Abstract
The art of navel gazing. The educational implications of a rhetorical way of writing reflection reports in Primary Teacher Training. An explorative study. Every Teachers' Training College in The Netherlands emphasizes the use of reflection. Dissatisfaction and astonishment about the way students wrote their reflection reports resulted in the central
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question of my research: how can I raise the level of writing reflection reports by students of primary education? At the basis of an extremely precise rhetorical analysis of the use of language of existing descriptions of reflection I will present a description useful for the educational practice of teacher training. Aspects of classic and modern (communicative) rhetoric are helpful for the defining the characteristics of a reflection report. I have interpreted the report as the representation of a mental process with reference to an event or a string of events, with a fixed construction and professional use of language, which becomes distinct in the choice of words, sentence structure, the use of narrative (in a given case expressive), argumentative and deliberative verbal strategies. For a reflection report this leads to a structure which, apart from the usual structural elements such as preface, introduction, précis and conclusion, encompasses three essential elements: the rendering of an event or series of events in the classroom in the form of a story, the account of comments upon elements of these event(s), and the draft of a scenario for future activities. I have developed a tentative method for writing reflection reports based upon two pillars: the strategy of narration and the strategy of argumentation. The technique of inventio is crucial with these strategies. Relating, commenting and scenario writing are not connected in a linear way, I am making use of the cakewalk metaphor which may also be applied to the rhetoric tasks of inventio, dispositio and elocutio with the construction of the final result: the reflection report. Essential in the didactics is the task of the teacher. I consider him to be the expert, a connoisseur. As an aid to the formulation of that assessment I have developed the so-called review model. The teacher writes a reasoned review of every reflection report on the basis of his intuitive judgment derived from his expertise and with the help of the review model. Reflection reports of students of Primary Education can actually be brought to a higher level and with that the professional identity of these students: - by using the description for reflecting developed by me; - by making the characteristics of a reflection report explicit; - by paying attention to the development of the use of professional language of students of Primary Education; - by offering a didactical method in the curriculum for learning to reflect and not to assume that this takes place automatically; - by offering in the curriculum a didactical method by means of which students are taught to write reflection reports on the basis of rhetoric principles and by teaching them to tell their stories, to reflect and to write.
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