Tracking Special Education Teacher Candidates’ Reflective Practices Over Time

Abstract

Clinical teacher preparation programs often incorporate reflective practices to promote critical thinking and professional growth. The purpose of this study was to determine whether special education teacher candidates’ reflective abilities changed from repeated exposure to reflective practice as they completed two field experiences. We sought to analyze patterns in candidates’ reflective practices by investigating both types of and topics for reflection. Six initial certification candidates completed two clinical experiences and wrote 30 reflection journal entries. Entries were sampled and reviewed to determine both a reflective ability score and reflective practice patterns over time. Results from a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance indicated no change in special education candidates’ reflective ability over time. Candidates’ reflections were descriptive and focused mostly on themselves. Results suggest professional growth in reflective ability does not occur through maturation. Teacher educators need to consider supplementing reflective practices with learning supports to see substantive growth.

Keywords

clinical field experiences special education reflective practices reflection teacher preparation

Most teacher educators would agree that learning to be an effective teacher requires more than simply studying the theory of effective teaching or watching other effective teachers (Leko & Brownell, 2011). Traditionally, preparation programs targeted theory and practice in isolation of one another (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education [NCATE], 2010). Current recommended teacher preparation practice has become more of a blend of theory and practice (Brownell, Ross, Colon, & McCallum, 2005). Most recent shifts in best practices have embedded theory in real-world classroom contexts. In 2010, NCATE’s Blue Ribbon Panel recommended an immediate and substantive shift to teacher preparation programs that were “fully grounded in clinical practice and interwoven with academic content and professional courses” (NCATE, 2010, p. ii). While NCATE was absorbed by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) in 2013, the proposed shift to clinically based teacher preparation, which is still at the forefront of accreditation standards (Allen, Coble, & Crowe, 2014), prompted more research focused on the degree to which theory and practice inform teacher preparation activities (e.g., Gelfuso, Dennis, & Parker, 2015).

A clinically based approach places field experiences at the center of teacher preparation. Clinical field experiences allow teacher candidates to put theory into practice while exhibiting quality teaching as measured by professional standards, reflecting on their knowledge and abilities, actively meeting the needs of diverse learners, and collaborating with other professionals before ever having to teach independently in their own classrooms (Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 2003). Many involved in teacher preparation agree that clinical field experiences have been and continue to be an integral component of general and special education preparation programs (e.g., Blanton, Pugach, & Florian, 2011; Brownell et al., 2005; Maheady, Smith, & Jabot, 2014; Nagro & deBettencourt, 2017; Nagro, deBettencourt, Rosenberg, Carran, & Weiss, 2017). As teacher educators work to define high-quality clinically based teacher preparation, the emphasis of field experiences may be more about in-context learning opportunities rather than opportunities to demonstrate understanding of theory (Gelfuso et al., 2015). In particular, clinical field experiences for special education teacher candidates are critical as they allow opportunities for supervised implementation of best practices while serving students with disabilities (Sayeski & Paulsen, 2012).

One of the most common teacher preparation activities linked to clinical field experiences is written reflection (Conderman, Morin, & Stephens, 2005; Nagro & deBettencourt, 2017; Nagro et al., 2017 Tripp & Rich, 2012). Dewey (1933), a foundational reflection theorist, posited experiences alone do not necessarily result in new knowledge that informs future action because learning and meaning-making occur only after reflecting on such experiences. This stance on the importance of reflective practice applies to teacher education and particularly field experiences within this preparation. Teacher candidates’ reflective practices are more likely to translate to professional routines upon entering the workforce if initiated in authentic settings during their preparation (Etscheidt, Curran, & Sawyer, 2012; Moore, 2003). Teacher candidates who develop the ability to reflect on their clinical teaching experiences learn to recognize their own strengths and limits while refining instructional decision-making skills (Calandra, Brantley-Dias, & Dias, 2006; Council for Exceptional Children [CEC], 2012; Crawford, O’Reilly, & Luttrell, 2012; Gun, 2011). Therefore, teacher candidate assessment systems used for teacher credentialing as well as professional standards within the field include an emphasis on reflective practices as a learning tool and on reflective ability as a professional skill (see Association of Colleges for Teacher Education [AACTE], 2013; CEC, 2012; Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2011).

