuertes-Camacho et al., 2021). When we compare the current study findings to those from the study by Fuertes-Camacho, Fuertes-Camacho et al. (2021), we see several similarities and differences in terms of each subscale.

In terms of the studies context, the present study looks specifically at three different programmes of study within the one Scottish university, whereas the study by Fuertes-Camacho et al. (2021) focused on undergraduate ITE students from three different Spanish universities. The sample of student teachers in the Spanish study had not been on a teaching practice placement, compared to those in the current study, where all students had been on teaching practice. In the case of the undergraduates in our study, they had been on three school placement blocks prior to sampling. This is an important factor when comparing our findings to the Spanish study, as the focus on reflective practice and in particular, reflective capacity, suggests that students’ school experiences of teaching practice will have an impact on their attitude toward reflective practice.

What is clear from our findings is that the three groups of ITE students score higher across nine out of the ten subscales in comparison to the undergraduate students in the Spanish study, with the exception of the Confidence-General subscale, which was broadly similar to the Scottish students’ responses. In terms of reliability, the Cronbach’s alpha for each item of the RPQ used in this study and the Spanish study are different. For example, the Cronbach alpha for the Job Satisfaction (0.308) and Stress interacting with Pupils subscales (0.459) was significantly lower in the Spanish study compared to the present study (JS 0.71 and SiP 0.89). In addition, the Cronbach’s alpha for the Reflection-in-Action (0.629) and Self-Appraisal (0.522) was lower than that in our findings (RiA = 0.75 and SA = 0.60). It is difficult to assess the extent to which socio-cultural differences between the ITE programmes in Scotland and Spain can account for such diverging findings. It is possible to suggest that lack of school experience and exposure to teaching may partially explain some of the differences between our findings and those of the study by Fuertes-Camacho et al. (2021). We also suggest that some of the difference between the Scottish and Spanish findings may arise from alterations in the psychometric properties of each item in the RPQ subscale because of the way the RPQ translating the RPQ from English into Spanish that might also account for.

When we compare the findings from the present study with other studies in other professions, we also see differences in response to the RPQ between student teachers, in the present study, and those of mental health practitioners (Priddis & Rogers, 2018), medical students (Rogers et al., 2019) and nurses in specialist education (Gustafsson et al., 2021). In terms of Reflective capacity, Rogers et al. (2019) found that medical students’ and mental health practitioners’ mean (SD) [Cronbach’s alpha] responses were 4.16 (0.53) [0.84] and 4.27 (0.68) [0.92] respectively. Whereas in the present study of student teachers, the mean (SD) was 4.89 (0.60) for PGDE (S), 4.74 (0.53) for PGDE (P) and 4.93 (0.53) for BA4 with a Cronbach alpha of 0.82. This suggests that the student teachers in our sample have a higher reflective capacity than those reported by Rogers et al. (2019).

The finding that BA4 students have a significantly higher Reflective Capacity than PGDE (P) students and have a higher but not statistically significant Reflective Capacity than PGDE (S) students is interesting. The age profile of the BA4 students sample is significantly younger compared to the PGDE (S) and PGDE (P) sample, with 85.7% of the BA4 student sample being between 20 and 25, and 56.7% of the PGDE (S) and 50.5% of the PGDE (P) student sample being >25 years old. We might have hypothesised that younger students’ reflective capacity might be lower than older students. Especially given the likelihood that PGDE students’ might have greater life experience and certainly have different experiences based on their previous undergraduate degree experience that might have endowed them with other transferrable skills that could aid the reflective process. Our findings suggest the opposite might be true. However, we would suggest that the BA4 students have had almost four years of exposure to reflective practice in terms of both theory and practice in schools that may explain the differences in Reflective Capacity. An interesting further study would be to consider the types of undergraduate/postgraduate degree that PGDE Primary students have on entry to ITE and to explore how this might affect their reflective capacity as a co-variable. In addition, we would like to follow up these students at one year, two year and five year intervals to identify the extent to which PGDE students catch up with BA students in terms of reflective capacity.

These findings are not surprising given that the GTCS Standards for Provisional Registration (SPR) outlines the need for student teachers to engage critically in both self-evaluation (akin to self-appraisal detailed in the RPQ subscale) and reflection in relation to the research literature and educational policy to inform everyday practices in order to meet the standards (General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), 2021). This places reflective practice on a mandatory footing within student teachers’ development. This thread is also the case within other GTCS standards such as the Standards for Full Registration and Career-long Professional Learning.

