Rooted in the onion model of reflection, the core reflection approach can bring the power of ideals and personal qualities to bear upon teachers' experiences of teaching. This study explored the ...contribution of the approach to Iranian English language teachers' professional development. Forty general English teachers at the university level attended three supervisory sessions wherein the teachers were coached into reflective practice. Pre/postintervention semistructured interviews, classroom observations, field notes, and reflective journals were used to collect qualitative data. Thematic analysis was used to identify recurring themes at each layer of the model. Further analysis revealed a significant difference between teachers' perceptions and teaching behaviors before and after the supervisory meetings. The results demonstrated that teachers experienced a process of growth with a developmental trajectory from the outer layers to the inner layers of the onion model. As a result of the activation of core qualities through core reflection supervision, teachers developed a sense of identity and mission that had an impact on their environment, behavior, and beliefs in a way that they shifted their attention from their own concerns to their responsibilities and ideals. The findings have important implications for various stakeholders in ELT.
The period of student teaching often creates crisis experiences in student teachers and can have various negative effects, but it also offers opportunities for deep learning. This study focused on ...the types of struggles student teachers encounter and on the effects of coaching aimed at the promotion of core reflection. Core reflection is an approach focusing on the tension between people's inner strengths and their inner obstacles, as a way to support growth. While previous research suggested that teachers were able to improve their classroom performance due in part to core reflection's influence, no study before this one has directly explored how core reflection addressed uncertainty experienced by student teachers. Additionally, this study indicates core reflection may aid student teachers with finding a personal, authentic way of teaching - a process one may call a Hero's Journey.
This study reports on the effect of a newly developed 4-week strengths-based training approach to overcome academic procrastination, given to first-year elementary teacher education students (
= 54). ...The training was based on a strengths-based approach, in which elements of the cognitive behavioral approach were also used. The purpose of the training was to promote awareness of the personal strengths of students who experience academic procrastination regularly and to teach them how to use their personal strengths in situations in which they usually tend to procrastinate. With a pretest-posttest control group design (two experimental groups:
= 31, control group:
= 23), the effect of the training on academic procrastination was studied after 1, 11, and 24 weeks. Results of a one-way analysis of covariance revealed a significant short-term effect of the training. In the long term (after 11 and 24 weeks), the scores for academic procrastination for the intervention groups remained stable, whereas the scores for academic procrastination for the control group decreased to the same level as those of the intervention groups. The findings of this study suggest that a strengths-based approach can be helpful to students at an early stage of their academic studies to initiate their individual process of dealing with academic procrastination. The findings for the long term show the importance of measuring the outcomes of an intervention not only shortly after the intervention but also in the long term. Further research is needed to find out how the short-term effect can be maintained in the long-term.
Offshore teaching is a common practice in Australian higher education. While challenges in offshore teaching have been well studied, the opportunities that it may provide have been seldom discussed. ...Considering this, the aim of this study is to address this gap by investigating the opportunities that offshore teaching provided faculty members in the development of their professional values. This study employs the memory-work method self-study based on the reflective notes of Author1 about his teaching experiences in the offshore programme between December 2019 and August 2021, with reference to Korthagen's core reflection model. The reflections revealed that he not only identified but strengthened his confidence in his core qualities through offshore teaching. This strengthened confidence in his core qualities also helped him to negotiate with the new problematic situations created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Research on school leaders' professional development is scarce. Knowledge about school leaders' professional development is important with regard to keeping the position of school leaders attractive ...and pupils' achievement. The current article explores the outcomes of a group reflective learning programme for school leaders. The programme focused on one of the school leaders' prioritised professional development needs: coaching teachers. Nineteen school leaders participated in the programme and were interviewed after the programme. The interviews gauged school leaders' perceptions of learning outcomes and impact on their professional behaviour. The transcriptions of the interviews were analysed using a coding tree. The school leaders indicated that they gained theoretical knowledge, that they developed their coaching skills and their way of providing feedback. The school leaders stated that they valued group reflective learning because they learned to approach situations from various angles. Moreover, the school leaders reported increased levels of self-confidence and no longer feeling responsible for solving all problems by themselves.