Although the push for a pragmatic approach to teacher preparation is clear, the minimum provision of theory as “suggestions for practice” may be inadequate for developing teacher candidates’ reflective ability resulting in a misunderstanding of the role of reflective practice as more of a superficial and implicit process rather than a deliberate approach to inquiry and growth (Khan, 2017). Previous research has demonstrated that teacher candidates who reflect superficially tend to focus most on recalling the lesson chronologically, summarizing events, and describing feelings about the lesson (i.e., awareness) rather than striving for inquiry and growth by analyzing teaching decisions, judging the success of instructional approaches, and planning for future lessons (i.e., transformation; see Kalk, Luik, Taimalu, & That, 2014). For example, Calandra, Gurvitch, and Lund (2008) measured changes in reflective practice of seven teacher candidates who wrote three self-reflections over 4 weeks. All seven participants focused on technical aspects of teaching across the three timepoints. Brantley-Dias, Dias, Frisch, and Rushton (2008) advanced this work by allowing teacher candidates to select the “critical teaching incidents” they wanted to reflect on, but again the exposure to reflective practice was limited because participants only wrote one reflection. Authors concluded this approach to self-selecting topics for reflective practices supported candidates in recognizing their own strengths and weaknesses, but candidates’ written reflections were technical and lacked depth (Brantley-Dias et al., 2008).

Rosaen, Lundeberg, Cooper, Fritzen, and Terpstra (2008) recognized analyzing the content of written reflections as the sole measure of reflective practice was limited and unlikely to capture change in teacher candidates’ ability to reflect. Robinson and Kelley (2007) advanced the literature by measuring reflective ability through a scoring rubric that categorized reflective statements as one of seven types of reflection ranging from a statement of fact to technical reflection to critical reflection. Each statement received a score from 0 to 7 and then more critical levels of reflection were weighted to calculate a mean reflective ability score. This work demonstrated a systematic approach to quantifying reflective ability, but similar to other efforts, the teacher candidates only wrote three reflections and these reflections were of role-playing activities within their teacher preparation coursework rather than actual clinical field experiences. Researchers concluded there was no change in candidates’ (n = 23) reflective ability from Timepoints 1 to 3 (Robinson & Kelley, 2007).

Although each of the studies reviewed above advanced the literature on reflective practices, limited exposure to reflective practice may be insufficient to prompt change in teacher candidates who are just learning about the reflective process. In addition, previous efforts have focused on either shifts in reflective practices or changes in reflective ability, but not a comprehensive approach to understanding teacher candidate reflective practices and abilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine whether special education teacher candidates’ reflective abilities changed from repeated exposure to reflective practice as they completed two clinical field experiences. We also sought to analyze patterns in teacher candidates’ reflective practices by investigating both types of and topics for reflection. The authors used the theoretical framework outlined in the following section to create a theory of change by which changes in the depth of teacher candidates’ reflective practices can be measured. It was believed that the use of this mixed methods design would allow for a more comprehensive analysis of reflective practices compared with previous investigations.

Theoretical Framework

Boud, Keogh, and Walker (1985) defined reflection as “those intellectual and affective activities in which individuals engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to new understandings and appreciations” (p. 19). Reflection must not occur solely at the unconscious level, but also on the conscious level. “It is only when we bring our ideas to our consciousness that we can evaluate them and begin to make choices about what we will or will not do” (p. 19). Daudelin (1996) provided the following definition of reflection that explicitly captures its relation to learning:

Reflection is the process of stepping back from an experience to ponder, carefully and persistently, its meaning to the self through the development of inferences; learning is the creation of meaning from past or current events that serves as a guide for future behavior. (p. 39)

Reflective practice (e.g., writing in a journal) is considered a teacher preparation tool where teacher candidates evaluate their current practices and explore new teaching concepts (Calandra, Brantley-Dias, Lee, & Fox, 2009), and the ability to reflect is considered a professional skill necessary for teachers who focus on lifelong learning (CEC, 2012; CCSSO, 2011; Tripp & Rich, 2012). For example, the certification process established by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) emphasizes teachers’ ability to scrutinize their practice, considering what might improve their teaching (NBPTS, 2015). Similarly, the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity’s (SCALE) developed edTPA, an assessment system requiring teacher candidates to demonstrate the ability to reflect on their own teaching. As of 2017, 18 states are taking steps toward or already require teacher candidates to pass the edTPA as a requisite for teaching licensure (AACTE, 2017). In line with this emphasis on reflective ability, CEC’s Standard 6: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice focuses on preparing profession-ready teachers who routinely reflect on their teaching practices, recognize their own strengths and limits, and adjust their decisions as needed to better promote student learning (CEC, 2012). Reflective ability is especially important for special education teacher candidates who will be required to review and rethink strategies to determine best methods for meeting the needs of students with individualized education programs who are not succeeding in general education classrooms (see Griffin, Winn, Otis-Wilborn, & Kilgore, 2003).

