Pre-service Teacher’s Problem Solving: Focus and Level of Reflection

The purpose of this study was to explore pre-service teachers' reflectivity occurring in their first-person reflection on their experience, by examining how they defined a problem and suggested its solution. For the research purpose, this study adopted Dewey's (1933) idea of reflection from which the definition of reflection in much research on teachers' reflections originated. This study analyzed the problem sections occurring in their reflection after first teaching practice, in terms of focus and depth of problem solving. The total number of the sections was seventy-nine and on average each participant's teaching journal involved three sections of a problem. Examination of focus of reflection was done as to 'agent of problem' and 'target of reflection', whereas an analysis of the depth of their reflection was done in terms of the number of dimensions and combination of dimensions of problem solving. The findings showed that much more focus of the pre-service teachers' reflection was put on the performance inside the classroom than outside. That is, the interaction between the teacher and the student was their primary concern. Also, the findings indicated that over half of the problem sections were beyond the superficial level of reflective thinking, but one third of the problem sections stayed still within the superficial depth of reflection. This suggested the necessity of providing guidelines on the focus and depth of reflection when reflection was employed as a tool of pre-service teacher's professional development.