These ethnographic case studies explore teacher education systems from two angles (Germany and the US) by analyzing program settings at two universities in which concepts of reflective thinking are implemented to enhance the professional development of pre-service teachers. In the US, teacher education takes place at Colleges of (Teacher) Education. With the demands proposed by the Holmes Group in 1986, Professional Development Schools were established in order to improve teacher education. Here, analyzing and reflecting upon teaching is being done in a close partnership between university teachers and school teachers, together with the student teacher. While critics of Professional Development Schools argue that there is not enough empirical evidence that PDS programs improve conditions of student learning (Hallinan 2001), research on the impact of Professional Development Schools on pre-service teachers (Castle, 2006) reveals that students from PDS programs scored significantly higher in aspects of planning, instruction and assessment and were able to integrate the standards in their portfolios. In these programs, small empirical research projects serve as a means to enhance students’ reflection on the basis of classroom research, in line with the tradition of the reflective practitioner (Schön 1983). In Germany, with its two phases of teacher education, the notion of reflective practitioners being embedded in a kind of practice that demands inquiry rather than the usage of “traditional recipes” should already be implemented at the university level. In light of subsequent reforms in the aftermath of studies in student achievement (PISA, TIMS), a new, more output-oriented perspective on the German educational system is currently being developed, one that is counter to the belief that assessment of learning as well as teaching methods and styles are determined solely by the judgment of teachers (Ertl, 2006). With the newly emerging empirical paradigm in Germany, pre-service teachers will eventually be educated differently (Koch-Priewe 2004), within the framework of "Didaktik" as well as empiricism, as the case study of a teacher program at a German university shows. In addition to the "Didaktik" tradition that still serves as a tool for planning, enacting, and thinking about teaching (Hopmann 2000), students are asked to theoretically reflect upon their own teaching experiences by conducting their own empirical studies (= "Forschendes Lernen"). As expert research (Bromme 1992) argues, reflection is particularly important in order to prevent students from developing routines they have not reflected upon which might result into stereotypical thinking about teaching. Research questions are the following: In which categories do students (pre-service teachers) reflect upon foreign language teaching? What is also included in this case analysis is a target-performance comparison of teacher educators’ expectations to-wards students’ reflection.

Data collection includes students’ journal entries, a content analysis of assignments given in class and semi-structured interviews with teacher educators teaching these classes. Participants at the German university include nine students, one teacher educator and two research associates; at the US-university the participants were ten students, one teacher educator and one research associate. This might be a first at-tempt to operationalize the concept of reflection in pre-service teacher education from a comparative point of view.

This project attempts to analyze the different kinds of knowledge categories in (foreign language) educational terms, in which pre-service teachers conceptualize teaching. This study does not attempt to measure the efficacy of neither reflective thinking nor "Forschendes Lernen". It is expected to find different levels of reflection on behalf of the student teacher that show different knowledge categories in which they conceptualize foreign language teaching. As one result of the ethnographic field work, there seems to be a substantial gap between teacher educators’ expectations towards students’ reflection, more so at the German university than in the US. First results of the analysis will be presented in September.