Understanding previous attempts to measure growth in reflective ability can inform future practice. Although different studies have used slight variations of multilevel reflection models (e.g., Crawford et al., 2012; Robinson & Kelley, 2007; Stockero, 2008), most include a progression with ranges from recalling the past (awareness) to planning for the future (transformation) based on the teacher’s analysis of the lessons. One well-known multilevel model is Zeichner and Liston’s (1996) five levels of reflection that included lower levels of reviewing or thinking about teaching through higher levels of reflection including retheorizing and reformulating including consciously comparing personal beliefs to academic theory. Another broadly used multilevel model is Pfeiffer and Ballew’s (1988) model including five phases: experiencing, publishing, processing, generalizing, and applying.

When applied to teacher preparation contexts, multilevel reflection models can help provide a measurable continuum of teacher candidates’ reflective ability. As previously mentioned, Robinson and Kelley (2007) used a multilevel model with scores for each reflective statement ranging from 0 to 7. A weighted average where for critical levels of reflection received higher scores was calculated for each candidate to represent their reflective ability. More recently, Nagro and deBettencourt (2017), Nagro et al. (2017) tested a measure of reflective ability where teacher candidates had to reflect across four levels of reflection. The four levels were describing teaching choices, analyzing why choices were made, judging the success of those choices, and applying insights to plan for future lessons. Reflecting across the four levels demonstrates well-rounded reflective abilities as opposed to only targeting transformative levels of reflection without requiring candidates to anchor critical statements to concrete descriptions of classroom events. This advanced approach to quantifying reflective ability was limited in that topics for reflection were prescriptive and teacher candidates could not select the “critical teaching incidents” upon which they wanted to reflect (see Brantley-Dias et al., 2008).

Pulling from strengths of past work by using a comprehensive measure of reflective ability while allowing teacher candidates to select their own topics for reflection combined with repeated exposure to reflective practice, we developed a theory of change by which teacher candidates would experience growth (see Figure 1). According to this model, through repeated exposure to clinical field experiences and reflective practice, teacher candidates improve their reflective abilities moving away from surface-level awareness and toward transformative thinking with the ultimate goal of professional reflective skills. Based on the theory of change proposed in this study, the following two research questions were investigated:

Figure 1.

Theory of change.

Research Question 1: What topics do special education teacher candidates focus on during weekly reflective practice?

Research Question 2: Do special education teacher candidates’ reflective ability as measured by types of reflective statements (e.g., describe, analyze, judge, apply) change as a result of repeated exposure to reflective practice throughout two clinical field experiences?

Method

Research Design

A concurrent nested mixed methods design, where both qualitative and quantitative data are collected simultaneously to give equal weight to both methods and allow for different types of research questions to be asked about the same theory of change (Creswell, Plano Clark, Gutmann, & Hanson, 2003), was selected for this investigation. A strength of this design is the ability to collect multiple data sources during one data collection phase and then to gain multiple perspectives from analyses of these data (Creswell et al., 2003). This comprehensive approach was an attempt to advance what is known about the emphasis on reflection as a clinical field experience activity.

Participants and Setting

During one academic year, six female special education teacher candidates (e.g., Anna, Dorinda, Jennifer, Janice, Bailey, and Meghan [pseudonyms]) completed two field experiences within one Mid-Atlantic University initial certification special education master’s degree program. All six special education teacher candidates were pursuing a 39 credit hour master’s degree in mild/moderate disabilities (with state eligibility for generic special education teacher certification) and were required to successfully complete two (3 credit hours each) clinical field experiences in two different school settings serving students with disabilities. Although 20 teacher candidates completed at least one field experience during the study time frame, only those candidates who completed two clinical field experiences during the academic year of study, with no breaks in their program of study, were included in this investigation. None of the participants were teachers of record prior to or during this investigation time frame (see Table 1 for descriptions of participants).

Table 1.

Participant Descriptions.

Participant	Age	Gender	Ethnicity	Bachelor degree	Prior teaching experiences
Anna	25	Female	Caucasian	Bachelor’s in arts in anthropology	Instructional assistant for 1 year
Dorinda	23	Female	Caucasian	Bachelor’s in arts in music	Camp counselor for 2 months; one to one aide for student with disabilities for 2 months
Jennifer	24	Female	Caucasian	Bachelor’s in arts in psychology	Instructional assistant in private school for 2 years
Janice	23	Female	Caucasian	Bachelor’s in arts in health communication studies	None (volunteered in college working with children with disabilities)
Bailey	43	Female	Caucasian	Masters in science in art therapy	None (mother to a child with autism)
Meghan	26	Female	Caucasian	Bachelor in arts in music (piano)	Instructional assistant at private school for 2 years; part-time piano teacher for at least 3 years

Note. Pseudonyms were used in place of actual names to protect participant anonymity.

