Reflective Practice in Teaching: Pre-service Teachers and the Lens of Life Experience

This book investigates the ways in which pre-service teachers develop and articulate their professional knowledge by presenting their reflections on contemporary issues and topics they have explored during their own teaching practicums. It uses reflective practice to connect pre-service teachers’ personal backgrounds with their placement experience concerning a self-selected topic, including teacher educators’ reflections on the pre-service teachers’ reports on these placement topics. By illustrating the broad range of issues encountered by pre-service teachers, sharing multiple perspectives on the complexity of classroom practice, and demonstrating the importance of reflective practice, it also provides a valuable mentoring framework. 

Moreover, the book studies how examining pre-service teachers’ life experience can facilitate in-depth understanding, specifically in the context of pre-service teachers’ reflections on their own practices in different educational settings. In short, the book helps current and prospective pre-service teachers and teacher educators get to know their students and themselves better using reflective practice.

Dr Gretchen Geng is currently a regional VP of the International Group at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Before that, she was a leader of Teaching and Learning Design at the DVC (Education) Office of RMIT University, and an Associate Professor at Charles Darwin University. Dr. Geng also provides consultancy to online TESOL companies in China on how to use educational technologies in teaching and learning in a global learning context.

Pamela Smith is an Honorary Fellow at Charles Darwin University, having retired from a lecturer position in 2016. She had been involved in lecturing and coordinating pre-service degree programs within the School of Education. Pamela has come to tertiary education after a long career in teaching spanning the early years to secondary teaching, as well as several executive leadership positions.

Dr Paul Black retired from Charles Darwin University in 2015.  With a Yale doctorate in Linguistics, he came to Australia in 1974 to undertake descriptive and comparative studies of Australian Indigenous languages, and many of his publications relate to his specialisation in comparative historical lexicostatistics. Most recently he served a joint editor of The Challenge of Teaching ― Through the Eyes of Pre-service Teachers and Challenges in Global Learning.

Dr Yoshi Budd is currently a lecturer in Education at RMIT University, where she designs and delivers units of study in (under)graduate literacy programs. Yoshi began her teaching career as a teacher of English, German and Japanese. This experience was significant in developing her interest in the relationship between education, society and literacy pedagogy.

Dr Leigh Disney is an Early Years lecturer within the Faculty of Education at Monash University. He began his career as an early childhood educator in both prior-to-school and school-based settings. He has developed an in-depth understanding of the educative and care needs of young children through supporting young children’s social and emotional development.