Developing South African Primary Pre-service Mathematics Teachers’ Reflective Practice

Abstract

Mathematics education is an area of concern across multiple countries, and, while reflective practice is a recommended skill for improved teaching, research has found it a rare and difficult skill to develop. This has resulted in increased research into ways for developing both pre- and in-service teachers’ reflective practice skills. Using a four-level reflection model, our interpretive case study analysed the initial reflections of 18 pre-service teachers at the start of their journey towards becoming reflective practitioners. These student teachers were in the third year of their 4 year Bachelor of Education degree at a South African university. As part of their Mathematics Education Methods course, they participated in three lectures designed for developing both reflective practice and mathematical knowledge for teaching. Our analysis of the students’ written reflections from each lecture session indicated that reflections were predominantly general rather than mathematical, and at the first (descriptive) level of the model with only minor movement towards higher levels of reflectivity across sessions. The article contributes South African data on pre-service teacher reflections when using frameworks that focus reflections of various aspects of mathematics lessons.