Reflective Diary for Professional Development of Novice Teachers

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This publication doesn't include Faculty of Economics and Administration. It includes Faculty of Informatics. Official publication website can be found on muni.cz.
Authors

UKROP Martin ŠVÁBENSKÝ Valdemar NEHYBA Jan

Year of publication 2019
Type Article in Proceedings
Conference Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE’19)
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Informatics

Citation
Web http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287448
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3287324.3287448
Keywords reflective practice; learning journal; teacher training; teaching assistants; teaching skills
Attached files
Description Many starting teachers of computer science have great professional skill but often lack pedagogical training. Since providing expert mentorship directly during their lessons would be quite costly, institutions usually offer separate teacher training sessions for novice instructors. However, the reflection on teaching performed with a significant delay after the taught lesson limits the possible impact on teachers. To bridge this gap, we introduced a weekly semi-structured reflective practice to supplement the teacher training sessions at our faculty. We created a paper diary that guides the starting teachers through the process of reflection. Over the course of the semester, the diary poses questions of increasing complexity while also functioning as a reference to the topics covered in teacher training. Piloting the diary on a group of 25 novice teaching assistants resulted in overwhelmingly positive responses and provided the teacher training sessions with valuable input for discussion. The diary also turned out to be applicable in a broader context: it was appreciated and used by several experienced university teachers from multiple faculties and even some high-school teachers. The diary is freely available online, including source and print versions.
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