Construction and application of an evaluative tool to assess reflection in Teacher-Training courses

In recent years, the ability to reflect has been considered an important competency that teachers should acquire during teacher training and implement in teaching throughout their professional lives. Thus there is the need during teacher training to assess student teachers' developing reflective abilities. This article describes a two-dimensional framework by which student teachers' written reflections may be assessed. One dimension is the object of writing (content), and the second is the form of writing. This evaluative tool was developed and applied during a one-semester teacher-training course. During each week of the course, students were required to submit a personal document concerning the previous lesson, including their thoughts, feelings, hesitations, questions, links to previously learned issues and to relevant papers, and associations between the learned material and the students' experiences as students and as teachers. Assessments were carried out on the reflective writings of a sample of 20 students, at different points in time. The evaluative framework was found to offer a tool sensitive enough to explain all the students' various reflective statements. Results showed a change over time in the form of writing, but not the content. Most students' reflections progressed from the descriptive form to a more deliberative form that we called "critical bridging". In this article, these results are expanded upon, their implications discussed and illustrative examples given of all twelve cells of the evaluative framework.