Louisiana State University of Alexandria Teacher’s Preparation Program: Using Reflective Writing as a Way of Preparing Teacher Candidates
Conley Hathorn & Tina Hathorn
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to analyze teacher candidates, at Louisiana State University of Alexandria, reflective writing, and its impact on future teaching opportunities of the teacher candidates. The results of this study have challenged the LSUA education professors to provide specific feedback to teacher candidates across all programs on the opportunities on how reflective writing can impact their teaching practice. Requiring teacher candidates to use reflection as an analysis has become an impact tool to guide the development of teaching and learning for all students. The birth of reflection in practice began with John Dewey’s teachings. Dewey espoused that reflective thinking is a tool to create meaning and order from complexity (Jorrgenson, 2015). Jorgensen summarized Deweyan reflective process by revealing that reflection was the foundation of developing one’s self-efficacy in their practice through a critical analyzation of one’s practice through a lens of critical thinking, self-efficacy, and problem solving. The LSUA education faculty set goals for achieving quality reflective writing in order to impact the teacher candidate's ability to differentiate a lesson, promote a greater understanding of adapting lessons to fit the interests of their students, develop a stronger understanding of questioning, and to instill the importance of research. The teacher candidates have had a positive response to reflective writing. The recommendations following the review of data focused on the professor’s quality feedback on the reflective writing and interrater reliability of the scorers. The recommendations for the teacher candidates were to focus on guiding questions that scaffold the reflection into a reflective narrative rather than bullet points and using the reflection to drive instruction.