EL EJEMPLO CARLOS ALBERTO Y OTROS DOS MÁS

One of the themes that emerged from the interview data is one that involves the identification of the strengths and weaknesses in teaching as well as providing suggestions on how to improve teaching. I have labelled these elements as SWIS (Strengths, Weaknesses, Improvements, Suggestions). For example:

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Dollah: Reflection in terms of teaching is.. the way the teacher wants to see, the strengths and weaknesses of his or her own teaching. And.. by that way the teacher will know how to.. be a better.. educator in the next lesson.

In another extract, the process of identifying SWIS is seen as involving a retrospective examination of teaching with a focus on ‘rectifying mistakes’:

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Azrul: ...looking back at what we have done.. something that you looking back and then.. you go.. and see what, what went wrong and then.. what you’re going to rectify the mistakes so that’s it.

Certainly, when we reflect, we tend to look into our past actions and experiences. Dewey (1933) once said that experience is one of the important components in formulating reflection and has been demonstrated in many models of professional learning such as Wallace’s Reflective Model (1991) and Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model (1984) as discussed in 3.3.5. Furthermore, Kolb (1984) also asserted that if transformation was to take place, we have to reflect on the experience continuously. This means that reflection is not an isolated process which only involves a mere identification of SWIS as Dollah and Azrul had suggested above. Reflection also takes into account other things beyond SWIS in order to acquire better understanding of practice (see 3.2.3). In addition, Azrul concluded his perception with ‘so that’s it’ which indicates a somewhat superficial approach to the business of reflection.

In another extract, Devi associated identifying SWIS to the process of writing reflections:

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Devi: Reflection is a write up which I feel that.. important and essential for me to reflect back on what I’ve done during the.. teaching and learning practice, when I entered the class, and the moment I come outside, that’s the time for me to reflect on.. what are the.. my flaws and what are my strengths of my lessons for that day. So I feel that.. basically that is what meant by reflection..

Interestingly, Devi used the word ‘flaws’ instead of ‘weaknesses’ to identify her teaching problem. I find this term rather vague as to whether ‘flaws’ here refers to her teacher persona or the ‘flaws’ in her teaching. However, I assume that ‘flaws’ here could still mean the things that did not go well in the lesson. In addition to this, it seems that in her reflections Devi identified her own weaknesses and strengths in teaching and not the weaknesses and strengths of her pupils’ learning. Thus, the reflections are centred around ‘me’ as indicated through the constant use of pronouns ‘I’ and ‘my’ in her response, which are also found in other extracts under SWIS.

The many instances of ‘identifying SWIS’ suggest that student teachers wrote their reflections based on a standard format or framework. They also indicate that student teachers applied a formulaic approach in writing their reflections. For example:

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Jega: First of all I choose based on my strengths, I highlight my strengths first just to show.. showcase whatever I’ve done. Let’s say today I’m using a new teaching aid, so I will 7_{puji sendiri la the teaching aid. And then moving on to}

my weaknesses, I will not highlight as much as my strengths. I will try to hide my weaknesses. If there is no one observing me.

In this extract, Jega’s strategy to writing his reflection was to highlight the strengths first in order to portray his best side to his supervising lecturers, showing his abilities and skills in teaching. This shows that he feels proud of his accomplishments. Jega gave an example of using a fancy teaching aid in his lesson which was probably something that he produced himself that could be associated with ‘good’ teaching. In contrast, he would not write about his weaknesses or hide his failures in his reflections if he were not being ‘observed’ during the practicum. This gives the impression that perhaps student teachers

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write reflections differently from those when he is not being observed by his supervisor. This raises the question to how truthful the discussions written in the student teachers’ reflections are. The comments that student teachers write in their written reflections may not paint the entire picture of the teaching situation. Instead they may represent just a fraction of what is really going on in the classroom or the things that student teachers think about in their teaching. This point resonates with Hobbs’ (2007) study about ‘forced’ reflections and their impact on the authenticity of the reflection student teachers produced (in 3.5 and 3.6).

In the interview, Jega continued to express his concerns about writing his weaknesses in his reflections. He justified this by stating that:

ST1Jega35

Jega: Because let’s say I’ve done the 8_{buku RPH, let’s say my juniors are}

reading.. my school teachers they want to read. I don’t want to show my weaknesses to them. I want to show my strengths to them. So that they will have more this image of me, so depends on the personality. I don’t want people to see my weaknesses, I don’t want to show that. So I’ll highlight the strengths first.

