Reflective practice for professional development-towards a more humanistic approach for prE-service teacher education in the Ch.pdf

1、Counteracting with the traditional top-down approaches, reflective practice is believed torepresent a more humanistic approach to teacher education that facilitates self-awareness and the teacher's development of profess

2、ional identity. Although reflective practice has already made incursions into the Chinese pre-service teacher education programs for over the last year, research inthe field still belongs to an initial stage and many cal

3、ls have been made to provide contextualizedaccounts, This study aims to provide contextualized descriptions and understandings of pre-service teachers' reflective practice for professional development during the teaching

4、 practicum. It is concerned with the analysis of student teachers' reflections in terms of content and levels and seeks to provide insightful information to teacher educators in relation to pre-service teacher education

5、andthe implementation of a reflective approach in a Chinese practicum program. The nine Chinese student teachers who volunteered to participate in this study were engaged in a systematic process of reflection during the

6、 10 weeks of their teaching practicum. Three main instruments were employed to encourage and collect student teachers' reflections: (1) a series of predesigned reflection tasks to be completed periodically, (2) a reflect

7、ive journal, and (3) weekly open interviews and conversations.Data was triangulated into three main categories related to student teachers' content of reflection (i.e.student teachers' reflections from their role of stud

8、ent teachers, teachers, and reflective practitioners).In terms of contents of reflection, the study revealed that the topics of reflection within theseperspectives were varied and echoed Korthagen's (2004) onion model de

9、scribing the Levels on whichrellection can take place. In terms of levels of reflection, it showed that student teachers couldachieve different levels fiom descriptive to critical. Their reflections also unveiled a serie

10、s ofcontextualized issues regarding the teaching practicum program and the implementation of reflectivepractice in it. Such issues were discussed and several recommendations were made for pre-service teacher educators to