Procedures

The teacher candidates completed two, 10-week field experiences within classrooms serving students with disabilities. Teacher candidates gradually assumed teaching responsibilities (e.g., preparing lessons and leading classroom activities) under the guidance and support of a mentor teacher. Each teacher candidate wrote one to two reflective journal entries per week to complete 15 total journal entries per field experience. The candidates were provided a list of prompts within the syllabus to guide their reflective practices, but candidates were not limited to these prompts and could write on topics of their choosing. Examples of prompts included (a) reflect on the pacing and/or sequencing of your lesson activities; (b) reflect on instructional/classroom management issues that affected your lesson; and (c) reflect on how you engaged your students. Teacher candidates emailed their journal entries to the field experience instructor (first author) weekly. Teacher candidates were instructed to write complete sentences and to limit their entries between 200 and 250 words per entry, to use Microsoft word checking for spelling and grammar, to use pseudonyms in place of real names, and to avoid writing about personalities of the staff at their school. The teacher candidates received points for completing the correct number journal entries, and the feedback they received each week was limited to indicating that the journal entries were received and were completed according to the directions. There was no feedback concerning the topic or subject matter of their reflections. The decision was made to limit feedback to investigate repeated exposure to reflective practice specifically without confounding the intervention. The intention was to capture reflective practices as they typically occurred within the field experience to understand current practice.

Data Coding and Analysis

To understand the teacher candidates’ reflective practices across time, the journal entries were scored at four timepoints across both field experiences (beginning of first, end of first, beginning of second, and end of second experience). To provide a representative sample of reflective practices rather than one snapshot at each of these four timepoints, we included two entries for each timepoint (two from beginning of first, two from the end of first, two from beginning of second, and two from the end of the second experience). The scores were averaged at each timepoint so there was one representative score for each of the four timepoints. In total, eight reflection journal entries for each of the six participants were scored (i.e., total of 48 entries).

Similar to Robinson and Kelley (2007), each journal entry was scored using sentence-by-sentence coding to allow for consistency between coders. Each journal entry was de-identified and assigned a random number so that the entries were not coded in chronological order to protect against coder expectations to observe change. The average journal entry was 21 sentences long, and entries ranged from seven to 42 sentences. In all, we coded 1,021 sentences to gather both qualitative data used to identify topics for reflective practice and quantitative data used to calculate a reflective ability score. The following subsections outline the specific coding procedures used as well as approach to data analysis.

Reflective practice

With triangulation of findings a goal, three different approaches were used to understand reflective practices. First, a selective coding approach was used to code for topics of reflective practice (see Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1998). That is, the first and second author selected two core categories, subject (e.g., self, student, paraeducator, administrator, parent) and topic (e.g., preparing materials, student behaviors, teaching strategies), and all coding was related to these two categories. Then we used the constant comparison approach (see Glaser & Strauss) to identify and refine all categories under the initial two. Specifically, we coded four reflection entries sentence-by-sentence, met to compare codes, looked back at old codes for comparison, refined our thinking by expanding or collapsing codes, and then scored the next four reflections to begin the cycle again. This pattern was followed until the categories became saturated and no more changes were made to the coding scheme. Once saturation occurred, the remaining eight journal entries were coded by one scorer only (second author).

Second, NVivo qualitative data coding software was used to conduct a content analysis identifying the most frequently used words across the pool of 48 written reflections. Frequency counts were calculated using the software, but the results were not presented in context. Therefore, the second author reread all sentences that included the most commonly used words (after omitting articles and pronouns) to analyze the context of the word use and understand the intended meaning. Then, journal entries that included the most common categories were reread in chronological order to understand if time (i.e., repeated exposure as outlined in the theory of change, see Figure 1) revealed shifts in reflective practices. This second approach helped to confirm that the final categories used by the coders were indeed the most pervasive across the pool of reflection journal entries.

Third, a descriptive coding structure, taken from previous work (see Nagro & deBettencourt, 2017; Nagro et al., 2017) and therefore determined a priori, was applied. Table 2 includes operational definitions and coding examples for each of the three descriptive coding categories. First, each sentence was labeled as one of four dimensions of reflection (description, analysis, judgment, or application). Second, each sentence was classified as either general or specific: general meaning the sentence was written about the entire class, classroom, school, the overall content being covered or program being used, or broadly about education as a profession; specific meaning the sentence was written about the teacher candidate herself or an individual student. Third, each sentence was classified as either reflective or planning. This last category was defined as the teacher candidate was either thinking about the implications of past events in a reflective manner or was planning for the future events that had not occurred yet, for example, noting the need to seek out more help for controlling behavior or planning for instructional changes to her future lessons.

