Reflect on your teaching experience: systematic reflection of teaching behaviour and changes in student teachers’ self-efficacy for reflection

Abstract

Reflecting on teaching experience is meaningful in teacher education because it enables student teachers to evaluate their professional behaviours in the classroom and to develop new instructional strategies. Little is known, however, about the motivational aspects of the reflection process, such as self-efficacy for reflection. Self-efficacy is an important resource in teacher education which relates negatively to stress and burnout, and positively to professional behaviour. This longitudinal intervention study with data from N = 600 student teachers investigates how self-efficacy for reflection can be enhanced over the course of one semester. Our findings show that student teachers’ self-efficacy increased significantly in an intervention group in which student teachers systematically reflected on teaching situations in the context of micro-teaching experiences. There was no increase in self-efficacy in the control group in which student teachers did not teach in schools, nor systematically reflect. The increase in self-efficacy for reflection in the intervention group was moderated by previous pedagogical experiences in teaching of student teachers. Our findings are discussed for further development in teacher training.