ABSTRACT
Teacher educators are expected to support pre-service teachers’ development. Part of this development entails that pre-service teachers engage in reflection upon their professional practice, as this is seen as an important aspect of their career-long professional development. This emerged from the understanding that, rather than presenting pre-service teachers with a set of skills that need to be mastered, a focus on how teachers learn about their own and their students’ learning was more appropriate (Calderhead 1987). Yet, the existing guidelines on how pre-service teachers can engage in reflection mainly take the form of a number of steps to follow. This is problematic, as such learning results in mastering a skill that leads to the view of the teacher being a technician rather than a professional, and such learning does not fit into the socio-constructivist framework encompassing this study. Hence, the aim of this study is to provide insight into how best to support pre-service teachers’ reflective development. Data used for this study emerged from a reflective journal I kept in my role as teacher educator, thus positioning this study as reflective self-study. Entries focussing on my learning process of how best to support pre-service teachers’ reflection were selected, resulting in a total of 556 entries which were assessed using thematic analysis. Major findings emerging from the analysis of data revolved around how the teacher educator learned about reflection as a professional development tool for her- or himself while trying to understand pre-service teachers’ reflection. Emerging aspects included the importance of creating and highlighting the need for systematic reflection upon professional practice; the role of conversation and questioning on both an individual level and group level; how to make learning relevant to the learners themselves; the need for professional practice to be professionally informed; and, finally, the importance of modelling reflective thought.
