Teacher training has attracted international attention in the last decade, both in terms of education policy and in education research (cf. Eurydice 2002; OECD 2005; Schwille et al. 2007; Blömeke 2012). A central strand of research in international teacher education places its focus of interest on the question as to how institutionalized learning opportunities influence the competence development of future teachers (cf. Schmidt et al. 2010). Against this background, the presentation aims at the analysis of the reflection competence of student teachers as these proceed through university initial training in Germany and through different learning opportunities related to dealing with the professional task of teaching.

The paper draws from an understanding of reflection competence as a "generic professional disposition" (Hatton/Smith 1995, p. 43) and views it as an instance of mediation between knowledge, skills and experience (cf. Neuweg 2005). The starting point is the assumption that different forms of knowledge underlie the analysis of teaching by the student teachers. These forms can include scientific knowledge but also subjective theories and ethical-normative orientations.

The research question is: which knowledge about teaching do prospective teachers use and how do they reflect processes in the classroom. We apply a theory-guided, multidimensional heuristics to guide the empirical analysis with the aim to capture reflection processes on the one hand in terms of their content knowledge and, on the other hand, to look at possible differences in quality (see Herzmann/Proske et al. 2013). The heuristics refers:

• to triggering mechanisms of reflection processes. According to Dewey (1929) one can understand these mechanisms as issues concerning a experiencing of the difference between school-related experiences on the one hand, and educational beliefs, ethical orientations or scientific educational knowledge about teachers’ acting on the other hand.
• to substantive dimensions of knowledge used in reflecting about teaching along various pedagogical knowledge traditions. According to Liston/Zeichner (1996) we may distinguish four such knowledge traditions: 1) a tradition of academic subject-related knowledge (content centered), that handles the representation of the teaching content; (2) a technological tradition (efficiency centered), which focuses on effective teacher strategies for teaching management; 3) a child and developmental tradition (child centered), which puts the learner, the preconditions and motivation into focus and finally 4) a social constructivist tradition (context centered), which focuses on the situatedness of the classroom action.
• to the cognitive quality of reflections: According to Hatton/Smith (1995) these may be classified inasmuch as “pure descriptions” of teaching events must be distinguished from “descriptive reflections” which are characterized by knowledge-based classifications and explanations. Distinct from the latter, in turn, is “dialogical reflection”, which analyzes the observed action in a multi-perspective way and experiment with competing explanatory approaches.

Departing from this modeling of the construct ‚reflection competence’, the present contribution pursues three central research questions:

(1)    How are reflection processes of teacher students triggered and which form of knowledge is used?

(2)    Can we identify substantive reference points of this knowledge about teaching?

(3)    Can the reflection processes of students be graded in their quality?

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