Table 2.

Reflective Practices Operational Definitions and Scoring Procedures.

Scoring procedures	Example
1. Dimensions of reflection were discrete and one is not a prerequisite of the next.	A TC described a teaching choice during small group instruction and then judged this choice successful without analyzing why this approach was used. The TC received credit for describing and judging even though they skipped analyzing.
2. Within each sentence, only the central category was coded.	A TC discusses the importance of and then lack of student engagement due to frequent absence and then describes parent involvement in the same sentence. The focus of the sentence is coded as student engagement.
3. Only explicit statements were coded because each scorer could draw different conclusions about implicit statement meanings and TC were not able to confirm intended meanings.	Explicit: “The student used the graphic organizer I created for her.” Implicit: “It was interesting to see what she came up with.”
Operational definitions	Example
Describe: Concrete statements of what happened that include basic mention of individual elements or a detailed retelling of the lesson	“One of my students is unable to identify objects or follow directions when a verbal prompt is given.”
Analyze: Rationale, reasoning, or justification; an explanation of why, based on students, based on teacher thought process, based on research, and so on	“I could see that they had an easier time responding to the multiple choice questions I asked compared to figuring out the short answer questions since students copied sentences from previous questions just to have something to fill up the space.”
Judge: Some sort of decision about a lesson element, a choice, or an entire lesson that links to outcomes to provide evidence from the lesson to support the decision	“I also like the confirmation of success in choosing this approach because the data we collected showed that student X can identify letters A through S receptively in a field of 3–6.”
Apply: A plan for extending effective practices or changing ineffective practices in future lessons based on insights (must be a declarative statement about the future with an observable example)	“In the future I plan to include technology into my math lesson using the interactive smart board in order to increase student interest and engagement.”
General: Global, big picture sentences referencing the whole class or lesson as a whole	“Students were engaged in the lesson.”
Specific: Sentence specific to an individual student or teacher candidate talking about themselves	“I maintained the student’s attention by redirecting and using visual aids.”
Reflective: A look back at what already happened	“I chose to stop since the students were frustrated.”
Planning: Thinking about or planning for the future	“I recognized this lesson had the potential to be frustrating so I built in breaks and reinforcers.”

Note. TC = teacher candidate.

The two scorers coded four randomly selected reflection journal entries and then met to compare codes. When disagreements occurred, the scorers reviewed the operational definitions of each coding category, referred back to previously coded entries to reference similar instances and help with continuity of coding, and made a joint decision on the final code. This process was repeated 10 times until there was clear level of agreement (it was consistently above 80%). The final eight journal entries were coded by Scorer 2 only. Frequency counts for each category were turned into percentages (X out of 100) to create descriptive statistics. The percentages allowed for comparison across reflections where the frequency counts were not directly comparable as each journal entry potentially varied in length. For example, if a teacher candidate “X” wrote 30 sentences in their first reflection and 20 of these sentences were coded as description, the teacher candidate described 67% of the time. In this same example, teacher candidate “X” wrote 40 descriptive sentences in their last reflection, which might be interpreted as they were more descriptive over time. However, once the total number of sentences per journal entry was accounted for, it became clear that time spent describing actually went down over time from 67% at Timepoint 1 to 50% at Timepoint 4.

Reflective ability

A reflective ability score was calculated for each participant at each of the four timepoints using the category dimensions of reflection (describe, analyze, judge, and apply) defined in Table 2 to create a continuous variable comparable across time. Previous research has demonstrated that teacher candidates initially focus on awareness of an experience using descriptions and feelings rather than transformative learning procedures such as analysis, judgment, and planning for the future (see Kalk et al., 2014). Therefore, the decision was made to weight transformative reflective statements progressively across the dimensions of reflection to capture where on a sliding scale teacher candidates were in their reflective practices. Similar to the scoring approach developed by Robinson and Kelley (2007), 0 points were given for each sentence that was coded as description, 1 point for each analysis sentence, 2 points for each judgment sentence, and 3 points for each application sentence, and then this composite score was divided by the total number of sentences. This approach allowed for a reflective ability score ranging from 0 to 100 with 50 as a midpoint permitting a straightforward interpretation of the results.

Interrater agreement

Forty of the 48 journal entries (83%) were randomly selected and scored by two independent scorers (first and second authors), and the codes were compared to determine interrater agreement. To calculate agreement, the number of sentences in each journal entry was multiplied by the eight possible predetermined codes (describe, analyze, judge, apply, general, specific, reflecting, or planning) to determine the number of total possible agreements for any given entry. Actual agreements were divided by total possible agreements to identify the percentage of agreement for each entry. The grand mean for all entries was then taken to determine overall interrater agreement which was determined to be 93%.

