Collaborative Reflection Meetings of Student Teachers in The Netherlands: Opportunities for Learning in Community?

• In Event: Sharing Knowledge in Local Settings: International Perspectives on Teacher Learning Communities

Abstract

Among the most essential moments for teachers working/learning together in community is when they meet formally in discussion groups, for example, or informally during breaks. When teachers work together due to an administrative decision, attendance at meetings may be mandatory. And when teachers want to not only work together but also learn from each other, such meetings may be even more important (e.g., Little, 2002). However, just what and how teachers learn from such formal and informal meetings is unknown. Wilson and Berne (1999) described several projects in which teachers worked and learned together but found little systematic research of what and how the teachers learned in groups. Teachers nevertheless reported collaborative learning and reflection to be very useful to their teaching.
In previous work (______ et al., 2009) we reported on student learning from collaborative reflection meetings in one Dutch teacher education institute. We extended this study to other contexts to see if the observed patterns between student learning and the content and process of the reflection meetings could also be found there. We therefore followed six groups, each consisting of 5 student teachers, in two different teacher education institutes in the Netherlands during their collaborative reflection meetings over a three-month period. We chose a mixed-methods approach combining both qualitative and quantitative data, audio-taped meetings, a questionnaire after each session, and a focus group interview (Burke Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004). The reflection meetings follow the Korthagen Model (2001), a sequential model whose four steps are outlined in the figure below. In this paper we describe what was talked about in the meetings, how it was talked about and what student teachers learned from the meetings. We used previously developed categories to analyze the data.
Our findings confirm what we previously found. Connections were found between the content of the meetings, the steps in reflection, and perceived learning results (see figure below). When we related the meetings’ content (concerns) to the discussion sequences and the perceived learning results, clear patterns of interaction became apparent. The content of the meetings influenced the course of the discussion, which influenced the perceived learning.
Concerns Expressed During the Meetings Steps in Discussion and Predominant Utterances Perceived Learning Results
All concerns Step1: Recall/describe situation Support (understand own learning process)
Boundaries on teaching responsibilities Step 2: Formulate essential aspects Insight/understanding
Students Step 3: Develop alternatives Practical hints
School context Step 4: Choose a solution No link found
The most significant findings suggest that learning as a result of collaborative reflection and the course of such learning should not be studied independent of the initial concerns (i.e. content of the reflection meetings). That is, student teachers learn different things about different subjects in different ways. These findings have implications for teacher education where meetings for collaborative reflection should not be restricted to sequential models for reflection. Furthermore these findings stress the importance of forming communities of (student) teachers to learn to ask questions they normally would not ask themselves.

Authors

• Paulien C. Meijer, Utrecht University

• Helma Oolbekkink-Marchand, Radboud University Nijmegen