How University Teachers Can Support the Linking of Theory and Practice in Lesson Debriefings with Student Teachers

Abstract

[EN] Considering professionalism as a paradigm of higher education in university settings, it seems crucial to establish supportive spaces in which reflection, regarded as a mediating process between theory and practice, can be initiated. Within the conceptual framework of UntAdFoKo supervision, developed and tested in pre-service teacher education, N=10 lesson debriefings of university teachers and student teachers in the practical semester of teacher training were qualitatively analyzed to find out how and to what extent reflection can be initiated by connecting practical teaching situations with theory-based principles of learning-effectiveness and dimensions of teaching quality. First results indicate that in lesson debriefings using the conceptual UntAdFoKo supervision, linking of theory and practice occurred twice as often as the description of teaching situations and that university teachers are the main initiators of the linking process. These findings give insights into the effect of conceptually linking theory and practice on reflection processes.