Student Teachers’ Perceptions of Feedback Which Contribute to the Reflective Process

Author(s):

Hazel Crichton(presenting / submitting)Francisco Valdera Gil(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 10 A, Beyond Teacher Education: Doctorates and Enrichment

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

15:30-17:00

Room:

B217 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Shosh Leshem

Contribution

Critical reflection is seen as fundamental for effectiveness in teaching (Brookfield, 1995, Danielson 2009). In Scotland, where this research took place, the General Teaching Council Scotland (GTCS), which regulates the teaching profession, incorporates a number of benchmarks relating to reflective practice in its Standard for full registration as a teacher. Reflective thinking implies ‘judgement suspended during further enquiry’ (Dewey, 1910, p. 13) as teachers analyse and assign meaning to their experiences in the classroom, in order to improve their effectiveness. Postgraduate student teachers, who may come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, may find the concept of reflection difficult (Spalding and Wilson, 2002). This study aimed to investigate what postgraduate student teachers found helpful in developing reflective capacities related to their practice in their first school placement.

The study explored students’ perceptions of the way they had developed a reflective perspective on their classroom practice through evaluation of their lessons, with a view to increasing their competence in areas they had identified as important to their progress. It also aimed to establish what challenges, if any, they had had in developing a critically reflective approach.

Smyth (1989), drawing on Dewey’s and Schön’s work, describes four stages of reflection which are sequential, related to the following questions:

describing: what do I do?
informing: what does this mean?
confronting: how did I come to be like this?
reconstructing: how might I do things differently?

Student teachers’ evaluations of their lessons could be characterised as broadly aiming to answer the questions above, however, what is not always clear is how students, beginning their career as teachers in their first placement, are helped to understand what it is that they are actually ‘describing’; what ‘information’ this gives them; the reasons for their actions; and how, once issues have been identified, they might improve by changing their practice. The study aimed to answer the questions:

How do student teachers develop a reflective outlook?
What forms of feedback might be helpful to develop reflection?

As student teachers in a subject department, all the students in the study had been allocated mentors in their placements. Much has been written about the importance of mentoring by a more experienced teacher, with relation to the development of reflection (Danielson 2002, Harrison et al. 2005). Within a social-constructivist approach, teaching students are helped to operate in their ‘zone of proximal development’ deconstructing apparent successes in lessons and identifying areas requiring improvement through discussion with the more knowledgeable other (Vygotsky, 1978). However, it is acknowledged that mentoring can bring some issues of inconsistency (Hudson, 2014) and we were keen to discover if students had developed additional strategies to enable them to analyse their lessons in order to improve their practice.

An important factor in evaluating the effectiveness of practice is feedback, either explicit, from a mentor or the pupils themselves, or implicit, that is, the student teacher's 'feel' for how effective, or otherwise, a lesson was, often based on factors such as perceptions of pupil engagement, pupils' active participation or fulfilment of the success criteria (Hiebert et al., 2007). The study aimed to investigate how student teachers developed their awareness of different kinds of feeback, and how they interpreted them, enabling them to develop a 'feel' for the effectiveness of the lesson, which would enable them to answer Smyth's questions more confidently and competently than when they had started.

Method

After the first full teaching placement of six weeks, 24 student teachers were asked to provide evidence, in the form of a reflective essay and samples of lesson plans, on how they felt they had developed skills to enable them to address a specific issue they had each identified related to their own classroom practice. Twenty-four modern languages PGDE students agreed to analysis of their reflective essays and lesson plans by the researchers. The essays were scrutinised and the steps they undertook to improve their developing competence in specific areas throughout the placement were noted, focusing on the role that reflection and evaluation of lessons played in informing next steps. Of particular interest was the process by which the students developed their reflective practices and what strategies they used to inform the reflective process. Both researchers analysed the essays individually before agreeing a number of themes arising from the essays and the lesson plan evaluations. A quarter of the students (6) were then interviewed in order to gain deeper insight into their perceptions of how they had developed their reflective practices and how these had supported their development as increasingly effective classroom practitioners. In the interviews, students were asked how easy they had found the reflective process and what kinds of feedback had played a part in increasing their awareness of how successful their lessons had been. They were also asked what actions they had taken to ensure that the conclusions they had come to in their evaluations of lessons could be considered valid reflection. After the interviews, the researchers re-examined the essays and lesson plans in the light of the data obtained through interview. Both sets of data were analysed using an interpretivist paradigm, which sets out to explore ‘real world’ situations (Patton 2002: 39) with a view to providing clear description and possible explanations for what happens, allowing themes to emerge from the data. The use of interviews aimed to provide triangulation, which has been compared to the presentation of legal argument, the success of which is proved if the jury, that is, the reader, is persuaded by the evidence presented ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ (Johnstone, 2007). The data were organised into codes which indicated what the students perceived as important for aiding evaluations of lessons and the subsequent process of reflection. The patterns which emerged were then categorised to allow the main themes to be identified.

