Abstract
This paper explored a fostered critical self-reflection among Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students after their micro-teaching sessions. During the first and second micro-teaching sessions, student teachers attend to the pre-lesson phase; and the actual teaching focuses on the mastering of skills such as lesson planning, use of instructional teaching media, management of classroom activities and questioning skills, among others. In return, student teachers are provided with written and face-to-face feedback or a video recording as a third option. These three approaches are employed by lecturers to assist student teachers to critically reflect on their own progress and practices. The aim of the research study was to explore the use of critical reflection PGCE students after micro-lesson exposure. Vygotsky's theory of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) was used to demonstrate that a scaffolded self-critical reflection in a micro-teaching can be useful. This study used a qualitative research approach. A purposive sample of 16 students was selected with the aim to broaden the understanding of self-critical assessment within a micro-teaching context. An open-ended questionnaire was used to collect data which was later analysed categorically into different themes, according to the items responded to by the students. The findings showed that PGCE students are able to apply critical self-reflection as a skill to enhance and confront teaching problems at a very limited scale. Furthermore, the study revealed that PGCE students find it challenging to critique themselves using various tools such as video-recordings, reflective journaling among others within Vygotsky's ZPD.
Highlights
The Postgraduate Certificate in Education programme is offered at many South African universities as a professional teaching qualification
The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) theory based on Vygotsky was fit for this paper within a reflective learning culture pursued by student teachers
This research study highlights the importance of enhancing the skill of critical self-reflection in the teacher training programme
Summary
The Postgraduate Certificate in Education programme is offered at many South African universities as a professional teaching qualification. [12][13][14] mention that self-reflective learning could be regarded as a high-order cognitive process where the student teacher, as teaching practitioner, evaluates his or her past experiences and decides on what to do better or differently in the future [15][16]. Reflection on action will involve the student teacher deliberately engaging self in the micro-teaching event that occurred by means of reviewing, analysing and evaluating how future teaching related problems could be improved. Critical reflection on action indicates high order metacognitive process in terms of Bloom’s taxonomy of knowledge with the intention for the student teacher to challenge his or her self-held assumptions about content knowledge being taught and the pedagogical strategies employed in the micro-teaching environment [21]. Critical reflection suggests that student teachers should be conscious of the inherent challenges in their teaching spaces [21]. By critically reflecting, student teachers are liberated from the limitations of their teaching spaces and enabled to negotiate supporting spaces, rather than reproducing those inhibiting spaces. [22][23] suggest that liberating reflection embedded in critical reflection allows the student teacher to explore situations in which he or she felt disempowered with the aim of facilitating empowerment with the eventual freedom
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