An investigation into the use of collaborative online documents to promote critical reflection in trainee teachers

This thesis reports an investigation of the nature of trainee teachers’ critical reflections in collaborative online weekly reviews and the contribution made by interactions with a university tutor and the affordances of the technology used. The study draws on three principal areas of literature and theory: the nature and process of learning; workplace learning; and critical reflection. Each area includes the role and influence of online technologies. These principal areas are used to interpret the data and ultimately support the development of an evaluative continuum. The data comprises reflective weekly reviews written by trainee teachers engaged in the primary and early years PGCE programme of Initial Teacher Education at a university in England. The reviews are online documents that are created and owned by the trainee but shared with and editable by the trainee’s university tutor and school-based mentor. Recursive methods of analysis, involving constant movement between the data and the researcher’s interpretations, have been used to ensure rigour in the construction of codes and themes from the data. The findings are that trainees’ critical reflections consisted of: questioning of their own learning, practice and assumptions; taking a wider view by engaging with broader perspectives; considering and articulating their understanding of learning and teaching; and taking responsibility for professional development and practice. Analysis of the data shows that critical reflection can be promoted by tutors’ use of collaborative online documents to support these processes through dialogue and that collaborative online documents afford the making of connections in learning across school and university-based contexts. The resulting continuum of expansive-restrictive learning in collaborative online environments in ITE has implications for teacher educators as it could be used to inform the introduction and evaluation of the use of collaborative online documents to facilitate trainees’ critical reflections