TITLE:
Blended Collaborative Learning Supporting Pedagogy Students’ Reflective Practice
AUTHORS:
Niki Lambropoulos, Charikleia Pitsou
KEYWORDS:
Reflective Practice, Blended Learning, School Education, CSCL, E-Learning, Flipped Classroom, Shadowing
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.11 No.10,
October
20,
2020
ABSTRACT: Educating the pedagogy students as teachers is one of the main aims of the Department of Education and Social Work Sciences, University of Patras, Greece. Teachers in Reflective Practice is a compulsory module; groups of 20 students are obliged to shadow teachers at the schools for reflective practice, active engagement in the educational activities and teachers’ shadowing, reflective meetings with the tutors and students’ final assignments. The aim of the intervention was to advance and modernize the module with new pedagogical methods and associated tools widely available to the tutors and the students. Following the literature review and the current trends in university students’ education, collaborative and flipped classroom learning supported by both an online course and an onsite course was decided to be implemented in addition to their involvement in the school. The research design and methods followed mixed-methods research design for validation and generalization. As such, the findings derived from an online questionnaire, the eClass logs, a focus group discussion, and tutors’ observation notes are presented and discussed. It appears that reflective engagement and accelerated learning were evident; the online course and discussions were utilized for active engagement; lastly, digital literacy and more time in the classroom are needed for better results. As a result, the implications and best practices are extracted for similar reflective practice courses.