How Do Prompts Shape Preservice Teachers’ Reflections? A Case Study in an Online Technology Integration Class

Abstract

To investigate how prompts shape preservice teachers’ reflections, we examined, in this exploratory case study, the written reflections responding to three types of prompts (standard-based, concept-based, and task-based) of 21 preservice teachers in an online technology integration class. We analyzed these reflections at the sentence level (total 1,503 comments), both quantitatively and qualitatively, using a framework comprising descriptive, rationalistic, and anticipatory dimensions to understand the compositions of reflections generated from each type of prompt and the kinds of teacher abilities demonstrated in each dimension. We found quantitative patterns between prompt types and the reflections generated and emergent themes in each dimension of reflection relating to teacher abilities. We conclude by discussing three prompt design features that appeared to have played an important role in shaping the reflections and suggesting implications and future research directions.

Keywords

teacher education preservice teacher reflection prompt design technology integration

Introduction

Reflection is considered a highly valued tool for teacher learning (Beauchamp, 2015; Brenner & Brill, 2016; Naidoo & Kirch, 2016), but there are a number of challenges with successfully implementing reflection activities in teacher education. One widely acknowledged problem is the lack of clear conceptualization of what teacher reflection is (Beauchamp, 2015; Collin et al., 2013), which has been attributed largely to the competing influences of two major educational scholars, Dewey (1933) and Schön (1983). Akbari (2007) described Dewey’s perspective on reflection as a scientific or rational way of thinking and Schön’s as an artistic or intuitive way of thinking, a philosophical difference that has led to varied implementation practices. Another problem is the lack of empirical evidence as to whether or not reflection actually results in desirable outcomes (Mälkki & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2012) as few researchers have longitudinally observed teacher learners who were trained to reflect in their future classrooms and because there is no clear understanding of what to expect as a desirable outcome of reflection across different subfields of teacher education.

Scholars have proposed clarifications of what teacher reflection is and how it differs from other ways of thinking (e.g., Feucht et al., 2017; K. Liu, 2015; Rivera, 2017). They have also identified different types of reflection (e.g., Hatton & Smith, 1995; Jay & Johnson, 2002; Rivera, 2017; Ward & McCotter, 2004) and proposed ways to help teacher learners generate reflections that lead to deep and personal engagement with the profession and develop professional identity, using such methods as video-based guided reflection (Nagro, 2020), digital storytelling (Kim et al., 2021), electronic portfolio (K. Liu, 2017), self-coding (Valtierra & Siegel, 2020), or dialogues with experienced teachers (Mau & Harkness, 2020). These researchers, however, have tended to regard change due to reflection generally rather than examine specific kinds of change that reflection might theoretically foster, which could leverage reflection as a practical tool for teacher education. We need to better understand how reflection relates to change in a specific manner—for instance, what change it relates to. Through this study, therefore, we empirically explore conditions in which a certain type of reflection is generated and whether or not such reflection demonstrates the kind of desired change discussed in the literature.

As a beginning step, we aligned reflection with three cognitive skills that have been repeatedly addressed in the teacher learning and reflection literature—abilities to frame, to reason, and to design. We have also focused on reflection prompts as the widely applied way of eliciting teachers’ reflections. We constructed an analytical framework that accounted for different perspectives on reflection in the literature to capture what is represented in preservice teachers’ written reflections. The framework was then used to analyze reflection data at a sentence level to determine whether and how different designs of prompts were related to different types of reflection. Our goal in this study was to inform both researchers and practitioners on ways to leverage reflection as a tool for growth in teacher education.

Types of Teacher Reflection

Different categorizations of teachers’ reflections have been introduced in the literature. One of the earlier ones was Hatton and Smith’s (1995) typology of Descriptive Writing, Descriptive Reflection (descriptions with reasoning), Dialogic Reflection, and Critical reflection. The sequence of their categories suggest that the content of reflection becomes more complex as teachers progress. Such progression is also indicated in Van Manen’s (1977) three levels of deliberative rationality: Technical, Practical/Pragmatic, and Critical. More recently, Rivera (2017) proposed a continuum of reflective writing comprising Description, Explanation, Exploration, and Expansion, each with distinguishing subcategories. Rivera’s Explanation category suggests basic sensemaking through reasoning. Her Exploration category suggests the dialogic aspect of teachers’ reflections, and her Expansion category can be considered parallel with critical reflection about broader pedagogical, social, and ethical issues.

Jay and Johnson (2002) implied a similar progression in their three dimensions of teacher reflection, namely, Descriptive, Comparative, and Critical, which are intended to capture the complexity of reflection in practice and may be likened to Schön’s (1983) constructs of problem setting (descriptive), frame experiment (comparative), and further inquiry (critical). They intended their categorization to be used as a tool by teacher educators to promote preservice teachers’ development of reflection in all dimensions. The authors noted that what teacher educators often meant by “deep reflection” was the combination of descriptive, comparative, and critical reflection. Ward and McCotter (2004) and Nagro (2020) have adopted similar structuring of teacher reflection.

Ward and McCotter (2004) introduced a teacher reflection rubric designed to “recognize the qualities of reflection that are related to improvement of practice” (p. 246). The rubric, which they based on examination of exemplar teacher reflections, has both multiple dimensions (Focus, Inquiry, and Change) and multiple levels (Routine, Technical, Dialogic, and Transformative). While the levels resonated with other reflection categorizations, their conceptions of dimensions were intended to capture situated and dynamic aspects of reflection in practice that lead to new insights about themselves, their profession, and their environment. The authors further noted that, given the low-level reflection commonly found among novice teachers, the rubric could be used as a tool for scaffolding preservice and novice teachers’ learning as well as for program evaluation and research.

