Dialoguing written reflections to promote self-efficacy in student teachers

Abstract

The practice of written reflections as a source for creating awareness, evaluating and decision making for classroom instructional and managerial decisions is synonymous with student teachers, especially during the practicum. However, there is the reality of these written entries being denigrated to detached descriptive pieces of journal entries, especially if the practicum stretches over a period of time. How then does the student teacher move beyond the level of personal recounts and achieve a higher level of awareness of self-efficacy? This paper proposes the reflection model which considers three elements: reflective writing, reflective dialoguing and self-efficacy to be necessary for critical reflection. As a preliminary report, the paper concentrates on one element – reflective dialoguing. Excerpts from the sessions show that when provided with opportunities to critically evaluate and talk about these reflections with their peers and lecturers on a regular basis, the student teachers are able to sharpen and target their observations to build local funds of knowledge bases, e.g. on the students, the school, the community, and at the same time to critically reflect on their own beliefs and practices, which in turn helped inform them of their own pedagogic choices and practices in the classroom.