Teacher Interns' Written Reflection in College Assignments

Abstract

This exploratory study investigates preservice teacher written reflection during the full-time internship semester and trends across assignments, topics, and interns that may have a relationship with dialogic or critical reflection. Sociocultural theory serves as the theoretical underpinning of the study. The study applies Hatton and Smith's (1995) types of writing: descriptive writing, descriptive reflection, dialogic reflection, and critical reflection. Case study and content analysis methodologies are simultaneously used to address the research questions. This study reveals that interns engage in written reflection within all three categories (descriptive reflection, dialogic reflection, and critical reflection) (Dinkelman, 2000; Hatton & Smith, 1995), however, the overwhelming majority of reflection is descriptive reflection (95.8%), followed by dialogic reflection (4.1%) and critical reflection (0.1%). This study did not find a single condition, topic, or assignment that guarantees written dialogic or critical reflection. Instead, this study found that intern written dialogic and critical reflection appears to be an outgrowth of a combination of factors including, but not limited to, intern understanding of reflection, internship semester responsibilities, assignment design, and the role of the college supervisor.