Embarking on the Teaching Journey:Pre-service Teachers Reflecting upon Themselves as Future Teachers

Abstract

This article reports on a research study that examined 25 reflective papers written by pre-service teachers a few weeks into attending primary teacher education. The overall aim of the study was to gain insight into the students' thoughts and ways of reflecting as a basis for taking action to improve lecturing, tasks and exercises which promote reflection in the primary teacher education program. The students were asked to write a paper reflecting upon "The teacher I want to become". Two research questions were posed upon the material: What images of teachers emerge in the texts? How is reflection carried out in constructing these images? The analysis of the reflective papers revealed that the students' images of themselves might be placed in the main category; "caring teacher". Furthermore their ways and levels of reflection varied considerably from descriptions and fragmented thoughts to accounts with elements of dialogic reflection.