Results

Understanding Reflective Practice

Research Question 1 explored what teacher candidates wrote about when reflecting during two, 10-week clinical field experiences. These findings are organized into two categories (subject and topic) and patterns over time are also considered.

Subject

Teachers mainly focused on themselves as the subject of their reflective practices whether at the beginning or the end of their two clinical field experiences. Specifically, the most pervasive category that emerged in regard to subject was teacher candidates focusing on self as teacher. Subcategories that were collapsed into the category self as teacher included self as professional, self as observer, self as novice teacher, self as specialized teacher, or self as reflective teacher. Subject categories students and the profession of teaching were not as common and were dropped.

There did appear to be a shift in how teacher candidates reflected on self as teacher over time. At first, they wrote often about being afraid or nervous to teach and later reflected on their growth and progress as a teacher. For example, at the start of her induction or first field experience, Anna wrote, “I did not anticipate the full range of emotions that I would face on my first day in the classroom.” At the same timepoint, Dorinda wrote, “I am a little nervous today about teaching my first class.” Again, at the beginning of the field experience, Jennifer wrote, “Today was my field experience. It was such a new and interesting experience. When the day began, I was quite nervous, as I have little to no experience with the kindergarten age group.” In a similar sentiment, Janice wrote about her first day of her first field experience:

During the course of this 15-hour day, I have felt everything from joy, to fear, disappointment, frustration, hopefulness and sorrow. I smiled, I scowled, I laughed and I had a full on crying tantrum of my own, that lasted longer than anything seen from my students today. I am such a mix of emotions that I cannot even articulate how I feel now, not to mention my stomach is a mix from barely having time to eat or use the restroom today.

Teacher candidates continued to focus on themselves in their second field experience written reflections, but in addition, they expressed more progress and growth. For example, during the start of the last field experience, Bailey wrote,

I am constantly finding myself readjusting my thinking in regards to student conversations, behavior, expectations and lesson planning. I am frequently reminding myself that I am in a high school and want to make sure I am respectful of treating the students as such.

At the same timepoint, Janice wrote,

I feel that I am growing into that professional I was expecting to walk in the door to save me in September. I know that I have a lot to learn, but that is not so intimidating to me anymore.

When not focusing on themselves, a secondary category was focusing on students. For example, at the beginning of her first field experience, Anna focused on the students’ responses to a collaborative activity rather than her decision making when planning and implementing this activity when she wrote,

Students could only submit answers after collaborating with each member of their team. This activity was very successful in keeping the students engaged while helping them to verbally express their methods and reasoning used to determine the appropriate answer. The activity helped show each student’s mastery of math properties while also fostering positive social interaction skills.

Similarly, at the beginning of her first field experience, Meghan focused on experiencing the lesson with her students rather than leading her student through the lesson when she wrote,

It was nice to have a change of pace this week and enjoy a chapter book with my students. We completed some vocabulary and comprehension lessons together, but a lot of the time was centered around the actual read-aloud and discussing the book.

While still focused on students, at the end of her last field experience, Bailey wrote about taking the perspective of one particular student:

Student “E” turned 18 years old today. He has failed government 2 times and is on his third try. He is fairly quiet but seems so confused and lost even with greatly modified material and the answer right in front of him. I believe he is almost at the point in his education where he will be switched from a diploma track to a certification track I find myself thinking about how he perceives his situation.

Topic

Three broad categories, planning, student behaviors, and instructional strategies, emerged through selective coding for topics of reflections. These scorer-identified categories were compared with the content analysis run through NVivo and the three categories were confirmed. A fourth, less prominent category parents was dropped. There was no clear shift in topic patterns over time since candidates reflected on planning, student behaviors, and instructional strategies regardless of progress within their two clinical field experiences.

The first category, planning, was typically written about within the context of time such as how time-consuming planning and preparing for teaching was. Topics scheduling, preparing, and pacing all related back to planning and were therefore collapsed into the category planning. For example, at the end of her first field experience, Janice wrote,

I felt like a deer in headlights, unsure of what to do during my planning time, much less before or after school. While I still feel like there is so much to do and I am not always realistic at what I can accomplish during my planning and prep time I have settled into somewhat of a routine.

Again, in regard to time spent planning for lessons, in her last field experience, Caitlin wrote,

I cannot afford to spend hours on lesson plans that are ultimately unused. I plan on increasing the amount of time I use to plan lessons and concrete back-up lessons for every day of instruction with the hopes that at least one of my plans will be sufficient.