This study follows one individual student teacher during a period of one single school year in which she was supported in developing ‘presence’ while teaching. The notion of ‘presence’ was formulated ...by the teacher herself, and coincides with the growing interest in this aspect in psychology, and in theories about becoming a teacher. In her supervision, the so-called core reflection approach was used, which strongly builds on the concept of presence and on positive psychology. Based on analyses of audio taped supervisory sessions, six stages were identified in the teacher's development. These stages are described and related to theories about positive psychology and core reflection. The supervisor's interventions leading to the transitions between the stages were identified, analysed, and related to key principles of core reflection. It appeared that the teacher's growth not only led to experiencing ‘presence’ while teaching, but also to a greater use of her personal qualities. Taken together, it appeared that after the supervision the teacher was much more ‘in flow’,
and that she was more effective as a teacher. In this article, both the teacher's growth and the supervisor's interventions are described in detail, and illustrated using quotations from supervisory sessions, logbooks, and interviews. A case is made for connecting professional and personal aspects in supervising student teachers.
This study was an attempt to examine the levels of teacher activity and reflection phases Iranian prospective language teachers go through in a way to put into practice the concepts and theories ...explored on campus within their workplace. To this end, Core Reflection Model was practiced by drawing on reflective journals, focus group discussions, and field notes collected over a four month period. The findings indicated that reflections on all six levels of the core reflection model took place mostly being on the level of convictions or beliefs, followed by competencies, behavior, environment, identity, and mission. Moreover, through the movement of reflection among the five phases, a shift from the second phase, looking back at action, to the third one, awareness of essential aspects, was observed and held on to the last phase; the reason could be the lack of mentorship and supervisory interventions for promoting guided reflection practice for prospective teachers in English language teacher education in Iran. In general, utilizing core reflection model in language teacher education for prospective teachers seems to be successful, because the model fostered the reflection of language teachers on all levels and phases and could empower them in their practice.
Aim: This study examines the effects of an intervention aimed at making the primary school pupils aware of their core qualities and promoting their use of these qualities. Method/Rationale: This ...article reports on a quasi-experimental study among 1346 pupils from 17 primary schools, based on insights from positive psychology. Findings: By using a questionnaire several effects on the pupils' well-being were found, both in the short-term (immediately after the intervention), and in the longer-term (three months after the intervention). Limitations: The data collection is about subjective self-reports of pupils and not about objective observations. A further limitation of the study might be that the pupils could only work with one core quality for four weeks. It is also somewhat unnatural when pupils discover various core qualities in themselves and yet are only allowed to specifically use one core quality and describe examples of its use. Conclusions: We can conclude that working with core qualities had a positive impact on the primary school pupil's wellbeing. The study yields interesting directions for further research. In particular, future research may study the effect of long-term interventions that involve several core qualities.
This study explored the reflection process of secondary in-service English teachers during a graduate course. In particular, the study aimed to examine the type of reflection the teachers are engaged ...in as they strive toward experiencing core reflection. In addition, the restricting and contributing factors during the process of reflection were also looked into. A total of 17 in-service secondary English teachers participated in this study. The data were collected from class observations, group discussions, reflective presentations, and interviews. The results of the study showed that they struggled at first due to many restricting factors such as lack of training to conduct structured reflections and ongoing administrative concerns. As they progressed and focused on a particular question that triggered further reflection, they were able to collaboratively reflect on a shared theme. This enabled them to confront their long-term difficulties and finally move forward. The implication of the study points out the importance of proper training to conduct effective reflection on a regular basis and the efforts to provide programs that focus on helping teachers to redefine imported theories and methods so that they can appropriately apply them in their classrooms.
Developing students’ reflection on their learning is currently one of the major learning goals in higher education. Today's students need to be prepared to function in the rapidly changing world of ...professional practice. In line with the above, reflection is currently a key concept in teacher education. The purpose of the present study is to support student teachers’ reflection. More specifically, to find out what kind of problematic situations students face in their practical teaching and which levels of activity they report in reflection when using a reduced version of the guided reflection procedure. The analysis is based on 34 written individual reports of the student teachers from a university in Estonia. Data was analysed using qualitative content analysis method, the employed coding scheme was developed based on Korthagen & Vasalos (2005) model of core reflection. The majority of problems were brought out in connection with the students themselves. Finding solutions to the problematic situations showed that reflections were made on all levels of the onion model (Korthagen & Vasalos, 2005). The most frequent level of reflection was the level of beliefs, followed by environment, behaviour, competencies, identity and mission.
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