Objectives

        Building reflective capacities of preservice teachers’ understanding and transformation of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) they have acquired in initial teacher education and teaching practicum is crucial for preservice teachers’ professional development. Reflections on teaching and classroom observation can be two practical approaches for preservice teachers in developing reflections and ultimately achieving higher teaching quality. This study aimed to identify influences on preservice teachers’ professional reflection logs collected in online training to enhance teaching quality during the practicum.

Significance

        By exploring the relative strengths of different sources of experience on preservice teachers’ professional reflection logs, this study contributes instructional design in teacher education programme for promoting preservice teachers’ reflections to integrate theoretical knowledge with teaching practice experience, accelerating the professional development of these teachers.

Theoretical framework

        Defined as “deliberate thinking about action with a view to its improvement” (Hatton & Smith, 1995, p.40), reflection is a valued emphasis in the current field experience requirements of teacher education programmes, because preservice teachers are expected to develop the “ability to facilitate learning and talk meaningfully about their practice” (Tyrrell et al., 2013, p.15). Peer dialogues in a virtual learning environment of preservice teachers from four different countries on practical issues in teaching indicated reflected different depths of influences of teacher education and practicum (Wang, Lei & Fong, 2020). Considering how deep learners reflect on their learning and teaching practice, Ryan and Ryan (2013) create a Model for Teaching and Assessing Reflective Learning (TARL) that suggests characteristics of critical thinking levels of reflection in tertiary education. Preservice teachers could get benefit from this systematic model to improve their teaching performance with a holistic understanding of reflection.

        Classroom observation, defined as individual makes an observation and takes record of the events and interactions in classroom teaching carefully and systematically (Cogan, 1973), provides a direct way to observe and evaluate teachers’ teaching behaviours. With an accurate teaching and learning situation, preservice teachers could objectively observe what happens in the classroom through classroom observation: for instance, the teacher shows respect for learners in his/her behaviour and language (classroom climate), the teacher stimulates learners to think about solutions (intensive and activating teaching), or the teacher differentiates feedback according to students’ abilities (differentiated instruction). Classroom observation instruments have been used to identify generic teaching practices and measure teaching quality in various studies (Maulana & Helms-Lorenz, 2016; Maulana, Helms-Lorenz & Van de Grift, 2017, Ko et al., 2019).

Research Questions

        Preservice teachers and novice teachers were found referring to their experience during teaching practicums in reflections when they were having online professional discussions with overseas peers (Wang, Lei & Fong, 2020). Little empirical research has been identified and compared the relative influences of past learning experiences on preservice teachers’ reflections. Therefore, the research questions of this study are as follows:

1) Are there any differences in the influences of past learning experiences in preservice teachers’ professional reflective logs across the control group and the two experimental groups varied in the sequence of the training sessions (first classroom observation (CO), and then reflective teaching (RT), or vice versa)?

2) Are there any differences in the depths of reflection in preservice teachers’ professional reflective logs across the control group and the two experimental groups?

Methodology This study adopted a quasi-experimental research design with mixed methods to examine the relative significance of past learning experiences in preservice teachers’ professional reflection logs. For a deeper understanding of preservice teachers’ reflections, an in-depth qualitative dialogue analysis (Hennessy et al., 2016) was used to analyse preservice teachers’ reflection logs and focus group interviews. Each reflection log or focus group interview was coded in two dimensions: levels of reflection and sources of experiences. Following TARL model (Ryan & Ryan, 2013), the depths of reflection were categorized into four hierarchical levels: Reporting/Responding, Relating, Reasoning, and Reconstructing. Three sources of past learning experiences were found among preservice teachers in this study: experience as a K-12 student, experiences from initial teacher education, and experiences during the teaching practicum. Instruments Four narrated PowerPoints were designed as the online training sessions, two in reflective teaching, and two in classroom observation. After each training course, a scenario with open questions was given for all participants to write a reflective log. The reflective logs were used to explore preservice teachers’ understanding of PCK based on others’ teaching experience. For example, “Imagine you observed one lesson about insects, what do you want to discuss with the teacher?” Subsequently, semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted to explore preservice teachers’ reflections based on their own teaching experience on two topics: formative assessment and feedback to students, and areas for pedagogical improvements (Ko & Maulana, 2017). Data Sources A sample of 94 preservice teachers was recruited from a teacher education university in northern China in this study. 30 participants’ reflective logs were analyzed as the first stage of an ongoing doctoral study. The participants were assigned randomly into the control group without trainings and the two experimental groups differed in the order of the two training sessions (CO-RT Group vs RT-CO Group). The web links of online training sessions with reflective logs as homework activities were sent to the participants via WeChat, a Chinese instant messaging system. Each time, the two experimental groups were asked to finish learning an online training session before submitting a reflective log in three days. Although the control group did not take the online training, they still need to write reflective logs like their peers in the two experimental groups. Semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted for all participants after their teaching practicum via DingTalk, a Chinese online platform for video and audio communications.

Findings and Conclusions Preservice teachers’ professional reflective logs with 30 participants were analysed as the preliminary results. The results showed that the relative frequency of utterances related to teaching practicum experience was significantly higher than those from K-12 and teacher education (F (2, 81) = 29.41, p<0.001), suggesting that teaching practice played a dominant role in shaping preservice teachers’ reflections. Additionally, the relative frequency of utterances related to the teaching practicum in RT-CO Group experience sources was significantly higher than those of CO-RT Group and the control group (F (2, 81) = 5.23, p<0.01), indicating both the training and its sequence made a difference. However, the depth of reflection results showed that most participants’ utterances were either reporting or responding (F (2, 81) = 1048.92, p<0.001), indicating that participants’ authentic reflections were relatively shallow. Many researchers have proposed that having teaching practice plays a vital role for preservice teachers to improve their teaching skills (Ferrier-Kerr, 2009; Gray, Wright & Pascoe, 2017). Nevertheless, preservice teachers need to reflect and critically think about their teaching practice and what they have learned during the teacher education programme to achieve teaching effectiveness. Novice teachers’ teaching skills could be remarkably improved if they got support from teacher induction programme (Maulana, Helms-Lorenz & Van de Grift, 2015). In line with our findings, the knowledge the preservice teachers acquired from online training helped improve their PCK and reflective ability. Besides the rest of reflective logs, the in-depth analysis of interviews is still in progress. We attempt to explore a deeper understanding of preservice teachers’ depth of reflections according to their own teaching experience.

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