Exploring reflection in pre-service teacher education: a social perspective on the application, value and factors influencing reflection

This study explores the implementation of reflection from the perspective of teacher trainees in two ‘four-week’ teacher training courses in the southeast of the UK and provides a social perspective into reflection.

The study reveals that participants conceptualise the different aspects of reflection, written, oral, and reflections made about others, differently in terms of their application and value, and shows a number of factors impacting the understanding and practice of such aspects. Accordingly, the application of written reflection is viewed as an idiosyncratic process and is understood as a systematic activity that is underexplored, while oral reflection is described as an interactional process, characterised by discussion and participation, and portrayed to be a practice of an important value. Participants’ views on the reflections made on others, both peers and experienced teachers, define such reflections in terms of a social process. Three factors impacting reflection are psychological involving trainees’ emotions, contextual, identifying aspects such as the context of reflection, trainees’ status as novice teachers, experience in reflection, and the guidance required, and social, revealing the impact of community dynamics on participants’ reflections.

The study followed a qualitative approach and was framed within an ethnographic methodology with an autoethnographic aspect, recounting my insider experience during fieldwork. Data were collected in the two teacher training courses, using interviews, observations of the field, and an analysis of participants’ reflections, then analysed thematically.

The findings of the study have methodological implications, focusing on the importance of insider experiences in research, pedagogical implications, suggesting a multi-dimensional framework for reflection, useful in teacher education contexts and beyond, and theoreticalimplications, proposing the integration of a social perspective to the study of reflection.