Systematically Guided Reflection on Teamwork as an Opportunity to Enhance the Personal and Professional Development of Student Teachers

Abstract

Teamwork is an important generic competence in teachers today, therefore well-developed teamwork skills in student teachers should be an important study goal in modern teacher education. Students’ teamwork competence can be developed indirectly – using teamwork as an approach within various courses, and directly – within a specific course, based on a systematically-guided process of personal and professional development in teamwork. A team represents a powerful learning context; several intrapersonal and interpersonal processes cause rich self-reflective and metacognitive learning. Within the qualitative research approach, the method of content analysis was used on 132 students’ written self-reflections on teamwork experience as a part of the students’ portfolios. The findings indicate that students’ in-depth self-reflection on their own teamwork experience contributes significantly to their personal and professional development. The findings are discussed in relation to various theoretical models of team dynamics. Some suggestions for future teacher education and ideas for future research are highlighted.