ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Teacher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1621269
Using Scaffolds to Support Preservice Teachers' Reflective Practice
Provisionally accepted
- Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, United States
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The primary purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the impact of various types of reflection prompt scaffolds on preservice teachers' metacognitive and problem-solving abilities. Participants included preservice teachers in an educational technology course within an accredited teacher education program. The cognitive aspect of reflection was explored with an emphasis on Kolb's Cycle of Experiential Learning (1984). The cycle of reflection began with concrete and authentic situations encountered during a simulated teaching activity and resulted in reflective observation through blogs. Two rounds of teaching and reflection occurred, with blog reflections scaffolded by two types of prompts: traditional descriptive and critical incident prompts. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed separately, and results from all data sources were merged and interpreted. This research revealed that the type of scaffold impacted ill-structured problem-solving, pedagogical reasoning processes, metacognition, and reflective thinking in various ways.Recent literature emphasizes that "Reflective practices are widely advocated for in academic circles, and many teaching courses and seminars include information regarding different methods of reflection" (Machost and Stains, 2023, p. 10), with benefits extending to both students and educators themselves. Reflection is a common and often integral component used in teacher education to encourage and support adaptive metacognition, pedagogical reasoning, and the cultivation of professional judgment (Baran et al., 2017;Darling-Hammond and Bransford, 2017;Taylor, 2023). Its significance is underscored by the focus on reflection within national teaching standards, such as those outlined by InTASC, NBPTS, CAEP, and ISTE (Darling-Hammond and Bransford, 2017). Despite this focus, reflection is defined differently, depending on context and theoretical frameworks (Ide and Beddoe, 2023).Educators who have attempted to cultivate reflective practice in teacher preparation programs are well aware of the complexities involved (Fuentealba and Russell, 2023). One challenge is identifying the best ways to scaffold reflection to support novice educators in
Keywords: Reflection < Teacher education, metacognitive reflective scaffolds, critical incident prompt, Preservice < Teacher education, Experiential learning & education
Received: 30 Apr 2025; Accepted: 17 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chaseley and Abercrombie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tina L Chaseley, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, United States
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