An Analytic Framework for Preservice Teacher Reflection

In most, if not all, studies on teacher reflection categories we have reviewed, the authors were concerned about helping teacher learners engage in productive reflective thinking, leading to positive change. Such thinking entails reasoning about and describing learning and teaching experiences. Furthermore, to be transformative, reflection requires a dialogic phase, either internally or with others, which needs to be facilitated (K. Liu, 2017). Accordingly, we deemed it important to investigate the influence of reflection prompts, one of the most fundamental ways to structure learners’ thoughts, but which had not been the focus of previous studies.

To pursue our interest in exploring the relationship between prompts and reflections, we developed a framework that largely aligns with prior work on teacher reflection categories but is specifically applied to the prompt types examined in the study. As an exploratory attempt, developing this framework required consolidating existing categories and identifying core features of teachers’ reflections that have been theoretically associated with teachers’ thinking skills. As our focus was on preservice teachers, we avoided categories that were too complicated. For example, Ward and McCotter’s (2004) rubric provides for levels of reflection from three different dimensions (Focus, Inquiry, and Change) to accommodate the complexity of teaching practices, but we did not consider such conceptual complexity appropriate for preservice teachers who have limited field experience and may not, for example, be able to ask meaningful questions about student learning. We also avoided categories that were less consistently proposed, for example, dialogic, explanation, exploration, and comparative, which have been typically referred to intermediate phases between descriptive and critical reflection (Liu, 2017).

Instead, we attended to features of reflection that were repeatedly addressed across studies; in particular, descriptive (what) and rationalistic (why) dimensions. Describing one’s perception of an experience is a common dimension that has been highlighted in the literature multiple times as the lowest or entry level of reflective writing (Hatton & Smith, 1995; Jay & Johnson, 2002; Rivera, 2017; Ward & McCotter, 2004). Making sense of the experience and the issues involved through rational thinking is another universal dimension of reflection. In this endeavor, Van Manen (1977) pointed out that exemplary teachers tend to engage in a higher level reasoning. Finally, we added the anticipatory dimension of teacher reflection to our framework to acknowledge the future orientation of preservice teachers’ reflections and its potential to positively impact teacher learning (Conway, 2001). This dimension is similar to the descriptive dimension in that it is a depiction of possible outcomes.

In the literature, these three dimensions of teacher reflection, namely, descriptive, rationalistic, and anticipatory, have been associated with discrete teacher thinking skills. Thus, the descriptive dimension of teacher reflection in our framework refers to the ability to frame a dilemmatic classroom situation (Jay & Johnson, 2002) in a way that fosters pursuit of solutions to complex and ill-structured problems of the real world. The rationalistic dimension refers to the ability to provide a reason for actions (Van Manen, 1977). The anticipatory dimension refers to the ability to create positive images about the self (Conway, 2001) or to design a professional teacher identity. These three dimensions are elaborated below.

Descriptive dimension: Ability to frame a dilemmatic classroom situation

Describing an action or event that is being reflected on is similar to Hatton and Smith’s (1995) notion of descriptive writing, but while they excluded it from their analysis of reflection, we included it in our conceptual model as it portrays the reflector’s subjective and purposeful understanding or framing of a situation (Schön, 1983). Jay and Johnson (2002) argued that such a descriptive reflection is a critical step toward one’s comparative and critical reflection. The descriptive dimension of reflection is also closely related to Ward and McCotter’s (2004) Focus dimension of reflection, which includes focus on the self, specific teaching tasks, students and their learning, and fundamental pedagogical, ethical, moral, cultural, and historical concerns and impacts. In brief, situational descriptions demonstrate the focus in one’s thought.

Rationalistic dimension: Ability to reason for action

Another aspect of preservice teacher reflection is concerned with rationale thinking or reasoning. This view is largely influenced by Dewey’s (1933) conceptualization of reflection as grounded inquiry, which highlights the method of a reasoned thinker. Van Manen (1977) further argued that teachers demonstrate three levels of deliberative rationality. The first is technical application of pedagogical knowledge and curricular principles, which assumes that a single theory applies to an instance in practice, an unlikely scenario in the real world. The second is a “pragmatic” (p. 226) level of deliberative rationality that arises when one recognizes multiple and potentially conflicting alternatives for an action and applies common sense criteria, such as economy, efficiency, and effectiveness, to choose among the alternatives.

The concept of critical reflection (Van Manen, 1997) has gained traction among scholars as the highest level of reflectivity as it accounts for sociocultural, political, and ethical norms and values in educational practice (Dinkelman, 2000) as well as student culture (Howard, 2003). More recently, K. Liu (2015) expanded the concept to include not only the content of reflection (“established assumptions of oneself, schools, and the society about teaching and learning, and the social and political implications of schooling” p. 144), but also the process (“constant analyzing, questioning, and critiquing established assumptions, and implementing changes to previous actions,” p. 144). From this perspective, the ultimate goal of critical reflection is to take action for improvement, which explicitly positions it as a driver of professional transformation. This conceptualization of critical reflection may be further expanded to encompass any deliberate thinking that results in a process of critically questioning the validity of existing beliefs about social, cultural, political, ethical, or moral dimensions of educational practices, leading to changes in thinking about action or in taking action.

