The focus, role, and meaning of experienced teachers' reflection in physical education

Abstract

Background: It has been widely accepted that reflective teaching is a powerful component of effective teaching. Accordingly, educating reflective practitioners has been a major goal of teacher education. Reflective teaching refers to the act of thinking such as analyzing or assessing educational meanings, intentions, beliefs, decisions, actions, or products yielded through those thinking processes. Reflective practitioners are those who contemplate and negotiate the complexities of teaching to enhance their decision-making power and autonomy in classrooms. However, despite the enormous proliferation of literature on reflection, little is known about the nature of reflection which will provide significant insights into teacher education that aims to prepare reflective practitioners. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of three exceptional physical education (PE) teachers' reflection in terms of its focus and roles. Research questions that guided this study were: a) what is the focus of reflection-in/on-action of exceptional PE teachers? and b) in what ways does the reflection influence the teachers' practice? Methods: This study was grounded in a social constructivist framework and employed a multiple case study design. Major data sources included semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations, teachers' written reflections, students' work samples, relevant archival data, and researcher's field notes. The data were analyzed through the constant comparative method using Atlas.ti as an aid. To enhance the trustworthiness of the study, triangulation of multiple data sources and member checking were conducted. Results: Data analysis indicated that the teachers' reflection focused on four main topics: (a) the students, (b) instruction, (c) context, and (d) critical incidents. Reflection impacted the teachers' practice playing four key roles such as (a) making sense of unforeseen events, (b) developing knowledge-in-action, (c) making on-the-spot decisions, and (d) reconstructing teachers' belief systems.

Physical education teachers' use of practitioner inquiry: effective, enjoyable and relevant professional learning

“…Reflection is understood as a process that encourages practitioners to evaluate their goals, actions and the implications these have on the students they teach (Elliott, 2005;Ermeling, 2012;Jung, 2012;Leitch & Day, 2000;Pedro, 2005). Furthermore, reflection facilitates the acknowledgement and understanding of how the context and 'site expectations' influence their pedagogy (Casey, 2012a;Elliott, 2005;Leitch & Day, Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical Education 21 2000).…”

Exploring pre-service classroom teachers’ reflections on teaching physical education

“…Physical education research on reflection has mainly focused on the pre-service level, with the exception of few studies (e.g. Jung, 2012; Tsangaridou and O’Sullivan, 1997). Some studies have described how specific courses were designed to enhance reflective abilities among the prospective teachers.…”

A new lens for supporting and studying science teacher reflections: situating the self in the [activity] system

“…Educational researchers have shown the significance of understanding reflection across teachers with a range of experiential levels: José Chamoso, María Cáceres, and Pilar Azcárate (2012) examined reflection to show the challenges pre-service teachers faced in developing an identity as an 'authentic' [mathematics] teacher; Edward Pultorak (1993) constructed a set of questions that enabled novice teachers to reflect more comprehensively on their practice; and Jinhong Jung (2012) showed that properly structured reflection employed by experienced teachers can help them with (a) making sense of unforeseen events, (b) developing knowledge-in-action, (c) making on-the-spot decisions, and (d) reconstructing their belief systems (p. 157). Recently, the centrality of reflection to improving teaching and learning in K-12 schools has even been tied to the development of teacher leaders.…”