Promoting higher levels of reflective writing in student journals

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

Waikato Journal of Education, 2011

With the increasing focus for New Zealand teachers on reflective practice, initial teacher educators must take increasing responsibility in scaffolding students' critical writing, developing reflection skills for working in schools, the teacher registration process and ongoing professional learning. This article reports a study of journal writing practices of a sample of student teachers in their first year of an undergraduate degree at the University of Waikato. Of particular interest in the findings are the sophistication of the students' writing, choice of topic for each entry and the impact of feedback and support provided.

2014

As a part of their pre-service for the four year teacher-training programme, my students in college are required to engage in practice teaching for four months in their fourth year. The final year is quite demanding for them as they prepare themselves as interns for their first teaching assignment. The preparation includes making weekly lesson plans, writing journals and doing two projects, along with attending classes for three theory papers. While all of this is an essential requirement of the programme, it also is a great opportunity for them to learn and grow personally and professionally. As they engage with elementary school children, they begin to weave valuable and meaningful threads of learning experiences, insights and perspectives

2011

This study investigates the dimensions of reflection in student teachers' teaching practice journal entries. It examines and analyses the entries to determine the pattern and dimensions of reflection of their experiences encountered during teaching practice. It also explores the influencing factors to reflective journal writing process. Problems with the quality, breadth and the varied dimensions in the reflections by student teachers over the years prompted this study. The study aims to determine the dimensions and extent of reflection; establish the factors affecting the process of reflection; and seek appropriate intervention strategies for improvement. A case study design was used and the action research approach adopted. Data was obtained through the student teachers' written journal entries and an open-ended questionnaire. The participants were final year student teachers. The content category analysis and journal critical analysis methods were simultaneously used to analyse and interpret the data. The findings provided useful information on the types of experiences student teachers reflect on, dimensions of reflection, patterns of reflection and influencing factors to reflective journal writing process. The outcomes of the study provided valuable information for improving and strengthening the quality of the teaching practice reflective journal writing process to enable student teachers to become critical thinkers in their professional practice.

First-year student reflective journals showed a range of learning responses to a first week undergraduate class exercise. The exercise, about usually invisible bathroom rules, asked the question: “Which way should toilet paper hang?” with the underlying objective of demonstrating how “big-picture” sociological themes such as class, culture, and gender function at private and personal micro-levels of behaviour. This often proves surprising to students. However, what is the contribution to tertiary learning beyond a fun class session introducing them to university? The initial goal in reporting student journal reflections about this teaching exercise was to enable teacher reflection on student learning. Closer inspection of students’ journaling efforts reveals the complexity of what can be counted as learning even within the differentiated responses made.

Perspectives in Education, 28(2):31-40., 2010

This paper explores the role of journal writing in enhancing student teachers’ learning during school practice. It analyses data from 22 student teachers’ journals and 23 questionnaires. The study focuses on the areas that student teachers reflected on most, the nature of their reflection and the extent to which previous experiences informed their subsequent reflection and learning. Findings showed that student teachers frequently reflected on handling indiscipline issues, procedures and outcomes of supervision, but less on their own learning. Inadequate reflection on their learning suggests that journal writing has not yet sufficiently promoted student teachers’ professional growth. Generally, the examination and cultural orientation in the Ugandan society influence student teachers’ journal writing. Finally, the paper proposes strategies for improving journal writing in order to enhance the potential of students learning from reflection during school practice.

In this qualitative research study, the purpose was to analyze the reflective journal entries of the 26 preservice teachers attending the teacher education department of a state university. These teacher candidates were asked to write their reflections on a weekly basis during the "school experience" course in the fall semester. Twelve weekly entries and the end of the year reflection reports of these pre-service teachers (338 documents all together) were analyzed according to the contents; similar issues were coded; common themes were found; in the second phase, the findings were analyzed again in the light of reflective practice research to find out about the learning experiences of the pre-service teachers and to analyze in which stage of reflective practice their entries mostly fell into. The results revealed that preservice teachers benefitted from keeping reflective journals and their reflections mostly fell under the "interpersonal stage" and did not have many comments reflecting the other stages which were procedural and conceptual. The results show that in order for the pre-service teachers to gain more awareness through reflective writing, they need to be trained on how to write reflections effectively and on the different stages related to the reflective practice.

Dil ve Dilbilimi Çalışmaları Dergisi, 2020

This documentary study analyses the levels of reflection in the reflective journals written by 59 ELT student teachers from a Turkish university upon their experiences at practice schools. During the practicum, each student teacher wrote four reflective journals on predetermined topics for observation. The foci of journals were on the lesson observed, the mentor's classroom management strategies, classroom context and language, blackboard use and error correction. In this study, the journals were analyzed on the basis of Hattan and Smith's (1995) reflective writing styles and categorized under reflective models by Taggart and Wilson (2005). The analysis reveals that student teachers used a descriptive tone in writing their journals rather than a reflective one. The majority of the reflective statements used were in technical level followed by contextual level. In the journals, as compared to descriptions and reflections in technical and contextual levels, we detect rarer reflections in dialectical level. To shed more light to the study, interviews were held with eleven student teachers selected by convenience sampling method and the results of the analysis were discussed. Not being familiar with the word reflection, time constraint, lack of motivation, the nature of tasks and finally, distrust in the probability of supervisors' reading the journals were the reasons why the student teachers did not much care about how they wrote the journals.

Reflective practice—getting engaged in constant examination, thought, and reflection on one's own teaching through data collected during their teaching—has been extensively used in many teacher education programs in both in-service and pre-service phases of teaching. One of the ways that can be used to capture experiences and thoughts from reflective thinking is through a reflective journal (Loughran, 1996 in Goh, P and Matthew, B, 2011). By documenting, examining, and reflecting events, actions, or problems in teaching and learning process in narrative forms, a teacher will find the patterns of frequent aspects happening in their teaching and be encouraged to think in-depth how certain aspect happens and how to deal with that. Going through such a reflective practice will help teachers be more alert, independent, and developed in their teaching profession. This paper is aimed at analyzing the journal entries of five teaching-practicum students (as the pre-service teachers) coming from Satya Wacana Christian University, Indonesia that is to reveal their professional learning obtained during their teaching practicum.