Journal of Primary Education

Abstract

This study attempted to explore the levels of reflectivity attained by the preservice teachers in their perceptions of reflective teaching, and to investigate whether there were qualitative differences between the "commonsense thinkers" and the more reflective "alert novices" in their contents of reflection. The investigation consisted of a questionnaire study and in-depth interviews. In the questionnaire study, the technical level of reflection was found to be dominant among the preservice teachers, amounting to over 50% of the sampled subjects. The trend appeared to be that there might be a lack of congruence between preservice teachers' conceptions of teaching and learning and their levels of reflection. The interview findings were generally consistent with the questionnaire data which also showed a dominance of technical reflection. In convergence with the questionnaire findings, relatively few preservice teachers had attained the level of critical reflection as revealed in the interview data. These results, all in all, have suggested the necessity for a more critical deliberation upon the definition of reflective teaching and the nature of the content of reflection in teacher education as well as a more refined framework for assessing the level of reflectivity in future empirical studies.

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