A Comparison and Analysis of Preservice Teachers’ Oral and Written Reflections

Teacher reflection continues to be a key component of many preservice teaching programs across the United States. In Agricultural Education, reflection begins in the early field experience and continues throughout the teacher education program as an important opportunity to assess students’ proficiency of teaching concepts, thought process, and growth over time. The purpose of this study was to examine the topics of preservice teachers’ reflections and compare the effectiveness of written and reflective interviews. We examined the written and reflective interviews of four preservice teachers over three reflection cycles, comparing themes, levels of reflection, and completeness to determine the benefit of multiple methods of reflection. Applying the theory of preservice teacher concerns, we found participants tended to report more task reflection than self-concerns or impact concerns when given open-ended reflection prompts. Moreover, written reflections tended to be more summative in nature, while reflective interviews provided more support and detail. The findings indicate reflection across multiple methods may provide a more complete assessment of student proficiency. Teacher education programs could benefit from these findings by analyzing their means of facilitating preservice teacher reflection.