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Reflection and Professional Learning:
An Analysis of Teachers' Classroom Observations
Ewa Ivason-Jansson, Limin Gu
Introduction
In recent years, there has been an increased interest in-and demand for-improving teachers' professional knowledge through research by the teachers themselves on their own practices. There has been much discussion and an increased focus on various inquiry-oriented approaches and the use of terms like reflection, action research, and teacher empowerment in teacher education. However, this effort has mainly been at the pre-service level and emphasizes the development of capabilities among prospective teachers (Mills & Satterthwait, 2000; Reid & O'Donoghue, 2004). Little consideration has been given to applying these strategies to advanced in-service teacher education programs, where the focus has mainly been on studying theories or "renewing" teachers' knowledge.
Since the fall semester of 2002, the teacher education faculty at Mid-Sweden University has developed a new five-credit course, "Learning through guidance and reflection," for supervisor-teachers within an in-service teacher education program. (These teachers are responsible for supervising the pre-service teacher students from our university in their school-based practice in schools or kindergartens.) The focus is on communication in the classroom and interactions among teachers and children in relation to the children's learning. According to the communication tradition in the school world, the teacher presents information to students; thus the communication process is controlled or governed by the teacher, who also has an overview of the whole and the power to control the situation. The aim of this course is, in a more structured and systematic way, to help teachers develop a kind of insight into these important educational and pedagogic issues, with the aim of changing the pattern of traditional classroom communication by reflecting on what has occurred in the classroom.
In this study we try to find out what the teachers have learned through the course, where the observations and reflections on practice have been taken as a "red thread" throughout the teaching and learning process. Our focus is to describe, explain, and analyze how teachers have experienced the knowledge supplied by observation and reflection, as well as their own understanding of the function of action research in their professional development. Finally, as teacher educators, we are also interested in our role as facilitators for the teachers in this learning process, and in how to develop our course in the future.
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Reflection and Professional Learning: An Analysis of Teachers' Classroom Observations