Anticipatory dimension: Ability to design professional identity

Reflecting on their aspirations for the future is important for preservice teachers’ professional development. Referring to Van Manen’s (1995) anticipatory reflection, Conway (2001) argued that creating “positive illusions” (p. 102) can be a healthier way to confront challenges to their professional competencies than brutally accurate self-assessment. Others have argued that teacher educators should encourage preservice teachers to engage in anticipatory reflection on their professional identity as authors of their possible selves (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2010; Jenlink, 2006). Teachers’ ability to reflect on their future actions can be examined through their lesson plans (e.g., Ruys et al., 2012) and their written reflections about future contexts (e.g., Miller & Shifflet, 2016). Such a future-oriented ideation of their professional selves and capabilities can be particularly important in developing knowledge of instructional design with technology (cf. McKenney et al., 2015).

Prompts for Teacher Reflection

Productively shaping preservice teachers’ reflection through directed guidance may positively impact their learning. Kauffman et al. (2008) found that prompts that clearly conveyed what they were being asked to reflect on positively influenced their problem-solving about classroom management. Kramarski and Michalsky (2015) found that a generic “stop and think” during action approach was less effective than directed “think back” and “think ahead” approaches for promoting first-year preservice science teachers’ abilities to be reflective and design technology-infused lessons. These studies indicate that the specific guidance of targeted prompts is more likely than open-ended invitations to generate reflections that lead to desired learning outcomes.

Yet the issue of how to use prompts to shape preservice teachers’ reflections is complex. As there are numerous learning goals in teacher education (e.g., understand key concepts, acquire pedagogical skills, and form professional identity), there are multiple ways to purposefully design prompts that direct preservice teachers’ thinking and give teacher educators insight into their learning. Researchers have used several kinds of prompts to generate reflection data on teachers’ reflections (e.g., Beavers et al., 2017), but these studies have focused on how the contents of reflections relate to the experiences being reflected upon rather than on the role of prompts in shaping reflections in accordance with specific learning goals.

Research Questions

To address the aforementioned gap in the research on teacher reflection, we investigated how different prompts shaped the written reflections of preservice teachers in an online technology integration class. As described in the “Method” section, three types of prompts were developed collaboratively by the first author and the second author, who was also the course instructor, as part of a larger design and implementation research project. Preservice teachers’ reflections generated from these prompts were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively to address the following research questions:

Research Question 1 (RQ1): What kinds of reflective comments did preservice teachers generate in response to different types of prompts?

Research Question 2 (RQ2): How did the descriptive, rationalistic, and anticipatory comments reveal preservice teachers’ abilities to frame, to reason, and to design?

Method

We employed an exploratory case study design (Yin, 2003) with an abductive approach. Thomas (2010) argued that case studies require researchers to engage in abduction, that is, thinking about plausible theoretical explanations based on evidence, as opposed to induction, which focuses on generalization. To build phronesis (practical wisdom derived from theory) rather than theory per se, we engaged in abductive reasoning after data analysis to propose plausible explanations for the effects of prompts in shaping preservice teachers’ reflections, which we refer to as prompt design features in the “Discussion” section.

We situated our case study in an online preservice teacher education course on technology integration for several reasons. First, since issuing Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (PT3), the U.S. Department of Education has emphasized developing teachers’ competencies in technology integration (Bakir, 2016). Second, preservice teachers have reported that they prefer learning technology integration through hands-on technology experience and reflection (Brenner & Brill, 2016). Third, given the increasing prevalence of online course delivery, it is important to examine how these preferences are accommodated in an online setting where learning experiences are not supported by the physical presence of the course instructor. Fourth, technology integration research suggests that reflecting on the role of technology after practical engagement can promote teachers’ positive attitudes toward technology integration (Tondeur et al., 2012) and predict their prospective use of technology (Sang et al., 2010).

Context

An online technology integration course of which one of the authors was the instructor was selected purposefully (Patton, 1990). The course was delivered in both face-to-face and online modes with the same learning content and activities (e.g., mini-lectures/tutorials, interactive Q&A/discussions, and hands-on activities and projects). Various subject matter and grade-level technology integration examples were provided to situate the preservice teachers in particular contexts. Collaboration and sharing of ideas were encouraged through online collaboration boards (e.g., Nearpod and Padlet), and the preservice teachers documented their technology integration artifacts in electronic portfolios.

The 16-weeklong technology integration course was originally designed to meet the professional teacher technology integration standards of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). These standards were intended to promote teachers’ professional growth as lifelong learners, leaders, citizens, collaborators, designers, facilitators, and analysts. The core concepts covered in this course included effective and ineffective technology integration. These concepts were addressed across four units: learning to make good decisions, using technology to enhance teaching, digital citizenship, and lesson development with technology.

Authentic Teacher Tasks

Two tasks were designed to provide opportunities for preservice teachers to cognitively emulate the performance of a competent technology-using teacher. That is, the tasks did not involve hands-on technology practices (e.g., use of a Learning Management System), but they were cognitive tasks that required thinking like a skillful teacher, such as noticing students’ thinking (Van Es & Sherin, 2002) and designing lessons (Koh & Chai, 2016; Koh et al., 2015).

Classroom analysis task

Implemented in Week 3, in this task, preservice teachers analyzed a classroom situation after watching a published video clip of an experienced teacher’s practice. The course instructor had selected five video clips in different subject areas and grade-levels from which the preservice teachers chose one that met their interests. The clips were 10 to 12 min long, except for a 2-min special education video clip. The preservice teachers were instructed to watch the clip once while completing a worksheet with guiding questions (e.g., What are the learning goals and why? How is the teacher facilitating learning?).

Lesson planning task

Implemented in Weeks 6, 7, 13, and 14, the task engaged preservice teachers in designing a lesson in which technology tools were incorporated to support student learning. Similar to the classroom analysis task, the preservice teachers were allowed to work on a classroom context of their choice, and specific procedural guidelines were provided through a template (e.g., what technological and non-technological resources and tools to use, why, and how). In addition, the preservice teachers were given a model lesson plan, and the instructor provided feedback on their lesson plan drafts.

