Research on reflection on teaching practice has been widely developed in Europe. Examples include work on reflections by practising students (Ibarrola-García, 2013; MacDougall, Mtika, Reid, & Weir, 2013; Lamas & Vargas-D’Uniam, 2016; Colén & Castro, 2017). Reflection on teacher trainer’s practice has not been addressed so extensively.

As a result, this work offers a contribution to the field of training of trainers by presenting empirical evidence of reflections on the practice of a teacher educator providing feedback on student-teachers’ experiences during their field experience.

To achieve this, the study seeks to answer this general research question: How does a teacher educator provide feedback on her student’s field experience?

This question gave rise to the following research objective: Analyse the type and meaning of feedback that a teacher educator gives to her students on their field experience.

The analytical framework of this study is professional didactic. This French theoretical perspective was developed by Pierre Pastré (2002; 2006; 2007; 2011) and aims to analyse teacher’s professional activity (Pastré, 2007).

Teaching practice is complex. This complexity is due to the diversity of tasks teachers must accomplish for their students to learn. For professional didactic, teaching practice must include a mechanism to analyse one’s own practice while in progress. An analysis performed from the perspective of professional didactic makes it possible to view the conceptual structure that teachers provide to different actions and knowledge, and the way they operate in the classroom, which defines teacher’s construction of their own practice based on experience (Moscato, 2016).

By analysing practices, professional didactic offers a mechanism for reflection on one’s own practice, which allows teachers to visualise themselves, or in other words, see themselves in a mirror (Perrenoud, 2007). Through reflection on practice (Schön, 1998), teachers are able to see aspects that characterise their practice in the classroom, and as a result are able to improve it. The ability to discover who we are as teachers is a fundamental part of teacher training (Perrenoud, 2007).

Proposals by Vinatier and Altet (2008) and Vinatier (2013) have suggested it is possible to analyse recurrence in teacher educator practice from a holistic perspective. Recurring actions observed at the same time make it possible to define action rules followed by teachers carrying out their work. On the basis of these action rules, it becomes possible to reflect on practice and identify the meanings that teachers give to their own practice (Schön, 1998) through self-reflection. Teacher’s conceptualisation of these action rules in the classroom is known as pedagogical principles (Vinatier & Altet, 2008; Vinatier, 2013)

The professional didactic approach has been applied in Europe and Africa. In Latin America, professional didactic has recently been used to analyse teaching practices in basic-level education, as in studies conducted in Mexico by Fierro and Fortoul (2015; 2017), and in Argentina by Pereyra, Moscato, Calderón, and Oviedo (2016). This presentation delivers partial results from one of the first studies conducted on initial teacher training in Mexico following this approach. This study seeks to enrich the field of teacher training from theoretical proposals and methodologies developed by French researchers.

This study was developed based on proposals from interpretative research and following the theoretical approach offered by professional didactic. The instrumental case study method was used (Erickson, 1992; Stake, 2007), for which ethnographic techniques such as classroom observation and semi-structured interviews were applied. Fieldwork was conducted in a teacher’s college in Baja California, north-western Mexico. Access was negotiated beforehand with the school head, the teacher educator, and the student-teacher group. Fieldwork was performed over 10 weeks, as the aim was to describe the dynamics within the classroom in specific detail, to be consistent with the previously described theoretical proposals. During these 10 weeks, the student-teacher group had afternoon class sessions with the teacher educator. The data collection techniques used were: Classroom observation Participant observation was performed in 18 class sessions, each lasting two hours. Three of the classes observed were videotaped in an attempt to collect an extensive, detailed record of what occurred in the classroom in order to enable a deeper analysis of the data obtained. Afterwards, each of the videotaped sessions was carefully transcribed to outline all interactions between the teacher and her students, both verbal and non-verbal. Semi-structured interviews Once the teacher educator’s classroom practice had been observed, three open-ended interviews were conducted. The questions asked in these interviews sought to lead the teacher educator to conceptualise and reflect on her own practice in the classroom, thus defining her pedagogical principles. To arrive at a reflection on teaching practice, three steps needed to be taken before conducting the interview: 1) Transcribe extensively and meticulously the videotaped observation in the week the interview was to be held, so the interview could address and elucidate that week’s practice. 2) Analyse the interactions between the teacher educator and the student-teacher group in the transcriptions. 3) Define an interview guideline based on the class sessions transcribed and analysed.

This paper presents partial results from a master’s research thesis. On the basis of proposals in professional didactic (Pastré, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2011; Vinatier & Altet, 2008; Vinatier, 2013), the aim was to uncover the teacher’s own conceptualisations regarding her classroom practice. Three dimensions were used to describe the teacher educator’s reflections on her practice: (1) the teacher’s concept of her own practice, (2) the students’ perception of the teacher, and (3) the teacher’s image of self-efficacy. The teacher’s concept of her own practice This section will describe the teacher educator’s conceptualisation of her practice, and her beliefs regarding the reasons for her practice and its perceived usefulness. It will show how the teacher educator uses her own experience to provide feedback on students’ experiences. The meaning the teacher gives to this aspect is the pedagogical principle that guides her work in the classroom. The students’ perception of the teacher This second section will describe the importance of the students’ appreciation of the teacher educator’s practice, and will explain how positive comments that the teacher receives from her students serve to confirm the effectiveness of her classroom practice, and how the feedback provided by the teacher educator is valued by her students. Image of self-efficacy In the face of changes in basic-level education syllabi and curricula, the teacher educator affirms that she feels left behind by some of her students’ questions. This concern associated with her training is part of the uncertainties that the teacher educator experiences during her class, but at the same time helps to further her professional development. This aspect will be described in the third section.

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