Hallways, cafeterias, buses, bathrooms, locker rooms, and other spaces in and around school property serve as venues for positive and negative social processes. Middle school educators can gain important insights into the adolescent world by exploring student perspectives of these spaces vital to middle school social experiences. Often unseen or misunderstood by adults, the social processes in these spaces may facilitate social and emotional growth or may serve to harm students through various forms of victimization. Exploring young adolescents' perspectives of the social processes in these spaces is vital if educators are to address concerns and advocate for policy or procedure changes in these school environments, if warranted.
The researchers investigated the reflections of preservice middle school teachers (PSMTs) who were enrolled in an activity-based middle level social studies methods course. These reflections concerned the students' past educational experiences. Through weekly journals, the PSMTs were encouraged to reflect on course activities and relate them to the perceived effectiveness of teacher-centered and student-centered methodologies experienced in K-12 and college settings. Findings indicated that the analysis and evaluation of past educational experiences grew in complexity throughout the course. As the course progressed, the participants actively integrated the current activities into reconceptualizations of their past experiences. The researchers recommend future work with preservice teachers' reflections to address preservice teachers' perceptions of the reflective process and the effects on future practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.