Reflection Prompts

Three types of directed prompts were implemented near the end of the semester to guide the preservice teachers’ reflections. Table 1 shows the number of prompts per prompt type with samples. Seven standards-based prompts were designed to direct reflection toward meeting the seven ISTE teacher standards upon which the course was designed. Two concept-based prompts were designed to direct reflection toward the core concepts of the course. Two task-based prompts were designed to promote reflection on the aforementioned learning tasks assigned in this course. Major considerations in designing the prompts included (a) including different types of prompts that are common to teacher education and applicable in the target classroom, (b) phrasing the prompts so that the preservice teachers could easily understand and respond to them, while (c) maintaining as consistent wording for prompts within a prompt type as possible.

Table 1.

Reflection Prompts.

Type	N of prompts	Base	Variation
Standard-based prompts	7	Read the following standard.^a Describe how you would achieve this standard to become a(n) ______. Provide at least one specific example.	lifelong learner, leader, digital citizen, collaborator, designer, facilitator, analyst
Concept-based prompts	2	Describe an example of a teacher using technology ______ in a classroom that you have observed in the past. Why do you think she or he was _____?	effectively, ineffectively; effective, ineffective
Task-based prompts	2	Describe how ______ helped you become your version of an ideal teacher. Provide examples and explain how.	analyzing a classroom video, designing a technology-infused lesson plan

Note. ISTE = International Society for Technology in Education.

Descriptions of the competencies for each role, taken from the ISTE website, were provided below each prompt to help orient preservice teachers to what assuming each role entails.

Designing Reflection Prompts

One of the major design considerations for the prompts used in this study was whether they addressed what the teacher educator needed to know about her students’ learning experiences. Thus, the three types of prompts prioritized representing the values of practitioners rather than of researchers, so they focused on the respondents’ experiences and reasoning rather than on the accuracy of their understanding of concepts and standards. Another design consideration was ensuring that prompts elicited explicit reflections, so all had features to promote elaboration (e.g., Provide at least one specific example. Why do you think she or he was ____? Provide examples and explain how.).

Participants

Participants were 21 (out of 23) undergraduate preservice teachers who were enrolled in the online class. Ten preservice teachers were interested in teaching in early childhood or elementary education, and 11 were interested in teaching in secondary content subjects (e.g., history, physical education). Participants’ ages ranged from 19 to 38 years, with the majority (14 out of 21) in the age range 19 to 22 years. Most of them were female (17) and White (18), and there were two sophomores, 11 juniors, seven seniors, and one other. Information on prior online learning experience was not collected, but the instructor informally judged that most of the participants had had some online learning experience. The participants are given pseudonyms for reporting purposes. Participant demographic information is summarized in Table 2.

Table 2.

Participant Demographic Information.

Name	Age	Gender	Ethnicity	Year	Prior teaching	Teaching level	Content focus
Andy	21	Male	White	Junior	Yes	Secondary	History
Amy^a	36	Female	White	Other	Yes	Primary
Colin	20	Female	White	Junior	Yes	Secondary	Physical
Edith^a	20	Female	White	Senior	Yes	Secondary	Other
Ellen^a	20	Female	Black	Junior	No	Secondary	Other
Emilia^a	22	Female	White	Senior	No	EE	Other
Evon^a	38	Female	White	Junior	No	Secondary	Other
Evy	20	Female	Black	Junior	Yes	Secondary	History
Jake	21	Male	White	Junior	Yes	Secondary	History
Kate	20	Female	White	Sophomore	No	Primary
Linda	20	Female	White	Junior	No	Secondary	English
Mary^a	30	Female	White	Senior	Yes	College	Other
Nicky	21	Female	White	Senior	Yes	Primary
Rose	25	Female	White	Senior	Yes	EE
Ron^a	38	Male	Black	Junior	Yes	Primary
Sammy^a	29	Female	White	Junior	No	EE	Special
Sandy	21	Female	White	Senior	Yes	EE
Sally	19	Female	White	Sophomore	Yes	EE
Stella	20	Female	White	Junior	Yes	Secondary	Science/English
Taylor^a	29	Female	White	Senior	Yes	Secondary	Other
Tod	22	Male	White	Junior	Yes	Secondary	History

Note. EE = early education.

This participant is aged above 25 years or interested in teaching in Other content areas, which include Theatre Education and Family/Consumer Sciences, and college-level Visual Arts.

Data

At the end of the semester, we collected written reflections responding to 11 prompts from the 21 participating preservice teachers using Qualtrics. The respondents were instructed to write more than 130 words per prompt. On average, each preservice teacher wrote six or seven sentences per prompt. After multiple readings of the course materials and interactions with the course instructor to understand the classroom context, we segmented the reflection data at the sentence level. As smallest meaning unit in written communications, the sentences (whether or not syntactically grammatical) were referred to as reflective comments and used as the unit of analysis, which allowed us to attend to the syntactic structure of the reflection data. A total of 1,503 comments were analyzed.

