Hello, I am Chrissi and involved in Initial Teacher Training (ITT) within the Post-Compulsory Sector and one of the challenges I am facing for some time now is enabling student teachers to become reflective practitioners.
Student teachers are asked to keep reflective journals throughout their ITT course. These are written accounts, off- or online, shared and reviewed with their tutors and mentors but not with peers.
In one of my current classes, I have two (2) students with dyslexia and I am exploring the following with a clear focus on these 2 cases:
1. Could a socio-constructivist mobile learning approach be developed to enable the development of reflective skills among dyslexic students with the use of mobile learning tools and the recording and sharing of audio teaching practice reflections within a learning community?
2. Could the above approach be adapted for a wider community of learners, for learning with different learning styles, to develop more rapidly reflective skills?
The current is a small-scale qualitative study or pilot carried out during the academic year 2009/10, from January until March 2010, at Newcastle College. Participating students are currently on year 1 of a DTLLS course.