The focus, role, and meaning of experienced teachers' reflection in physical education

Abstract

Background: It has been widely accepted that reflective teaching is a powerful component of effective teaching. Accordingly, educating reflective practitioners has been a major goal of teacher education. Reflective teaching refers to the act of thinking such as analyzing or assessing educational meanings, intentions, beliefs, decisions, actions, or products yielded through those thinking processes. Reflective practitioners are those who contemplate and negotiate the complexities of teaching to enhance their decision-making power and autonomy in classrooms. However, despite the enormous proliferation of literature on reflection, little is known about the nature of reflection which will provide significant insights into teacher education that aims to prepare reflective practitioners. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of three exceptional physical education (PE) teachers' reflection in terms of its focus and roles. Research questions that guided this study were: a) what is the focus of reflection-in/on-action of exceptional PE teachers? and b) in what ways does the reflection influence the teachers' practice? Methods: This study was grounded in a social constructivist framework and employed a multiple case study design. Major data sources included semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations, teachers' written reflections, students' work samples, relevant archival data, and researcher's field notes. The data were analyzed through the constant comparative method using Atlas.ti as an aid. To enhance the trustworthiness of the study, triangulation of multiple data sources and member checking were conducted. Results: Data analysis indicated that the teachers' reflection focused on four main topics: (a) the students, (b) instruction, (c) context, and (d) critical incidents. Reflection impacted the teachers' practice playing four key roles such as (a) making sense of unforeseen events, (b) developing knowledge-in-action, (c) making on-the-spot decisions, and (d) reconstructing teachers' belief systems.

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