Ability to reflect and case work

The research work was carried out as a sub-project (Prof. Dr. Volker Scheid, Dr. Andreas Albert and Dr. Anne Thissen) in the context of PRONET (PROfessionalization through NETworking), with which the University of Kassel participated in the first funding phase of the Quality Offensive Teacher Education (2015-2018). The dissertation by Anne Thissen (2019) entitled Reflexionsfähigkeit in der Lehrerbildung - eine empirische Untersuchung im Rahmen der Schulpraktika im Fach Sport(https://karla.hds.hebis.de/Record/HEB460745786), which is presented below, was written as part of the sub-project.

In the context of the professionalization of prospective teachers, the ability to reflect is of particular importance (e.g. Wyss, 2013). Working with (video) cases is a suitable and recognized method for promoting this (e.g. Wolters, 2015). Case work can refer to both videotaped teaching events experienced by others and those experienced by the students themselves. As events that combine theory and practice, practical school studies offer students the opportunity to gather their own teaching experience. They therefore represent a suitable context for developing the ability to reflect. The study is based on two guiding assumptions:

1. Dealing with teaching events experienced by others and by oneself in the context of practical school studies in PE promotes the ability to reflect.
2. The preceding examination of other people's videotaped teaching events has a positive effect on the reflective examination of one's own teaching events.

A research design was developed to investigate the assumptions and used as part of the practical school studies. The ability to reflect was to be developed by analyzing the teacher's own remembered and other teachers' videotaped actions in physical education lessons. The cases were selected with reference to the three quality dimensions of good teaching (classroom management and structuring, student orientation and support, cognitive activation). In order to determine whether prior external reflection on videotaped student teaching experiments has a positive influence on the ability to reflect, the 35 students were divided into two groups (G1 = 25, G2 = 10) with different interventions.

The ability to reflect was assessed by determining the quality of reflection (breadth and depth). The evaluation of the written lesson analyses (a total of 188 case analyses) was carried out using the content-scaling structure: To record the breadth of reflection, the content-related reference to the three elements of the teacher's actions in a teaching event was identified (presenting content, organizing conditions, interacting with students). The depth of reflection was determined taking into account the four levels (ERTO process model by Krieg & Kreis, 2014: descriptive, explicative, introspective and integrative reflection) of the reflective examination of a teaching event.

With regard to the results of the study, it can be stated that case work in physical education teacher training has an effect that promotes reflection. However, the beneficial effect of an upstream analysis of other people's cases on the reflection of self-experienced teaching events was not confirmed in the study (see also Thissen, Albert & Scheid, 2019; Thissen, Scheid & Albert, 2019).