The development of reflective thinking in student teachers has been gaining greater attention in the teacher education literature. Nevertheless, some of the multiple factors involved in this process have not yet been examined. This study focused on the perceptions that student teachers have of their relationship with their cooperating teachers in the context of a practicum. More specifically, it attempted to determine if and how cooperating teachers trigger student teachers' reflective thinking. Seventeen student teachers, who made up the first cohort to experience the four-year undergraduate program in teaching English as a second language, participated in this exploratory study. Three sets of data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and reflective logs. Two phases of analysis followed, allowing the categorization of results and patterns into five distinct categories that corresponded to the research questions. The quantitative phase provided the results to the Likert-type questionnaire using two statistical management softwares: SPSS 10.0 and Excel. The qualitative phase used a coding system to identify the emerging patterns in the interview and in the reflective log data. The first phase of analysis provided descriptive statistics indicating that it is the cooperating teachers' verbal communication that most triggers student teachers' reflective thinking. The second phase revealed that student teachers attribute the triggering of their reflective thinking more to themselves and to class incidents than to their cooperating teachers. Based on the findings, Taggart's (1996) Reflective Thinking Model was enhanced by a socio-constructivist micro-model designed to help cooperating teachers better support student teachers' reflection. The study contributes to teacher education research by elucidating the relationship between student teachers and cooperating teachers with regards to the development of reflective thinking.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.84682 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Creators | Thibeault, Johanne |
| Contributors | Winer, Lise (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Second Language Education.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002083214, proquestno: AAINQ98381, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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