Expected Outcomes

The students identified a number of feedback types which helped them to develop the reflective process. Dialogue with more experienced practitioners seemed most valued for helping them to understand why particular classroom strategies had been successful or not. However, the students had also developed their own ways of gaining feedback on their performance which they used to aid reflection. For example, many students used observation of pupil participation and assessment of the pupil product. Some of the students used pupil evaluations at the end of each lesson (both oral and written) to evaluate how the lesson had gone. Written feedback from the pupils took the form of 'post it' notes and were completed anonymously. While this form of pupil feedback may be seen as rather expensive long term, for beginning teachers, it may be helpful to gain pupils’ views of their learning as a gauge of their effectiveness. Another, indirect support for reflection came from the students' peers. In informal gatherings and on a social media forum, some students discussed particular lessons, asked for and offered advice to others and suggested possible reasons for lessons' success or failure, allowing the students to explore the four questions posed by Smyth (1989) in what was perceived as a less judgemental atmosphere. The students found this not only supportive, but also helpful in making sense of their experiences in the classroom. Although the research took place within a Scottish context, the identification of the developmental process the students underwent during their first placement should be of interest to teacher educators and student teachers throughout Europe, as well as further afield as it could be argued that beginning teachers in every country face the same issues at the start of their career.

References

Brookfiled, S. (1995) Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Joey Bass Danielson, L. M. (2002) Developing and Retaining Quality Classroom Teachers through Mentoring, The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 75,4: 183-185. Danielson, L. M. (2009) How Teachers Learn. Educational Leadership 66, 5 Dewey, J. (1910) How we think, Boston, D.C. Heath and Co.,Publishers. Groundwater-Smith, S., Ewing, R. & Le Cornu, R. (2011). Teaching. Challenges and Dilemmas. (4th ed.), Melbourne: Cengage. GTCS (online) Standard for Registration http://www.gtcs.org.uk/web/FILES/the-standards/standards-for-registration-1212.pdf Last accessed 28th January 2014 Harrison , J. K., Lawson, T . & Wortley, A. (2005) Mentoring thebeginning teacher: developing professional autonomy through critical reflection on practice. Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 6, 3: 419-441. Hiebert, J., Morris, A.K., Berk, D & Jansen, J. (2007) Preparing Teachers to Learn from Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education 58, 1: 47-61. Hudson, P. (2014) Feedback consistencies and inconsistencies: eight mentors’ observations on one preservice teacher’s lesson, European Journal of Teacher Education, 37, 1: 63-73. Johnstone, P.L. (2007) Weighing Up Triangulating and Contradictory Evidence in Mixed Methods Organisational Research. International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches 1, 1: 27-39. http://mra.e-contentmanagement.com/archives/vol/1/issue/1/article/551/weighing-up-triangulating-and-contradictory Last accessed 26/12/13. Le Cornu, L. (2005) Peer mentoring: engaging pre‐service teachers in mentoring one another. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning 13, 3: 355-366. Patton, M.Q. (2002) Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods (3rd edition). London: Sage. Smyth, J. (1989) Developing and Sustaining Critical Reflection in Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education March 40, 2: 2-9. Spalding, E. & Wilson, A. (2002) Demystifying Reflection: A Study of Pedagogical Strategies that Encourage Reflective Journal Writing. Teachers College Record 104, 7: 1393-1421. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Author Information

Hazel Crichton (presenting / submitting)

The University of Glasgow

Glasgow

Francisco Valdera Gil (presenting)

The University of Glasgow, United Kingdom

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