Analysis

Coding

We developed a coding scheme and a manual based on literature and refined based on a pilot coding of a data subset. The final coding scheme included four categories: descriptive, assertive, evaluative, and anticipatory. Definitions and examples are presented in Table 3. Assertive and evaluative classifications were both based on the principle that reflection involves providing a rationale for perceptions or actions, which at the sentence took the form of assertion (e.g., “I think that teachers should . . .”) or evaluation (e.g., “I think he did a great job . . .”). Furthermore, an evaluative comment (i.e., value judgment on a specific matter such as a particular technology tool), could be based on reason (Davis, 2006) or on emotion (Beauchamp, 2015; Van Manen, 1995). We performed the coding sequentially, as the sentence-level data sometimes lacked necessary contextual information. After reaching an acceptable level of interrater reliability (κ = .88) with 20% of the data, the three authors independently coded the rest of the data.

Table 3.

Coding Scheme: Preservice Teacher Reflection Categories.

Category	Definition	Example
Descriptive	Describing a specific situation, action, or technology tool in the past (Jay & Johnson, 2002)	I observed a teacher who used a video game simulator type program.
Rationalistic-evaluative	Positively or negatively judging a specific situation, action, or technology tool	It seemed fairly easy for the instructor to use and the kids absolutely loved being able to “play” with the game.
Rationalistic-assertive	Articulating one’s beliefs, assumptions, or expectations about broader issues of teaching, learning, classroom contexts, and socio-technical surroundings	Students who grew up in this time of video games relate to this type of technology and find it more interesting than power points or other tools.
Anticipatory	Describing what one can or will do in the future, often in an idealized sense (Conway, 2001)	One way I hope to teach students to interact well online with others is through online discussion boards.

Quantitative analysis (RQ1)

To address the first research question, we calculated the compositions of standard-based, concept-based, and task-based reflections in the coded data. We counted instances of each of the three reflection dimensions (descriptive, rationalistic, and anticipatory) and calculated mean proportions to identify major components (whether instances of a dimension comprised 25% or more of a written reflection). We compared the descriptive statistics of the data at two levels, across (Level 1) and within (Level 2) prompt types, to identify salient patterns of relationships between prompt types and reflection dimensions.

Qualitative analysis (RQ2)

To address the second research question, we first reviewed the data within each code to find how target skills (framing, reasoning, or designing skills) were manifested in the data. During this examination, we also wrote notes describing the characteristics of particular comment content (open-coding; Corbin & Strauss, 1990). We constantly compared the coded data along with the researcher notes within and across prompt types until themes that sufficiently characterized aspects of teacher learning had emerged within each dimension of preservice teachers’ reflections.

Limitations

As a single case study, our findings are not generalizable. Individual differences were also not accounted for in the quantitative analyses.

Results

Compositions of Preservice Teacher Reflection by Prompts

A quantitative comparison of the data suggests that compositions of standard-based reflections differed substantially from those of concept-based and task-based reflections. The participants wrote largely anticipatory and assertive comments in response to standards-based prompts, whereas they wrote largely descriptive and evaluative comments in response to concept-based and task-based prompts. There were, however, exceptions. Table 4 shows descriptive statistics of the data at both prompt (Level 1) and prompt type (Level 2) levels. Means and standard deviations of the count data are provided to put the data in perspective. Percentages are derived from the count data across the four reflection categories to demonstrate reflection compositions. Details are reported below.

Table 4.

Descriptive Statistics of Preservice Teacher Reflection Comments.

Prompt	N	Anticipatory			Assertive			Evaluative			Descriptive			Total
Prompt	N	M	SD	%	M	SD	%	M	SD	%	M	SD	%	Total
Standard-based	21	2.9	(2.9)	41	2.4	(2.3)	34	1.1	(1.2)	17	0.5	(1.0)		6.9
Learner	21	3.1	(2.7)	45	3.1	(2.2)	44	0.4	(0.7)		0.4	(1.0)		7.0
Leader	21	3.5	(2.5)	52	2.5	(2.3)	37	0.2	(0.6)		0.4	(1.0)		6.7
Citizen	21	3.7	(4.3)	48	2.9	(3.1)	35	0.5	(1.0)		0.4	(0.8)		7.4
Collaborator	21	2.8	(2.9)	37	2.2	(2.5)	30	1.6	(1.6)	25	0.6	(1.2)		7.2
Designer	21	2.6	(2.2)	42	2.4	(2.3)	35	1.0	(1.0)	15	0.4	(1.0)		6.4
Facilitator	21	2.4	(2.7)	35	2.1	(2.0)	32	1.5	(1.6)	25	0.6	(0.9)		6.6
Analyst	21	2.0	(3.1)	26	1.9	(1.6)	28	2.4	(2.0)	40	0.5	(1.1)		6.7
Concept-based	21	0.3	(0.5)		0.5	(0.9)		3.5	(1.6)	55	2.2	(1.6)	32	6.5
Effective	21	0.1	(0.2)		0.4	(0.7)		3.3	(1.3)	50	3.1	(1.8)	45	6.9
Ineffective	21	0.6	(0.9)		0.5	(1.0)		3.6	(1.9)	60	1.2	(1.4)	19	6.0
Task-based	20	0.6	(1.0)		0.6	(1.1)		1.9	(1.3)	35	2.5	(1.7)	45	5.6
Classroom	20	1.1	(1.6)	16	0.6	(1.1)		1.8	(1.2)	36	2.2	(1.6)	41	5.6
Lesson	20	0.2	(0.4)		0.7	(1.0)		2.0	(1.5)	34	2.8	(1.9)	49	5.6

Note. Assertive and evaluative reflections belong to the rationalistic dimension. Means (M) and standard deviations (SDs) are of the count data. Percent values (%) are means of proportions that demonstrate reflection composition, and only components that constitute 15% (equivalent to one written comment) or more are reported. Reflection categories that comprised 25% or more of the total reflection are considered “major” components of the standard-based, concept-based, or task-based reflections.

