Contribution
Description: This paper focuses on reflective journal keeping, which is part of a reflective practicum course, and it analyzes if and how the student teachers developed their reflective skills in this course.
The theoretical framework of this course draws upon the work of Dewey (1933), Van Manen (1977), Schon (1983; 1987) and of Zeichner and Liston (1987). Thus, this reflective course aims to prepare teachers as reflective practitioners, who are inquiry oriented, and who can combine the theoretical with the practical. In this course, reflective journals stand to the core element. In the literature, journals are recommended and widely used for critical reflection in pre-service and in-service teacher education (Hoover, 1994; Brookfield, 1995; Pultorak, 1996; Yost, Sentner, Forlenza-Bailey, 2000; Bean and Stevens, 2002; and Tsang, 2003). Journals enable us to hear the student teachers' voices, and they provide us with first hand information to follow their development (Tsang, 2003).
Thirty non-native pre-service teachers of English Language in a 4-year Bachelor's degree program at a university in northern Cyprus participated in this 15-week study in the final year of their program, and they kept reflective journals for eight weeks. During the course process, the students were provided with reflective journal writing guidelines aiming to help them reflect on their school experiences. On the submission of the weekly journal entries, the course instructor/researcher provided constructive feedback on these journals that aimed to enhance the students' reflectivity a step further.
Methodology: This is a case study that was carried out in the form of action research. The reflective journals (total of 183) was read, reread and rated following a framework that was adapted from Sparks-Langer, Simmons, Pasch, Colton and Starko (1990). As a further step, the data was inter-rated by two other researchers, who were outside of the study but were knowledgeable of the topic. The results were presented by using descriptive statistics (frequency of reflective levels), and they were analyzed and discussed by comparing the students' development in reflection on a weekly basis. The early and recent works on reflection and the results of various empirical studies in the field will be considered in the discussion of the results.
Conclusions: The analysis and discussion of the results are still in progress. However, the early analysis revealed that the students developed their reflective skills in this course.
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