After the three semesters I’ve spent studying this topic, I have learned a great deal. My experiences have convinced me of the importance of reflection for preservice teachers. When students produce meaningful reflections, at that moment they make a connection between theory and practice that I can’t make for them. Once that connection is made, they finally take ownership of the course content, and I know it will serve them long after they leave my classroom.
Next Steps
As a result of this project I will, first of all, continue to use visual records to inspire reflection in my students. Although the data pointed to the usefulness of video, the final comments of the students provided the evidence that convinced me. Their vote for visual records of their performance was overwhelming and I will continue to provide them for future classes. Second, I will provide peer observers for each teacher (as class size permits). There are benefits for both the teacher and the observer—the teacher receives an alternate perspective of their teaching, and the observer connects theory to practice in a live context. Finally, I will continue to hold my comments until the end of the lab. This helped to keep the pace of the lab brisk, and it compelled the students to tune into all of my feedback instead of tuning out while I critiqued an individual performance.
In the future, I may redesign the reflective prompts, providing more structure and guidance to help the students as they respond. The prompts for this project were purposefully vague because I wanted to see how students would respond without limits or standards. I’ve learned that for some students reflection must be taught. Therefore, I may implement a reflective model that requests a description, justification, and critique of meaningful class events. With new reflective prompts, I am obliged to create a new rubric so I can collect data as the students’ reflective skills develop. Reflection is the focus of one of ten Initial Physical Education Standards from the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) and the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). Since the importance of reflection is recognized nationally, I hope to infuse reflection in all of our program’s field experiences and encourage other teacher education faculty to emphasize reflection in their professional courses.
Printable version of all poster pages
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