The paper presented here summarizes the main results of a research study that constitutes a PhD thesis funded publicly in the framework of the Spanish Teacher Training Programme (NReg. 7208636035 Y0SC000121). This thesis project is inspired by what some academics have called movement of reflective practice (Schön, 1984; Zeichner, 1993; Loughran, 2002; Perrenoud, 2004; Russell, 2012).

Many different teacher training programmes have been carried out under the auspices of reflective practice. However, these programmes are not so abundant in the Spanish context (Medina, Jarauta & Imbernón, 2010), possibly because the structural conditions of university teaching, as well as the traditional expositive and massive teacher training that existed previously, has impeded its implementation.

Therefore, starting from this premise, and taking advantage of the reforms that the university system is undergoing, we ask how we may boost and optimize this reflective capacity in such a way that it becomes an inherent part of the teaching profession and therefore, inscribed in initial training programmes. In particular the practicum appears to be configured as one of the opportune spaces for setting up this reflective training: teaching students are immersed in school activity, but at the same time they are provided with structured spaces for thinking collectively and individually (Gelfuso y Dennis, 2014).  

This paper presents a research study developed at the University of Cantabria, whose main objective is to design and evaluate a reflective practicum proposal for future teachers. This practicum is run as a reflective process of systematic collaborative inquiry on the experience of teaching carried out by the students in their school placement.

It starts with the individual description, on the part of each student, of a situation or a “pedagogical concern” that has been at the heart of their practices in the school where they have been placed, as they represent a puzzling situation that compromise the students to find an answer. After that, the training proposal is set at two moments of reflective work:

1. A moment for the personal reflection with each participant individually, trying to facilitate a first reflective approach to the chosen pedagogical concern. In this phase, the tutor and the student held an initial dialogue with epistemic and biographical value (Brinkmann, 2011), that is, with the main function to explore and reflect together on this dilemma, as well as on the relationship between the pedagogical concern and the personal and professional biography of the student (Bullough, 2000; Clandinin and Connelly, 2000; Kelchtermans, 2009).
2. The second reflective moment of the practicum proposal is created as a learning-through-relationship space and is structured based on seminars. This reflective space accompanies and guides the inquiry that each student performs on its pedagogical concern (based on previous readings, observations, gathering information from the tutor, from other sources, participation in web forums, and so on). This dilemma is contrasted and discussed at these seminars. Developing these reflection processes in a joint fashion with other colleagues may help us understand the situations from other interpretation standpoints different from the own and question some accepted suppositions of the practice (Larrivee, 2000; Brockbank and McGill, 2002; Cochran-Smith and Lyttle, 2002)

Some research questions we pose are:

• What pedagogical concerns have the students selected and what is their focus of reflection?
• What kind of relationship exists between the school and personal biographies of the students and the way they interpret certain educational issues?
• To what extent does the combination of the different reflective strategies used in the practicum promote the development of reflective processes in the participants?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the practicum proposal, as well as areas for improvement?

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