Compositional patterns across prompt types

Level 1 analysis suggest that standard-based reflections have large anticipatory (41%) and assertive (34%) components, whereas concept-based and task-based reflections have large descriptive (32%, 35%) and evaluative (55%, 45%) components. Based on this finding, we formulated three compositional hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1 (H1): Standard-based prompts generate reflections that consist mostly of anticipatory and assertive comments (STAN → major [AN, AS]).

Hypothesis 2 (H2): Concept-based prompts generate reflections that consist mostly of descriptive and evaluative comments (CONC → major [DE, EV]).

Hypothesis 3 (H3): Task-based prompts generate reflections that consist mostly of descriptive and evaluative comments (TASK → major [DE, EV]).

Compositional patterns within a prompt type

Level 2 analysis shows how reflection compositions varied within a prompt type. The variation appeared to be more prominent in standard-based reflections, which responded to seven prompts that addressed seven distinct standards. As shown in Table 4, all reflections, but those generated by the Analyst, prompt exhibited patterns similar to those of Level 1 compositional pattern (STAN → major [AN, AS]) although some standard-based reflections (Learner, Leader, and Citizen) followed the pattern more closely than others (Collaborator, Facilitator, and Analyst). Unlike the other standard-based prompts, Analysis generated more evaluative components (40%) than anticipatory (26%) and assertive (28%) components. Task-based reflections on Classroom Analysis also had a noteworthy anticipatory component (16%). These variations suggest that the prompt type was not the only factor shaping the reflections.

Themes in Preservice Teachers’ Reflective Comments

Quantitative analyses resulted in identification of three patterns showing how prompts shape preservice teacher reflection. The following qualitative analysis reveals characteristics of preservice teachers’ learning extracted from the data across the theoretical dimensions of preservice teacher reflection.

Ability to frame in the descriptive dimension

The descriptive dimension in concept-based reflections often included information about a teacher action with or without technology and its observed impact on student learning (consequences). For example, in response to the Ineffective prompt, Jake described a situation in which “the students were just required to watch [a teacher-provided video] without any complementary activity.” His comment was followed by a consequence: “Because of this, students fell asleep, were on their phones, or just did not pay attention.” The descriptive comments sometimes included an intended goal of the action (e.g., Edith’s suggestion of using “Kahoot to review vocabulary”). Because many teacher actions involved use of technology, the descriptive comments included accounts of technology features as well. However, these instances seldom included descriptions of the contexts in which such options were called for.

The descriptive dimension in task-based reflections, in which the preservice teachers were prompted to reflect on their experiences with the Class Analysis task and the Lesson Planning task, similarly demonstrated not only their perceptions of teacher technology integration actions and classroom situations but also their perceptions of task experience. The reflection data showed how they made sense of each task experience, allowing them to acknowledge the value of the experience. For instance, Andy commented that the Classroom Analysis task “presented some ways of teaching that I want to adopt and some that I don’t,” whereas the Lesson Planning task was “the first time that made me analyze just how I can use the technological resources in my classroom.”

Ability to reason in the rationalistic dimension

The rationalistic dimension (both assertive and evaluative comments) of the preservice teachers’ reflections yielded reasons for using technology that were primarily pragmatic (e.g., effective or engaging), perceptions of the societal expectations and personal value beliefs associated with particular teacher standards, and affective reasons for using technology. Overall, the preservice teachers demonstrated positive attitudes toward technology and were able to provide technical descriptions of features of technology tools that they perceived as effective for pragmatic reasons. Linda shared a social expectation that educators should “continually grow with the current technology and pedagogical practices” before expressing her intention to become a lifelong learner by maintaining membership in a professional learning network. Sally commented that she “enjoyed” NearPods while explaining the program’s features that “allow students to go at their own pace, while also answering open-ended questions and quizzes.” Other major themes in the rationalistic dimension included reasoning about why certain uses of technology would be ineffective and ways in which they could be improved.

We did not find evidence of critical reflection, as described in K. Liu (2015, 2017), in our data, partially because the reflections were constrained in terms of length and direction, which did not allow for dialogic elaboration. However, our analysis of the preservice teachers’ rationalistic comments in their reflections revealed evidence of changes in their thoughts or perspectives through experience, suggesting that they underwent some form of transformation although we could not determine whether the changes resulted from critical reflection. In this study, we focused on the role of technology in the observed transformations in a context where use of technology was highly valued as both the content and a tool for teachers’ learning.

According to our data, there were two major ways technology was associated with changes in the preservice teachers’ thinking. One was reference to technology as a tool for teacher learning. For example, Stella wrote, “being able to watch [a] video . . . and learn more about flexible seating changed my outlook and vision of my future classroom.” The other was reference to the use of digital technology as a tool for student learning. Edith commented, “using Storyboard online encourages students to use a higher level of creative expression in the storyboard itself rather than worry about the aesthetics of the storyboard.” These comments were suggestive, but a more holistic examination of such observations across common comments would be required to determine the level of critical reflection that K. Liu (2015) investigated, which includes concerns about “oneself, schools and the society about teaching and learning” (p. 10), information that is highly contextual.

Ability to design in the anticipatory dimension

The anticipatory dimension in preservice teachers’ reflections provided information on how their professional competencies with (or without) technology might be demonstrated in a given situation. In standard-based reflection, anticipatory comments were similar to descriptive comments in that their content included technology integration actions. As expected, the descriptions often appeared to be more idealistic (Conway, 2001) in standard-based reflections, without concerns for real-world constraints or explanations of what performing the action might entail. For example, in response to the Citizen prompt, Sandy commented that she would “seamlessly incorporate digital citizenship into daily lessons by practicing it every day” and Colin responded to the Facilitator prompt by saying that he would “plan for design thinking” without explaining what that means.