Second, teacher candidates often reflected on the topic student behavior and shared thoughts about addressing unwanted student behaviors by trying new instructional strategies. For example, in the beginning of her first field experience, Anna wrote, “I ask this student to help check the work of his peers or guide struggling students along. This increased responsibility has helped me reduce the frequency of his maladaptive behaviors.” At the end of her final field experience, Jennifer wrote,

His teachers would complain about him and his behaviors a great deal. I had heard that he would have upwards of 20 time outs per day, so I was curious to meet him myself . . . I was told that one of his biggest struggles was transitioning from preferred activities to other activities. When it was time to transition from choice time to writing, I braced myself for a struggle.

The third category, instructional strategies, was intentionally broad to include statements about topics including but not limited to data-driven decision making, using technology during instruction, and questioning techniques. However, reflective statements about instructional strategies while teaching mathematics were by far the most evident within this category. For example, Bailey wrote, “I had already checked their homework before class, so I was able to give them immediate feedback about their errors. I clarified a few math misconceptions and we proceeded onward.” Janice wrote, “So, this morning’s lesson included a warm-up that allowed students to build confidence and practice fluency in already mastered math skills.” Meghan wrote, “I think the one thing I wish I had more time for in math was review. I try to do some type of review each day for a warm-up.” Anna wrote, “Today I taught a math properties lesson that required the children to work collaboratively in a two-team race . . . The activity helped show each student’s mastery of math properties while also fostering positive social interaction skills.”

Reflective Ability

Research Question 2 explored if the teacher candidates’ reflective ability changed over time using a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Sphericity (i.e., the condition where the variances of the differences between all possible pairs of within-subject conditions are equal) was assumed, and descriptive statistics indicated that the mean reflective ability score at Timepoint 1 was 56.0% (SD = 7.6), 53.8% (SD = 4.3) at Timepoint 2, 51.2% (SD = 4.5) at Timepoint 3, and 57.7% (SD = 8.2) at Timepoint 4. A comparison of means across time indicated no significant difference among the four timepoints, F(3, 15) = 1.92, p > .05. Teacher candidates’ reflective ability scores were similar across all four timepoints.

Similarly, analysis of descriptive statistics (shown in Figure 2) suggests there were no notable shifts in reflective practices over time. Most often, teacher candidates simply described events within their field experiences. Across all four timepoints, teacher candidates spent about half (i.e., 50%, 54%, 57%, and 54%, respectively) of their reflections on describing and about a third (i.e., 37%, 36%, 35%, and 27%, respectively) of their written reflections on analyzing; teacher candidates spent 10%, 7%, 6%, and 13%, respectively, of their time judging the success of their teaching choices; and teacher candidates spent the least amount of time (i.e., 4%, 4%, 2%, and 7%, respectively) applying their insights toward plans for future lessons (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Teacher candidates’ average reflective practices by dimension across time.

The descriptive statistics also indicate no notable shifts from general to specific reflective statements (see Figure 3) where on average, candidates wrote roughly two general statements (i.e., 14, 16, 11, and 13 statements, respectively) for every one specific statement (i.e., 10, seven, six, and eight statements, respectively) across all four timepoints. Figure 3 also illustrates no notable shift from reflective to planning statements across four timepoints because essentially all statements were reflective (i.e., 20–4, 21–2, 16–2, and 19–2 reflective to planning statements, respectively). Taken together, teacher candidates’ reflective practices, whether measured by reflective ability, dimensions of reflection, or types of reflective statements, did not change even after repeated exposure to reflective practice.

Figure 3.

Average classification of teacher candidates’ reflection statements across time.

Discussion

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to determine whether special education teacher candidates’ reflective abilities changed from repeated exposure to reflective practice as they completed two clinical field experiences. We also sought to analyze patterns in teacher candidates’ reflective practices by investigating both types of and topics for reflection. Based on our theory of change (i.e., repeated exposure to reflection activities within a teacher preparation context) and past research that has explored teacher education reflective practice activities, it was hypothesized that there would be positive change in reflective ability (e.g., Conderman et al., 2005; Nagro & deBettencourt, 2017; Nagro et al., 2017 Tripp & Rich, 2012). Previous researchers have not documented consistent growth through teacher preparation reflective practices, but drew such conclusions without a direct analysis of how reflective abilities (e.g., Crawford et al., 2012; Stockero, 2008). The approach taken in this investigation to analyze both reflective practice patterns and changes in reflective ability was an attempt to understand teacher candidates’ experiences in a more comprehensive manner.

