Supporting reflection and reflective practice in an initial teacher education programme: an exploratory study

The importance of promoting reflection and reflective practice in teacher education programmes is widely acknowledged. This exploratory study describes how a revised B. Ed initial primary teacher education programme created a renewed focus on reflection and reflective practice to support students in becoming reflective practitioners The work on developing the new programme was a collaborative effort of staff, both at the planning and implementation stages. This paper reports on an evaluation of Year 1 of the B.Ed programme in which 440 undergraduate students and 24 staff were involved. The results were mainly positive, indicating that the changes in the programme have been largely successful in their goals. However, the results also show that further work needs to be done in this area with more in-depth research and analysis of the ongoing work being needed.