Clearly, Jega was very cautious about allowing his peers or teachers at school where he attended his teaching practice to read his reflections. He adamantly refused to let them read about his weaknesses but would want them to read about his strengths instead. It seems that Jega was trying to avoid the ‘bad’ teacher image and tries to maintain a ‘good’ teacher image, a stereotypical belief often associated with weaknesses and strengths in teaching. Apart from that, exposing his weaknesses would make himself vulnerable to comments or to scrutiny by others, a position which most teachers in training might not be prepared to be in or feel less confident to face. Jega was persistent in highlighting his strengths and hiding his weaknesses in his reflections which may indicate the implication of reflection being a requirement and a part of assessment (as mentioned in 2.5), an area which I will discuss further in the next section of this chapter. In fact, in Jega’s case it seems more to do with saving face rather than assessment.

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In contrast, Ai Ling seems more positive about writing her weaknesses in her reflections as compared to Jega:

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Ai Ling: So.. like maybe, when we plan the lesson we thought that we can carry out the lesson, but when.. when we enter the class and.. the things.. don’t come out as what, we expected (…) I would think like.. which part is not right which part is.. so that I.. can.. tackle.. something like that..

Here, Ai Ling explained that as she wrote about things that did not turn out well from her initial plans which put her ‘in the state of doubt and perplexity’ (Dewey, 1933) and led her to reflect on her teaching. It seems that Ai Ling was more receptive towards the weaknesses as she attempted to identify the parts which were not right and fix the problem that occurred in her lesson, as compared to Jega earlier which he seems to avoid.

In the interviews with the student teachers, reflection was seen almost exclusively as a process of looking back on their teaching and identifying the strengths and weaknesses in their lessons, with a view to rectify mistakes and improving future performance. There was no suggestion in the interview that reflection might take account of other matters such as values, the learners and the social political context of learning in order to develop better understanding of the teaching and learning process as discussed in the literature (e.g. Zeichner & Liston, 1996; Moon, 1999). Therefore, these reflections that predominantly focus on ‘teaching’ and identifying SWIS are what might be termed ‘teaching-centric’. The concept of ‘teaching-centric’ reflection will be examined and discussed more thoroughly in Chapter 7 and in 8.2.1 of this study.

5.2.2 Reflection as a Writing Activity

Student teachers mainly perceived reflection as something they do in writing (as can be seen in the extracts above and in the extracts in the current section). In the interviews, I asked the student teachers about their experiences of writing their reflections in the early stages of the practicum and most of them find it difficult. For example, Gan felt that writing reflections was ‘a very hard process’ (ST1Gan52). The difficulties in writing the reflections stems from being confined to what was taught and strictly following the instructions given by the lecturers and the guidelines given in the

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practicum handbook (see 2.9). The focus of the training seems to focus on the technicalities of writing and not how to reflect. This issue was also raised in Hatton and Smith’s (1995) study in which they commented that the focus in writing the reflections is on the construction of the genre and student teachers’ lack of familiarity with reflective writing may distort the evidence for reflection (as discussed in 2.6). Thus, student teachers might seem more adept at ‘writing’ than ‘reflecting’. Furthermore, the content area, the organisation of the written reflections, and the structure of the reflection is mainly determined by the trainer. In fact, the trainers themselves (the lecturers) also follow the same structure in writing their reflections (refer to the contextual background in 2.6 and the findings in Chapter 7). Subsequently, student teachers’ written reflections mirror what the curriculum expects of their reflective writing. Although guided and structured reflective writing practice may be an acceptable way for beginning teachers to start learning writing their reflections, it is also common in the first year of teaching practice that teacher educators give lots of guidance to help student teachers write their reflections.

However, as Gan gained more experience and practice in writing the reflections and ‘as long as we follow what the lecturers teach us’ and ‘keep their teachings as a Bible’ (ST1Gan52) the process of writing the reflections become easier. Eventually, student teachers will shift from being highly dependent on their supervisors to be able to reflect more on their own (as can be seen in the extracts in 5.4.1). It seems that the teaching experience helped student teachers to write better reflections as they progressed through their practicum.

