Examining the Nature of Preservice Teachers' Reflective Skills in the context of Web-Based Portfolios: The Influence of Metacognitive Awareness
Author(s):
Emine Adadan (presenting / submitting) Diler Oner
Conference:
ECER 2015
Network:
16. ICT in Education and Training
Format:
Paper

Session Information

16 SES 03 B, Enhancing Competences and Self-Regulation

Paper Session

Time:
2015-09-08
17:15-18:45
Room:
3001. [Main]
Chair:
Koen Aesaert

Contribution

Research on teacher education pointed out the importance of developing teachers' reflective skills for their professional development (Freese, 1999; Hoffman-Kipp, Artiles, & López-Torres, 2003). Reflection is described as a process of dynamic action and learning that enables teachers to develop their practice in the light of their analysis and evaluation (Parson & Stephenson, 2005). In this respect, metacognitive awareness is considered to be a critical element in promoting reflection among teachers (Zohar & Barzilai, 2013). In addition, given their potential contribution to reflection, the findings from past studies suggested using web-based portfolios in teacher education for promoting teachers' reflective skills (e.g., Borko et al., 1997). Thus, in the current study, a customized web-based portfolio system, namely the BOUNCE system, was utilized to promote reflection. The BOUNCE System included the blend of both technological (BOUNCE web-based portfolio software) and pedagogical (BOUNCE model) components. The BOUNCE web-based portfolio software provided a platform both for preservice teachers to upload their portfolio artifacts and for course instructors to follow-up their students’ work. The BOUNCE model was grounded in two premises: One involved the three processes of effective portfolio development such as identifying teaching goals, collecting evidence to connect goals with practice, and the owners’ critical reflections to become aware of their actions and thoughts (Wolf, 1994). The second one has to do with the three aspects of “teacher's life space,” namely goals, experiences, and observations (Fuller & Bown, 1975). The BOUNCE model task cycle was designed in a way to offer the participants opportunity for noticing and reducing the discrepancies among these three aspects of their life space.

This study primarily examined how the degree of preservice teachers' metacognitive awareness influences their reflections on their teaching practicum experiences as they construct their portfolios with the BOUNCE System. More specifically, the goal was to first describe the nature and frequency of reflective indicators (Oner & Adadan, 2011) of teaching practicum experiences exhibited by the groups of preservice teachers with a high level of metacognitive awareness (MA) and a low level of MA. The subsequent goal was to find out the relationship between the preservice teachers' high-level reflective indicators and their MA. The following research questions guided the study:               

(RQ1)  What is the nature and frequency of reflective indicators of teaching practicum                       experiences exhibited by the groups of preservice teachers with a high level of MA and a         low level of MA?

(RQ2)  How do the groups of preservice teachers with a high level of MA and a low level of MA         compare in terms of their high and low levels of reflective indicators of teaching practicum         experiences?

(RQ3)  What is the relationship between the preservice teachers' high level of reflective                     indicators of teaching practicum experiences and their MA? 

Method

The participants were thirty-six preservice teachers (18 females and 18 males) from two different departments, namely teaching of chemistry (20 of all) and computer and educational technology (16 of all), who were enrolled in two separate teaching practicum courses with their own cohorts. The teaching practicum was a semester-long course in which preservice teachers were required to observe 60 lesson hours and teach at least two lessons at an assigned internship school. Preservice teachers created and posted four types of artifacts to their BOUNCE portfolios: a general teaching goal, lesson plans, teaching videos, and reflection task responses. Once they created their portfolio artifacts, they invited two peers and their instructor for feedback. Preservice teachers received feedback on their artifacts (in particular, their teaching practice as reflected in their teaching videos) and reflected on the discrepancies they noticed among their goals, their experiences, and theirs and others' observations through their reflection tasks. All the artifact submissions and giving and receiving feedbacks were carried out through BOUNCE©. The participants completed the BOUNCE model task cycle twice. This mixed method study utilized a quasi-experimental comparison group design along with quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis procedures (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004). The data sources included "Metacognitive Awareness Inventory" (MAI) (Schraw & Dennison, 1994) and the participants' reflection task responses for the first and second teaching practice. The total MAI score of each participant was computed by summing their individual item ratings. Verbal data from reflection task responses inductively analyzed using the coding scheme from previous research (Oner & Adadan, 2011), which included both four high-level and two low-level reflective indicators. For RQ1, the participants were divided into two groups (the low level of MA group and the high level of MA group) based on their MAI scores. The total frequencies of the six different reflective indicators were calculated for each group of participants. Then, comparisons were performed across the groups. For RQ2, two different comparisons were conducted. One involved representing the total frequencies of the six reflective indicators within each group in percentages. In addition, the total frequencies of high-level and low-level indicators were calculated for each participant. Then, the two Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney tests were performed on the participants' high-level of and low-level reflective indicator scores. For RQ3, the Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between the participants' high-level reflective indicator scores and their total scores of MAI and their scores for each MAI component.

