A Study on Reflective Reciprocal Peer Coaching for Pre-service Teachers: Change in Reflectivity

Abstract

Reflective practice is considered as an effective way for professional development in order to gain awareness of one’s own teaching as well as to compete with the changing needs of the students. Especially in pre-service period, when pre-service teachers work cooperatively with their peers in a reciprocal fashion towards reflectivity, it has a potential to promote advancement in reflective practices and help them focus on the underlying meaning behind their actions. Based on these ideas, this study aimed at engaging pre-service teachers in a reflective reciprocal peer coaching experience and investigating whether such experience caused any changes in their reflectivity. For this purpose, 12 pre-service teachers in a Turkish ELT context participated in the study and a reflective reciprocal peer coaching program was implemented with a training aspect. In a mixed method study design, change in participants’ reflectivity was measured with a profile of reflective thinking attributes scale quantitatively and data were supported qualitatively with reflective diaries, video recordings of post-conference sessions and focus-group interviews. Results of quantitative and qualitative analyses put forward that the pre-service teachers advanced in their reflectivity throughout the reflective reciprocal peer coaching practice and benefited much from this experience before they embark into professional life. This study provides valuable implications to use reflection embedded in a peer coaching program and offers suggestions for teacher educators.