Apart from being challenging, student teachers were unsure of what or how to include in the reflections as Dollah stated in the extract below:

ST2Dollah127

Dollah: I do not know what to write.. for reflection.. and then from time to time I learn to write reflections and I think it is not that.. hard to write reflections.

As the saying goes ‘practice makes perfect’. Student teachers who continuously practice reflecting on their teaching and writing their reflections find the task less difficult. Ai Ling shared the same view about having time and practice which made writing reflections easier until she actually ‘can write it out on my own’ (ST2AiLing53) which indicated that she has become more autonomous in writing her reflections. And ‘because

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I have gone through two practicums and now in my third practicum, I already know what to write, already know what to identify’ (ST2AiLing53). The repeated process has relatively made writing reflections ‘easy’ because ‘I write over and over again’ (ST2AiLing109).

Some student teachers can write more easily than others. They have no problem in writing either about their weaknesses or strengths in their reflections as Devi stated here:

ST1Devi39

Devi: Because it is so clear, my weaknesses are so clear I don’t have to crack my head to think what are my weaknesses. So that I feel that during my reflection write up I feel that the weaknesses just flow by themselves. So I don’t feel that there’s any difficulties for me to find out what is my weaknesses and strengths.

From the extract, it can be observed again that Devi approached writing their reflections strategically. She focused more on the weaknesses since they are more obvious and easier to identify. Her thoughts are more fluent concerning weaknesses which indicates that she may be more aware of her weaknesses in teaching than her strengths. Because she was able to do this, Devi seems to ‘prefer’ to write about this first in her reflections. Devi’s preference could also suggest that the process of writing the reflections is shifting from ‘trainer-centred’ (as I mentioned earlier in this section) to ‘trainee-centred’, where student teachers determine their own approach of writing their reflections. In writing her reflections, Devi further explained that:

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Devi: ...let say I have five strengths, I’ll just go about three because the number of my weakness are like ten! So given one page I had to write my reflection, I prefer more to write about my weaknesses and I will categorise first whether this weaknesses should it be in the reflection.

Again, this extract shows that Devi has a systematic approach in organising her reflective writing. This is perhaps influenced by how she was taught to write reflections on the programme as I mentioned in the previous section. Devi’s approach to only choose a

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certain number of issues shows that she was putting a limit to how much she could write in her reflections. This also indicates her ‘decision making’ about how much to write, what to highlight and what to hide in her reflections. This also depends perhaps on what she perceived the impact of the issues she selected would be on the reflection as a written task and what the audience (examiner) might expect from the reflections. Clearly, this is a rather strategic and formulaic approach to writing, similar to the earlier extracts from Jega (ST1Jega33 in 5.2.1 and ST1Jega23 in 5.3.1).

So far, it could be said that student teachers were closely guided and followed a strict order in writing their reflections. However, there were some that approached writing the reflections rather flexibly. For example, in reflecting on his strengths and weaknesses Gan claims that he wrote his reflection based on ‘aspects that I like’ and the ‘good things’ (ST1Gan30) which is also similar to Jega (in 5.2.1). However, the focus of Gan’s reflection may shift when he has ‘more weaknesses or more problems’ (ST1Gan30) in his teaching, he would stress writing on the weaknesses first. What this means is that the focus of writing on the strengths and weaknesses in the reflections is interchangeable, depending on which area needed attention most. Being able to choose the focus of the reflection also indicates a degree of autonomy in Gan’s approach in writing his reflections. This could also suggest that some student teachers may not write their reflections based on what had been suggested to them in the practicum guidelines (in 2.9) or ‘on what the lecturer wants’.

In summary, the extracts above show how pre-service student teachers perceived ‘reflection’ as a written task that needed to be completed during teaching practice. The focus is mainly on the identification of the strengths, weaknesses in teaching and suggesting ways to improve their teaching. Although the student teachers mainly wrote their reflections according to the course requirement, there was one instance in the extract that suggests student teachers can be autonomous in approaching writing their reflections as they can choose and decide on writing areas that are relevant to them in the reflections. Next, I will investigate further the reasons student teachers write their reflections during the practicum as this will inform the expectations student teachers had on reflection.

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