Given that student teachers are assessed by school-based mentors and ITE tutors against these standards, it is reasonable to expect the scores for the reflective capacity subscales to be at the higher end of the scale given the importance placed on reflection during placement and at the time when assessment of those students’ progress against the standard at the end of placement.

In our study, the findings indicate that Reflection-in-Action correlates positively with Reflection-on-Action, Reflection with Others and with Self-appraisal. In turn, Self-Appraisal was found to have a positive association with both Reflection-on-Action, Reflection-in-Action, and Confidence–Communication. We would argue that ITE student teachers benefit from Self-appraisal as a way of deepening their reflection on their practices during school experience. In that regard, our study is in line with other similar studies (Fuertes-Camacho et al., 2021; Scharfenberg & Bogner, 2019). Student teachers further develop their ability to reflect on their experiences and teaching behaviour by focusing on practical experiences and making connections between those experiences and the educational theories, research and policies that they learn about while studying on their ITE programme at university.

To facilitate effective reflection, teacher educators need to support ITE students’ growing awareness of the frames of reference available to them as part of their reflective practice and the types of bias that can filter their reflections. This is particularly true of aspects of confirmation bias and unconscious bias that can refract student teachers’ thinking in ways that lead to poor decision making. In this regard, reflection with others plays an important role in helping the student teacher to focus and attend to the correct aspects of practice during post lesson reflection. Even when a school-based mentor or ITE tutor provides feedback to support student teachers’ reflections on practice, it does not always follow that reflection on performance leads to improvements in practice. Therefore, the feedback provided during such episodes of reflection (with others) needs to focus on the students’ developing practice as well as assessing a lesson’s effectiveness.

We would argue that without guidance or the opportunity for reflection with others, student teachers’ learning from teaching practice might be superficial (Tiainen et al., 2017). Also, during such episodes of reflection, the mentor/tutor’s role is to supportively challenge the student teachers’ assumptions in order to help them gain clarity of thought and focus their reflections on predetermined developmental goals. Some of the findings in this study point to positive associations between Reflection-on-Action and Reflection-in-Action and support the findings of Fuertes-Camacho et al. (2021). We would suggest that being able to Reflect-on-Action supports student teachers’ ability to reflect during classroom interactions with pupils and to reflect on situations within their wider school experience (Reflection-in-Action). By placing an emphasis on reflection in teacher education programmes, with the aim of developing student teachers’ ability to analyse, interpret and make good professional judgements on their classroom practice, teacher educators must design learning experience that will support this if this is an objective for ITE programmes. We would argue that this is the case given the prominence of reflective practice within National Teaching Standards such as those of the GTCS, and that teacher educators need tools (such as the modified RPQ) that supports their efforts to develop reflection within their students.

Our findings show the modified version of the Reflective Practice Questionnaire to be a reliable tool for assessing ITE students’ reflective capacity and by extension their attitude towards reflective practice. More generally, we suggest that this study provides insights into how teacher educators might use the RPQ in a longitudinal manner to assess shifts in student teachers’ attitude towards reflective practice by using the findings as part of their own reflective practice to support modifications to their curriculum with respect to the teaching and assessment of reflective practice. The current study only looked at final year students responses to the modified RPQ so cannot tell what student teachers’ views are towards reflective practice are early on in their studies. However, the by Fuertes-Camacho et al. (2021) study indicates that there may be a difference between year one and the final year student teachers attitude towards reflective practice.

Limitations of the study

We recognise that in all educational research there are limitations and that these limitations may possibly affect the interpretation of the findings. Since this is the first evaluation of the RPQ in a Scottish context and only the second study to-date using the RPQ with student teachers, generalizations of the findings and interpretations should be applied with caution. The main limitations of this study focused around methodology. This relates specifically to the participant sample, and technical application the questionnaire. This study is cross-sectional in nature and non-experimental. As such, the conclusions drawn from this study need to be treated tentatively and claims to generalizability need to be treated with caution given the small, focused participant sample from one Scottish university across three academic sessions. In order to be more generalizable we would like to extend this work to other Higher Education Institutions across Scotland with ITE programmes.

The process of knowledge construction is not neutral and we would argue that reality is sequentially construed and interpreted by the individual through their perception and worldview. Since this research relies on participants’ perception towards the object of the research, in this case reflective practice, we acknowledge that it can be difficult to separate the personal motivation and perceptions of the participant given the self-reporting nature of this study. We also acknowledge that there may be some limitations relating to how our participants may have interpreted the items in the questionnaire. We also accept the possibility that there may be an element of social desirability bias in the sample, since some participants may be reluctant to report deficiencies in reflective capacity, given the mandatory nature of reflection within the GTCS Standards for Provisional Registration (General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), 2021). Furthermore, it is also possible that participants with low reflective capacity may be unaware of possible deficits in reflective capacity due to a reduced ability to self-reflect. Ultimately, this could lead to incorrect reports of elevated values.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Scottish Government [SRO20170629-21].

