Reflective Journal Writing: Deaf Pre-Service Teachers With Hearing Children

Abstract

In this study, the authors examine the content of reflective journals written by six Deaf pre-service teachers during their student teaching in classrooms with hearing students. In doing so, the authors analyze and compare the journal entries to the established literature on student teaching. Results indicate that these student teachers focused on many of the same issues mentioned in the literature on reflective teaching with hearing student teachers—pedagogy, teaching strategies, and relationships with students—and these student teachers often did so by incorporating key elements of Deaf culture into these categories. Unlike most student teachers, this cohort placed a primary emphasis on pedagogy—but with a special visual consideration—and a secondary emphasis on classroom management. They also focused on their ability to think independently from their cooperating teachers. Implications for sociocultural perspectives in teacher education programs are discussed.

Reflective Journal Writing as a Tool to Teach Aspects of Social Studies

“…Concerning journal writing in the preparation and education of teachers, it is of interest and concern in many countries such as the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. Most programmes that use journal writing are pre-service teacher education programmes (Woodward, 1998;Zeyrek, 2001;Stiler & Philleo, 2003;Uline et al, 2004;Lee, 2004;Chitpin, 2006;Arikan, 2006;Greiman & Covington, 2007;Grande, 2008;Bailes, Hulsebosch & Martin, 2010). Jordan and many other Arab countries have yet to adopt these methods.…”

Higher Education Students’ Reflective Journal Writing and Lifelong Learning Skills: Insights From an Exploratory Sequential Study

“…They stressed the lack of empirical data to indicate that the development of reflection in an academic context has long-term and definitively benefits most learners. Thus, in contrast to the plethora of literature on the teaching and learning of reflection (Hume, 2009;McGuire et al, 2009;Bailes et al, 2010;Brown et al, 2011;Dyment and O'Connell, 2011;McCarthy, 2011;Cowan, 2014;Adie and Tangen, 2015;Ryan, 2015), the dearth of evidence concerning transfer is inescapable.…”

“…In contrast to the numerous studies on the topic of metacognitive reflection dimensions in science education (Magiera and Zawojewski, 2011;Zohar and Barzilai, 2013;Stanton et al, 2015), there is a dearth of empirical work related to these components in the context of reflective writing in teacher education. The importance of incorporating reflection into teacher education is highlighted for example by Bailes et al (2010), who asserted that complex situations often occur in schools, and the need to engage in lifelong learning underlies the rationale for integrating reflection into teacher education. The review of literature since 1995 of reflective practice in teacher education (Standal and Moe, 2013) which pointed to pre-service teachers' inability to reflect critically, substantiates the call to use reflection in teacher training programs.…”

What do Pre-Service Teachers Think about Science Journals and Journal Writing?

“…Th e current understanding of the constructivist nature of knowledge and the need for teachers to engage in lifelong learning has encouraged teacher education programs to seek sources of knowledge that lead to self-directed growth. Th at goal underlies the rationale for incorporating refl ection into teacher education (Bailes et al, 2010). One critical tool for refl ective practice in pre-service education is journal writing (Gallagher et al, 2008;Hume, 2009).…”