Anticipatory reflection is a part of reflection a few professionals in teacher education and nursing see as the missing component in the model of reflection worked out by Schön (1991) who talks about reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action (Schön, 1991). They argue there is a third part of the partnership of reflection and action: ‘reflection-before-action’ (Reed and Procter, 1993 in Burton 2000; Greenwood, 1998), ‘anticipatory reflection’ (Van Manen, 1995 in Conway, 2001; Loughran, 2002; Freese 2006), or ‘prospective reflection’ (Conway, 2001; Urzua and Vasquez, 2008). The emphasis in their approach to reflection is not on retrospection, but rather on ability to imagine, visualise.

The author of the present paper is of the same opinion. To her mind, the essence of anticipatory reflection for student teachers is to prepare them to become reflective practitioners by first of all being reflective student teachers. It can be done if teacher educators not only expect student teachers be automatically ready to reflect on their pedagogical practice but instead help student teachers visualise and make opinions on what their real first teaching behaviour and professional future could look like by activating their anticipatory reflection even before hands-on experience. That in its turn would encourage students under supervision of their educators to think of a realistic situation of their pedagogical practice thus avoiding having a ‘shattered image’ – a case when, for example, unjustified high expectations before pedagogical practice do not match the real classroom experience (Cole and Knowles, 1993).

Therefore the research questions of the study are as follows:

1. What are specific issues in student teacher's pedagogical practice (in particular, leading lessons) student teachers think they are helped with in their teacher education studies if their anticipatory reflection is activated?

2. What causes student teachers’ ‘shattered image’ of being a teacher in their pedagogical practice – what is discrepancy between anticipated and actual things? What should be done to avoid that?

3. In what way does the fact that student teachers’ anticipatory reflection is activated impact their self-assessment habits?

In order to answer the research questions following research objectives are set:

1. To analyse scientific literature on the research related issues.

2. To organise a standardised open-ended interview with student teachers before their first pedagogical practice.

3. To gather student teachers’ self-assessment essays on their experience of their first pedagogical practice.

4. To organise an open interview with student teachers after their first pedagogical practice.

5. To analyse, compare, interpret the obtained data from student teachers’ interviews and self-assessment essays.

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