The anticipatory dimension in concept-based and task-based reflections showed themes similar to those found in standard-based reflections but with more specific descriptions of ways to improve classroom practices. In their reflections on the Classroom Analysis task, for instance, Andy commented that he wanted “the ability to have a strong and meaningful relationship” with his students, and Evy said that she would set up a Google Docs forum for her students “to share with each other and analyze together as they went along.” It should be noted, however, that these actions were mostly presented as alternatives to actions of others that the respondents perceived negatively in reflections responding to the Ineffective prompt or the Classroom prompt.

Summary of the Findings

Based on the data, we propose the following assertions about the relationships between preservice teachers’ reflections and types of prompts:

i. In general, different pairs of descriptions and reasoning (e.g., anticipatory and assertive, descriptive and evaluative) were associated with prompt types.

ii. There were variations within a prompt type that call for further exploration.

iii. Regardless of the prompts, preservice teachers’ reflections consisted of descriptions of teachers’ actions with or without technology and observations of their impact on students, as well as reasoning about the described action.

iv. Prospective, or future-oriented, descriptions of teacher actions in anticipatory comments portrayed an idealized version of self although such naive idealization seemed to decrease when the prompts guided the preservice teachers to think about alternatives based on observations of others’ ineffectual actions (Ineffective, Classroom prompts).

v. Descriptive comments typically not only consisted of vicariously learned teachers’ actions but also included perceptions of the task experience in response to task-based prompts.

vi. Reasoning about the described actions, or knowledge beliefs associated with these descriptions, consisted of perceptions of societal expectations and personal value beliefs associated with ISTE teacher standards, general positive attitudes toward technology, technical descriptions of effective technology tool features, ineffective teacher uses of technology, and suggestions for improvement.

vii. Evidence of critical reflection leading to transformative learning indicated that technology can be a vehicle for transformation for preservice teachers in two ways: for teacher learning and for teacher action that impacts student learning.

viii. Decomposed reflection across dimensions demonstrated evidence of teacher learning, and it also identified areas that might benefit from refined structuring of prompts: Lack of insight into the cause of a technology integration action (framing ability), lack of consideration of real-world constraints or of the need for elaboration in describing actions (design ability), and lack of elaboration on why technology use is effective/enhancing and of consideration of its broader impact on the society (reasoning ability).

Discussion

We concur with previous researchers who suggest that directed prompts enhance preservice teacher learning (Kauffman et al., 2008; Kramarski and Michalsky, 2015). Based on our findings showing the effects of prompts on how thoughts are expressed (form of reflection—i, ii, and iv) rather than on what the thoughts are about (content of reflection—iii, v, vi, vii, and viii), we further argue that the design of prompts has critical impacts on shaping preservice teachers’ reflective thinking. In the following, we discuss possible prompt design features as “hypothetical explanatory concepts” (Thomas, 2010, p. 577) for eliciting the reflections of preservice teachers in a technology integration course.

Prompt Design Features

First, prompt type, which in this study was conceptualized as what preservice teachers are supposed to reflect on (standards, concepts, or tasks), was found to have an impact on what Van Manen (1995) called the “temporal dimension” (p. 34) of the reflection, that is, the past (descriptive) or future (anticipatory) orientation of the teacher actions described. Types of reasons for the described actions (assertive vs. evaluative) appeared to be associated with the temporal dimension. A post hoc contingency table created using recoded data (two categorical variables with four values each: more assertive, more evaluative, equally assertive, and evaluative, both zero vs. retrospective, prospective, current, and all zero) and a chi-square test supported that this relationship was statistically significant, χ²(9, N = 231) = 47.941, p < .01. This result suggests that the prompt type can be predictive of the pair of reflective comments (anticipatory-assertive vs. descriptive-evaluative) generated. The implication is that teacher educators can be more intentional in designing prompts according to the type of teacher learning evidence (ability to frame and reason or to design and reason) they would like to observe in the reflections.

Another important feature of prompt design could be use of particular prompt keywords and tenses. This possibility is partly demonstrated in our standard-based reflection data, in which a relatively large variation within a prompt type was noticed (Table 4), despite use of the same base phrase across seven standard-based prompts (Table 1). In addition, the standard-based prompts could have been phrased in a past tense instead of a future tense construction. For example, standard-based prompts could be worded as “Describe how you have used technology to become a ____,” instead of “Describe how you would use technology to become a ____,” (italics added) as in this study. Similarly, the concept-based prompts could be phrased to suggest a neutral/present tense by omitting time references, for example, “Describe an example of in/effective classroom use of technology (omitting observed in the past).” Additional investigations are warranted to examine how particular wording (keywords and tenses) affects preservice teachers’ reflections.

A third plausible feature of prompt design is related to characteristics of the experience used to anchor a reflection (anchoring experience characteristic). In responses to two prompts (Ineffective, Classroom), we observed a relatively high presence of anticipatory comments in concept-based and task-based reflections, which were generally more realistic than those in standard-based reflections. Both of these prompts guided the preservice teachers to base their thinking on observation of others’ ineffectual actions. On the contrary, the Effective prompt guided preservice teachers to think about teachers’ exemplary actions and the Lesson prompt to think about their own actions as teachers. Reflections responding to these prompts consisted mostly of descriptive and evaluative comments, with evaluative comments comprising 50% of the reflections in response to the Effective prompt and 34% to the Lesson prompt.

