Trends and Issues in Literacy in Early Childhood Education

Collaborative Project Proposal 

Purpose 

      As the standards based movement and high-stakes testing era in the United States grows more popular, the value of teachers’ self-reflections risks being “swept under the table” due to its lack of tangible, quantitative data; however, these reflections offer us, as researchers, a chance to illuminate the importance of continual implementation of reflection in the classroom and teacher education programs. Reflective teaching is important, not only as a tool for teaching, but as an aim of education. In this sense, reflection can be an avenue which improves both teaching and pedagogy. However, the act of developing personal theoretical perspectives through the reflection during teacher education programs is finding much resistance.

Both British and American political figures contend too much time is being spent by preservice teachers learning about theory and reflecting, while too little time is spent putting experience into practice (Griffiths & Tann, 1992). Although this might be true in some cases, we do think that most teacher education programs really support preservice teachers by providing subject matter instruction, theories of child development, and sound models of teaching and classroom management strategies. Classroom observations, peer-teaching exercises and field placements are usually employed to further prepare the novice teacher to meet the demands of the classroom and students with innovation and a strong knowledgeable vision.

So, more important is the need for providing opportunities of thinking in a reflective way. Reflection provides the opportunities to identify where one needs to improve and generates practical ideas about effective instructional skills. The purpose of our research is then to examine the multimodal types of reflection preservice teachers are engaged in.  Are there on-line resources for preservice teachers to reflect together as a community?  If so, what are they and how are preservice teachers reflecting on these sites?

MethodsHOW:

            We propose conducting on-line searches using (Google, Google reader, manual searches, GSU library, EBShost, etc.) to collect evidence/lack thereof of the various mediums preservice teachers use to reflect.  In conjunction with on-line searches we will be researching scholarly articles to review current studies relevant to avenues of preservice teachers’ self reflections.  We will post URLs, reflections, PDFS, etc. to our weblogs and will be communicating each week through blogging, email, and face-to-face communication. 

WITH WHAT:

            Our blogs will serve as a tool for Eudes and I to reflect and grow in understanding related to the paths preservice teachers use to self-reflect.  We will collect public examples of preservice teachers’ self-reflections (ex. Blogs, websites, MySpace, wikis, etc.).   

Timeline (Weblogs will be used throughout to communicate with each other through ideas, reflections, questions, clarification and relevant URL postings.)

Week of 2/20/07: Turn in completed Research Proposal

Week of 2/27/07:  Jointly researching on-line resources (e.g. blogs, college/university websites, scholarly journals) for evidence and research concerning preservice teachers’ reflections.*

Week of 3/06/07:  Jointly researching on-line resources (e.g. blogs, college/university websites, scholarly journals) for evidence and research concerning preservice teachers’ reflections.*

Week of 3/13/07:  Independently review data sent from partner and further familiarize ourselves with our own findings.  Meet and disaggregate our data.

Week of 3/20/07:  Independently review data sent from partner and further familiarize ourselves with our own findings.  Meet and disaggregate our data.

Week of 3/27/07:  Begin writing our findings.

Week of 4/03/07:  Continue writing our findings.

Week of 4/10/07:  Continue writing and begin class presentation.

Week of 4/17/07:  Finalize paper and presentation

Week of 4/24/07: PRESENTATION and CELEBRATION!!!!! 

* Throughout the data collection period we will be sending each other our findings and relevant research. 

Requests for support

1. Does anyone know of any online resources (e.g., blogs, podcasts) for preservice teachers to self-reflect on?
2.   Do we need IRB approval to conduct this research?
3. Does anyone have any scholarly journal articles which directly relate to preservice teacher reflection?
4. Does anyone have/know of any examples of on-line preservice teacher self-reflection?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 12:27 pm Filed under Preservice Teachers' Self Reflection; Collaborative Pro and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.