Promoting Student Teacher Development: A Study Of Reflective Teaching In University Teaching Practice

Teacher development is increasingly drawn attention and the results of the research on it become blooming and flourishing.There has been much discussion and an increased focus on the use of terms like reflection,reflective teaching and action research in teacher development.Some western scholars have made much research on reflective teaching and consider that reflective teaching is an efficient way to promote teacher development.In recent years,as the international research on reflective teaching goes further,educators in China have also probed into the reflective teaching and teacher development.And most of the studies are about reflective teaching promoting in-service teacher development, especially about college teachers' professional development,only a few touches upon pre-service teacher development,and fewer upon student teacher development.This thesis aims to demonstrate the hypothesis that reflective teaching is an efficient way to promote student teacher development.In order to answer whether reflective teaching could promote student teacher development or not,a study was carried out.The subjects were six student teachers who were English majors in Grade Three from School of Foreign Languages,Southwest University and did teaching practice in the Middle School Attached Southwest China Normal University from March 5~th,2007 to April 27~th,2007.They were selected from two different student teaching groups.One group taught English in Class 1,Grade 8,and the other in Class 5,Grade 11,with 3 subjects in each group.And there were 4 females and 2 males,with one male in each group,In this study,video recording and collaborative action research were adopted as student teachers' reflective approaches with reference to the procedures of Richards & Lockhart's reflective approaches-audio-video recording and action research.And the other two instruments used were qualitative in nature and included observation and student teachers interviews.The author observed processes of student teachers' reflective teaching activities and their classroom performance from March 5~th,2007 to April 27~th,2007,and interviewed six student teachers on April 28~th, 2007,when the teaching practice ended.This study relied on qualitative data collection and analysis methods.Data collection occurred through observations of student teachers' teaching performance over a two-month period of time and student teacher interviews.And the data was analyzed in order to identify common patterns and themes related to changes after reflective teaching. The classroom observation worksheet was chosen with reference to A Guide for Evaluating Teaching for Promotion and Tenure,by Centra,Foah,Gray,and Lambert.And the interview questions were all open-ended questions,and summary statements were extracted from each response to answer the research questions.Observation revealed that all the student teachers had improved their teaching skills after the reflective teaching, even though each student teacher made different progress in different aspects.And three themes-classroom management,student-teacher interaction and teaching strategies emerged obviously.Student teacher interviews revealed that video recording and collaborative action research assisted student teachers in gaining reflective skills and knowledge,and enhancing their reflection.And the student teacher interviews also proved that reflective teaching promoted student teacher development,including having a deeper understanding of theoretical bases,exploring sense of self as teacher,raising awareness of students,and being willing to reflect.The results of observation and student teacher interviews demonstrated that reflective teaching was an efficient way to promote student teacher development.The efficient reflective approaches student teachers benefit in this study are hoped to have reference effects on the future guidance of university teaching practice.Whereas some barriers that debilitate the reflective effects and student teacher development may occur in video recording and collaborative action research and other reflective teaching approaches.The researches on the barriers in the student teachers' reflective teaching and how to remove the barriers are needed and will pave a way to promote student teacher development better and more efficiently.