Portfolios as well as ePortfolios have become widely acknowledged by the educational field as a method for competence-oriented teaching and learning (f.e. Lim & Lee, 2014; Thomas & Liu, 2012). Learning environments which encourage self-regulated learning by giving the opportunity to work in an individualized, experience-based and cooperative manner, are known to promote the ability to reflect.

Research Questions

This project works with ePortfolios, which allowed us to conduct a quasi-experiment using a pre-test-post-test control group design. Central to this study is the question to what extend the ePortfolio, as a specific learning opportunity (Plöger et al., 2016), is able to enhance students’ competence for reflection (Leonhard, 2013; Himpsel-Gutermann, 2012). The ePortfolio is used as a reflective medium for development as well as a showcase-portfolio. It includes various phases of cooperative learning (Bosse, 2015). An essential part of the portfolio is working on reflective tasks: It mirrors the individual learning process – i.e. the current learning level as well as the learning progress recognized by the students. Although it can be commented on by the students’ peers. At the same time ePortfolios make use of digital learning by giving the student teachers the opportunity to rate videos, work with peer feedback and maintain a blog.

The following research questions will be answered during our presentation:

1)   Do peer feedback and blogging have an influence on the students’ ability to reflect?

2)   Are there differences in the competence for reflection between students who take part in a lecture working with ePortfolios and students who attend a lecture not working with ePortfolios?

3)   Does the recognition of pedagogical professionalism using the example of classroom management differ depending on the willingness to reflect and the level of animation to reflect inherent to the learning situation?

Objectives

This study aims to generate conditions, which create a learning environment in higher education institutions that foster a student teacher’s professional competence for reflection (descriptive writing, descriptive writing, descriptive reflection, dialogic reflection and critical reflection by Hatton & Smith 1995). We want to find out if ePortfolios, used as a medium to learn and work with, do increase the competence of reflection and therefore lead to a ‘deeper’ level of processing the presented contents (using the example classroom management). Among other things we will show how the use of ePortfolios – especially the tasks including blogging and peer feedback – affects the ability, the willingness to reflect and the depth of processing.

Theoretical framework

In the international discourse on the goals of teacher education it is agreed upon that reflecting one’s own behavior is a main character trait of professionalism (Lunkenbein & Rahm, 2014; Zeichner & Liu, 2009; Britton, Paine, Pimm & Raizen, 2003). Accordingly student teachers should be given learning opportunities to develop such a self-reflecting habit. The ability to reflect upon topics helps students integrate knowledge, skills and experience whereby the acquired theoretical-conceptual and the empirical knowledge together generate the framework for the reflection process. This study is based on Korthagen and Vasalos’ (2010) understanding of reflection as a mental process during which an (action) situation or already existing knowledge become restructured or structured to build new knowledge structures. Consequently, professional behavior as a teacher requires looking at one’s own teaching behavior with distance, becoming aware of personal convictions and routines and questioning alleged certainties. To become successful a “generic professional disposition” (Hatton & Smith, 1995) is essential. This disposition facilitates awareness of one’s own routines as well as the ability to reframe which is understood as a restructuring of a problem using reflection (Vally, 1997).

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