Notes on contributors

Stephen P. Day

Stephen P. Day is the Head of Division (Education) at the University of the West of Scotland. His work revolves around teacher education, teacher identity development, citizenship education and teachers’ professional development.

Carol Webster

Carol Webster is a Lecturer in Education (Mathematics) in the Division of Education at the University of the West of Scotland where her focus is on secondary mathematics teacher preparation.

Andrew Killen

Andrew Killen is a Lecturer in Education (Primary ITE) in the Division of Education at the University of the West of Scotland where his focus is on primary ITE and the part time MEd in Educational Studies programme which he leads. His research interests are in initial teacher education, teachers’ career-long professional learning and citizenship education.

Appendix

Modified Reflective Practice Questionnaire

Reflective-in-action (RiA)

1 – During my interactions with pupils, I recognise when my pre-existing beliefs are influencing the interaction. (9)

2 – During my interactions with pupils, I consider how my personal thoughts and feelings are influencing the interaction. (14)

3 – During my interactions with pupils, I recognise when my pupil’s pre-existing beliefs are influencing the interaction. (26)

4 – During my interactions with pupils, I consider how their personal thoughts and feelings are influencing the interaction. (35)

Reflective-on-action (RoA)

5 – After interacting with pupils, I spend time thinking about what was said and done. (3)

6 – After interacting with pupils, I wonder about the pupil’s experience of the interaction. (16)

7 – After interacting with pupils, I wonder about my own experience of the interaction. (24)

8 – After interacting with pupils, I think about how things went during the interaction. (33)

Reflective with others (RO))

9 – When reflecting with others about my work, I become aware of things I had not previously considered. (1)

10 – When reflecting with others about my work, I develop new perspectives. (12)

11 – I find that reflecting with others about my work helps me to work out problems I might be having. (29)

12 – I gain new insights when reflecting with others about my work. (38)

Self-appraisal (SA)

13 – I think about my strengths for working with pupils. (7)

14 – I think about my weaknesses for working with pupils. (13)

15 – I think about how I might improve my ability to work with pupils. (23)

16 – I critically evaluate the strategies and techniques I use in my work with pupils. (36)

Desire for improvement (DfI)

17 – I think I still have a lot of things to learn in order to improve my ability to work with pupils. (5)

18 – I would like to learn new skills in order to improve my ability to work with pupils. (19)

19 – I desire more knowledge to improve my ability to work with pupils. (30)

20 – I desire more experience to improve my ability to work with pupils. (40)

Confidence – general (CG)

21 – I have all the experience I require to effectively interact with pupils. (2)

22 – I have all the practical skills I require to effectively interact with pupils. (17)

23 – I have learnt everything I need to know in order to effectively interact with pupils. (22)

24 – I have all the theoretical knowledge I require to effectively interact with pupils. (32)

Confidence – communication (CC)

25 – I think I am good at creating a safe environment so that my pupils’ feel comfortable enough to share information with me. (6)

26 – I feel confident sharing my thinking with pupils. (11)

27 – I am good at providing clear messages to my pupils. (21)

28 – I am good at listening to my pupils with genuine curiosity. (34)

Uncertainty (Unc)

29 – Sometimes I am unsure if my planning for pupils is the best possible way to proceed. (8)

30 – Sometimes I am unsure if I am interpreting my pupils ‘ needs correctly. (20)

31 – Sometimes I am unsure how to handle the needs of pupils. (27)

32 – Sometimes I am unsure that I properly understand the needs of pupils. (31)

Stress interacting with pupils (SiP)

33 – Sometimes after interacting with a pupil I feel exhausted. (4)

34 – Sometimes I find interacting with pupil to be stressful. (15)

35 – There are times when I feel distressed after communicating with a pupil. (28)

36 – The pressure to meet the needs of my pupils can sometimes feel overwhelming. (39)

Job satisfaction (JS)

37 – My work provides me with a lot of fulfilment. (10)

38 – My work means more to me than simply earning money. (18)

39 – I enjoy my work. (25)

40 – There are times when I find myself wishing that I did not have to go to work. (*reverse item) (37)

Note: The numbers in brackets indicate the position in the questionnaire of that item as it was presented to the ITE students.