Exploring student teachers’ reflection skills: Evidence from journal tasks

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of developing reflection skills of Polish foreign language student teachers in the context of university training. Although the importance of fostering reflection in student teachers has been widely acknowledged, the complexity of the construct and difficulties to operationalize reflection in research calls for new studies, to which the present paper aims to contribute. The paper discusses the study in progress whose main aims were to explore the potential of journal tasks as techniques stimulating trainees’ reflection and to investigate the nature of reflection demonstrated in students’ journals. The results of the analysis of students’ texts revealed different ways that the students adopted to approach the journal task. Three perspectives from which the students developed their narration were identified: teacher-focused, learner-focused and the one that focusses on external factors. Additionally, the analysis led to the identification of three types of writing, named in the study as Theorising, Describing and Discussing. The findings point to the effectiveness of journal tasks in stimulating students’ thinking about their practicum experiences. They also stress the significance of fostering novice teachers’ reflection skills as a way of socializing students into new roles they will play in their future professional communities.