Developing Student Teachers’ Reflexivity Toward Their Course Planning: Implementation of a Training Program Focused on Writing and Reflective Skills

Abstract

Recent literature has shown the low levels of reflexivity student teachers exhibit when doing reflective writing and the lack of a training program in their initial training to help them. A training program that was developed to support future teachers’ reflective writing was implemented and the program’s results were evaluated. The program was based on a combination of theories from the fields of teacher training and writing instruction. The training program was offered to a class of 16 future primary school teachers in French-speaking Belgium (three males and 13 females, averaging 20 years old) who were in their final year of training. They rewrote a reflective text several times and the 64 texts produced were analyzed quantitatively. The results showed that the training program enabled participants to make major progress from one draft to another and thus improve their reflective writing skills. In addition, a qualitative single case study showed how one student’s writing evolved during the training program. Among the practical implications that emerged from this study were the recommendations to include time in the training curricula dedicated to the teaching of reflective writing and to train trainers to support the writing of reflective texts.