A design-based self-study of the development of student reflection in teacher education

Reflection is critical to successful pre-service teacher learning, but it is hard to teach and difficult for students to conceptualize. This article reports a self-study, with others, where a practitioner and colleagues scrutinized an intervention in teacher education. The study employed design-based methodology to examine an intervention in a teacher educator's own class. Students were invited to use teaching strategies such as investigating, problem solving or cooperative learning and to analyze aspects of episodes in their school-based experience when teaching with these strategies. In collaboration with others, the teacher educator gathered data on the effects of this intervention through interviews, focus groups, observation, records of lecturers' reflections, on-line discussion board records and students' portfolios. The findings revealed that the use of contextual anchors contributed to these students becoming reflective and exhibiting increasing levels of reflection. Over the semester they moved from simple descriptions of what was happening in their classroom to richer analysis of their practice. We locate this study in current developments in science teacher education with particular emphasis on reflective practices. © 2010 Taylor & Francis