As our decisions regarding prompts to include were generally practice-driven, the disparities in the data led us to retrospectively consider characteristics of the prompts that might have triggered different psychological responses in preservice teachers. Two noteworthy aspects of anchoring experience characteristics are whether the experience involved one’s own or another’s actions and whether the preservice teachers perceived these actions positively or negatively. Research has focused on comparing the effects of different types of experience on learning (e.g., productive failure, productive success, vicarious failure, and vicarious success), but these studies were focused on content learning and did not address reflection in relation to teachers’ learning. Future studies might focus on examining the effects of different anchoring types on the composition, content, and quality of preservice teachers’ reflections.

Implications

For teacher educators and teacher learning researchers, our study suggests that design prompts for preservice teachers need to be more intentional as they have potential to direct thinking to salient matters. Understanding which, and how, prompt design features are related to each component of preservice teachers’ reflections could lead us to designing better reflective learning experiences for preservice teachers and leveraging their reflections for improving future teacher learning. The three types of reflection prompts in this study represented different kinds of information to consider for preservice teacher learning.

Referencing preservice teachers’ reflections to professional standards can provide information helpful for course design and program-level assessment. Directing preservice teachers to focus on core learning concepts, such as in/effective technology integration in our study, can shed light on their knowledge construction in a course. Also, guiding preservice teachers to reflect on particular tasks can provide information about their learning outcomes from performing the tasks.

A large body of research has focused on designing prompts that support learning, especially as a way to optimally structure learners’ thinking in computer-mediated collaborative learning settings (e.g., Morris et al., 2010). Ge and Land (2004) argued that reflection prompts, along with procedural and elaboration prompts, can scaffold ill-structured problem-based learning. However, their categorization does not distinguish between subject matter content learning and professional teacher learning. In fact, scholars have found contrasting influences of different types of reflection prompts between science learning (Davis, 2003) and teacher learning (Kauffman et al., 2008; Kramarski and Michalsky, 2015) contexts. We argue that this contrast may be due to differences between the ways in which learning is conceptualized and assessed in subject area content learning and teacher learning. This study adds to the existing body of knowledge on reflection by focusing specifically on prompt design in teacher education.

In this study, we examined the three types of reflection prompts commonly used in teacher education (teachers’ professional standards, core course content, and teachers’ learning tasks) and attempted to theorize what is already prevalent in the practice of teacher education. Building on prior findings suggesting that direct prompts work better for teachers than indirect prompts, our study provides insights into how a multidimensional view of teachers’ learning outcomes may help educators to guide teachers to reflect productively.

Methodologically, our analytic approach provides an alternative way to examine preservice teachers’ reflection in a systematic way. We analyzed the reflection data both quantitatively and qualitatively with a multidimensional framework (description, rationale, and anticipation) to enable a more comprehensive understanding of preservice teachers’ learning. We also analyzed the data at the sentence level, capturing both the form and content of the sentences. Although analysis at this granular level limited determination of critical reflection, it provided a methodology for a systematic and replicable study that could be applied to a larger set of data. For example, a future study with enough data might leverage machine learning and data mining techniques to obtain categories. A number of studies have used using machine learning and data mining techniques in educational contexts, but these are rarely fused deeply with educational theories (Chen et al., 2020). A few have been examinations of teacher reflection (e.g., Q. Liu et al., 2017), but a continued emphasis should be on conducting research that values knowledge from education and from computer sciences equally to produce findings that have real impact.

Conclusion and Future Research

The theoretical dissonance in teacher reflection research has made using reflection meaningfully in teacher education a challenge. In this case study, we tackled this problem by using a framework that integrated multiple perspectives on teachers’ reflections. By systematically examining how prompts shaped preservice teachers’ reflections in a technology integration class, we formulated three hypotheses on the relationship between prompts and compositions of reflections, and identified themes demonstrating preservice teachers’ abilities. Our abduction following these analyses led us to propose prompt types, uses of keywords and verb tenses, and anchoring experience characteristics as key prompt design features that can productively shape preservice teachers’ reflections. This was a novel attempt to make sense of preservice teachers’ reflection data as evidence of their learning by leveraging existing conceptualizations on reflection in teacher education.

To continue this line of inquiry, we suggest the following as potential areas for future research. One direction is to seek missing pieces of information about preservice teachers’ learning through further improvements in the design of prompts. Another direction is to determine whether the validity of the information captured in the analysis of preservice teachers’ reflections can be strengthened by correlating it with other measures of teacher learning, competencies, or performance. For example, how do the preservice teachers’ abilities captured in their reflective writing relate to their confidence in their technology-related knowledge? This line of inquiry would ensure that insights derived from preservice teachers’ reflections are in fact predictive of other important qualities of teachers and ultimately of the preservice teachers’ impact on student learning in their future classrooms. Finally, this study can be replicated with machine learning techniques to process large-scale preservice teacher reflection data (e.g., Ullmann, 2019).

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Jiyoon Jung

Ya-Huei Lu

Ai-Chu Elisha Ding

Author Biographies

Jiyoon Jung is an assistant professor in the Department of Leadership, Technology, and Workforce Development at Valdosta State University. Her research focuses on professional learning of innovative practices in a technology-rich authentic learning environment.

Ya-Huei Lu is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics, Science, and Instructional Technology Education at East Carolina University. Her research focuses on examining experienced and beginning teacher technology integration practices, and the use of technology to support teaching and learning practices.

Ai-Chu Elisha Ding is an assistant professor of educational technology at Ball State University. She earned her PhD from Indiana University with double majors in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education, and Instructional Systems Technology. Her research interests include technology-enhanced second and foreign language learning, K–12 teachers’ technology integration, and professional development.

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