Despite the comprehensive approach to understanding the written reflections and the theory that repeated exposure to reflective practice would have a positive impact on teacher candidates, the teacher candidates’ reflective ability did not change. One explanation for this finding is that teacher candidates do not know how to reflect and without direct guidance in the reflective process, teacher candidates will not improve their ability to reflect regardless of exposure. A second explanation is that even after building from Robinson and Kelley’s (2007) hierarchical scoring method to develop an advanced approach to measuring reflective ability using four dimensions of reflection, subtle yet important changes did occur but were not captured through the reflective ability scores alone. For example, through qualitative analysis of reflective practices, the scorers noticed that the teachers expressed how nervous and overwhelmed they were at the beginning of their first field experience (Timepoint 1). Yet, by the end of their second field experience (Timepoint 4), these teachers were remarking about their growth and progress as well as indicating that they had increased confidence. Although self-efficacy is not the same as actual ability, it is an important starting point in becoming a profession-ready teacher (e.g., Nagro & deBettencourt, 2017; Nagro et al., 2017). Although findings from this study were not robust enough to draw conclusions about best practices for measuring reflective practice, these findings did support Rosaen and colleague’s (2008) determination regarding the limitations of a singular coding approach for measuring teachers’ reflective ability.

The goal of emphasizing reflective practice in teacher preparation programs is to develop teachers who are self-aware and make changes to their practice to improve the learning opportunities for their students. The teacher candidates in this investigation did not deepen their reflective practices throughout their two field experiences as measured by a lack of shift in focus or change in ability. The teacher candidates spent the majority of their written reflections, regardless of timepoint, simply describing classroom events or classroom routines. Although a critical starting point in self-reflection and self-evaluation is the candidate’s ability to identify and describe teaching choices to analyze and judge the success of these choices, the teacher candidates’ written reflections suggest that time and exposure alone may not be enough to promote change (see Figure 1). However, we cannot be sure time exposure will never lead to change in different circumstances because the methodology used in this investigation did not control for mediating factors outside the theory of change proposed.

It is also possible the dynamics between theory and practice as related to transformative reflective practices is not linear as is suggested in the proposed theory of change (see Figure 2). For example, Khan (2017) suggested, “theory and practice have reciprocal impact on each other which could be interpreted to varying degrees in either direction” (p. 65). Teacher candidates may need ongoing guidance or instruction grounded in theory (i.e., research-based teaching frameworks, professional teaching standards, lists of evidence-based teaching practices) to deepen their reflective practices and improve their ability to reflect. Teachers who focus on scheduling and planning may be learning about the profession, but such reflective practices are unlikely to lead to changes in their actual delivery of clear directions, implementation of evidence-based practices, or data-driven decision making about instruction (see Shefelbine & Hollingsworth, 1987).

Limitations

Although several interesting findings emerged in this investigation, there are limitations that need to be acknowledged. First, the small sample size from only one university prevents generalizing results beyond the context of this study. Second, the selective coding scheme and predetermined descriptive categories may have restricted the data analysis process in a way that excluded important patterns or themes from emerging. Third, teacher candidates did not know their written reflections were going to be scored using dimensions for reflection so their performance may denote an agenda for reflecting different from that of this investigation. Fourth, the measure of reflective ability was researcher-created and not previously validated.

Implications for Research and Teacher Education

The findings from this investigation parallel those who have previously studied reflection practices within a teacher education context; therefore, conclusions from past work that teacher preparation programs might do well to provide more specific and direct guidance to teacher candidates during reflection activities still hold true (Calandra et al., 2008; Kalk et al., 2014). Given the rising popularity of edTPA, edTPA-like teacher preparation activities, and more broadly reflective ability as a professional expectation, continued efforts in understanding how to guide reflection activities that lead to genuine growth remain important. Teacher candidates may first need to learn what reflection (in a teacher preparation context) is, why it matters, and how to engage in reflective practice before being expected to demonstrate growth in the ability to reflect across deeper dimensions. An important next step is to study approaches to providing specific instruction on reflection activities for teacher candidates completing clinical field experiences. Teacher educators may attempt to model deeper levels of reflection or possibly provide the rubric by which reflections will be scored to candidates as a tool for guiding reflective practice toward deeper dimensions. Given the agreement that clinical field experiences in general and reflective practices more specifically are integral components of general and special education preparation programs, we need to continue to explore how to explicitly instruct candidates to improve their reflective practices during their clinical experiences. This investigation adds to previous research in this critical area of preparing reflective teachers using clinical field experiences and yet more research is needed to optimize the learning experiences of teacher candidates.

Footnotes

Associate Editor: Melinda Leko

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.

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