A Booster for Turkish Novice Teachers: Reflective Teaching

Background

Education can be likened to an ocean since it is a vast area comprising political, societal, economic, psychological, aesthetical, etc. constituents. In order to be able to live, develop and help others develop in this ocean, a teacher needs to be an expert swimmer/teacher. Also, learning to swim/teach is a life and career-long learning process that begins during pre-service. For that reason, acquision of basic swimming/teaching skills is so vital for one so that they will not get lost in the ocean of education. Teachers whose reflective teaching practice has grown during pre-service education may assimilate fundamental teaching knowledge and skills and continue to develop them throughout their professional lives. The very skilled novice teachers require to be able to deliberate on the practical knowledge (Van Manen, 1995) they gained at pre-service is reflection - querying on coherence of teaching with the students’ attributes (Harrison, Lawson, & Wortley, 2005; Oshrat-Fink, 2014; Van Manen, 1995). To this end, Chetcuti, Buhagiar, and Cardona (2011) argue that teachers who have gained reflective teaching skills during pre-service teacher education continue to use these skills in their first years of work.