Expected Outcomes

Based on the findings from the data analysis, the two groups of preservice teachers demonstrated both high-level and low-level of reflective indicators, but the preservice teachers with a high level of MA (n=479) produced more high-level reflective indicators about their teaching practices compared to their counterparts in the low-level MA group (n=295). In both groups, the most frequent high-level reflective indicator was “reflection on action (ROA)”, but the frequency of observing such an indicator was still different across the groups. For example, the high-level MA group created a total of 213 ROA reflective indicator, whereas the low-level MA group generated a total of 122 ROA reflective indicator. The results of Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test indicated a statistically significant difference between the mean ranks of the two group (U=51000; p˂0.01), implying that the participants with a high level of MA more frequently exhibited high-level reflective indicators on their teaching practice in comparison to the participants with a low level of MA. However, no statistically significant difference (U=157000 p˃0.05) was observed across the groups in terms of the frequency of low-level reflective indicators. In addition, the Pearson correlation analysis indicated a statistically significant but moderate relationship (r= 0.62; p˂0.01) between the participants' metacognitive awareness and the frequency of their high-level reflective indicators. These findings point to the importance of the degree of metacognitive awareness in terms of developing preservice teachers’ reflective skills and maintaining such skills over the long-term professional teaching career. In addition, teacher educators should more frequently integrate proper tasks that contribute to the development of preservice teachers metacognitive awareness in teaching practice, such as encouraging preservice teachers to monitor their teaching performance, identifying and evaluating the discrepancies among their aims, experience, and theirs and others’ observations (of their teaching practice).

References

Borko, H., Michalec, P., Timmons, M., & Siddle, J. (1997). Student teaching portfolios: A tool for promoting reflective practice. Journal of Teacher Education, 48(5), 345-357. Freese, A. R. (1999). The role of reflection on preservice teachers’ development in the context of a professional development school. Teaching and Teacher Education, 15(8), 895-909. Fuller, F. F., & Bown, O. (1975). Becoming a teacher. In K. Ryan (Ed.), Teacher education, 74thyearbook of the national society for the study of education (pp. 25-52). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A. J., & López-Torres, L. (2003). Beyond reflection: Teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice, 42(3), 248-254. Johnson R. B., & Onwuegbuzie A. J. (2004). Mixed methods research: A research paradigm whose time has come. Educational Researcher, 33(7), 14–26. Oner, D., & Adadan, E. (2011). Use of web-based portfolios as tools for reflection in preservice teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(5), 477-492. Parsons, M., & Stephenson, M. (2005). Developing reflective practice in student teachers: Collaboration and critical partnerships. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 11(1), 95-116. Schraw, G., & Dennison, R. (1994). Assessing metacognitive awareness. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 19, 460-470. Wolf, K. (1994). Teaching portfolios: Capturing the complexity of teaching. In L. Ingravrson & R. Chadbourne (Eds.), Valuing teachers’ work: New directions in teacher appraisal (pp. 112-136). Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research. Zohar, A., & Barzilai, S. (2013). A review of research on metacognition in science education: Current and future directions. Studies in Science Education, 49(2), 121-169.

Author Information

Emine Adadan (presenting / submitting)
Bogazici University
Secondary School Science and Mathematics Education
Istanbul
Diler Oner
Bogazici University, Turkey

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