What the indirect categories for guided reflective practice mean?

The first four categories, accepting feelings, praising or encouraging, clarifying ideas, and prompting inquiry, are indirect strategies for guiding analysis and reflection. Whereas categories 5-7, providing information, giving directions, and addressing problems, are direct strategies for guiding reflection. Two journal patterns are described for each journal category. These patterns relate to the adult learner's current preferred system for solving complex problems (reflective judgment level). Two case studies are examined, let's take a closer look at the categories.

Indirect Journal Responding

Feelings often have an enormous influence on our ability to reflect - to interpret and respond to situations. We submit that reflective thinking can be temporarily "frozen" by intense feelings like a teachers anger over being disrupted by the same student for the umpteenth time. Feelings expressed in journals, both positive and negative, should be given special consideration by the supervisor. We also acknowledge that interns will vary in their ability to discern feelings in both self and others.

If the intern has difficulty discerning feelings in both self and others the mentor teacher or clinical teacher should share his/her own feelings. By doing so, one is acknowledging that feelings are an important part of what it means to be human. If the beginning teacher discerns feelings in both self and the students the mentor or clinical educator should accept the feelings, "You sound frustrated."

In our society persons often ignore negative feelings, offer negative feelings in return, or marginalize the feelings, "Don't worry, this too will pass." Such responses are roadblocks to effective journal dialogue, and diminish the importance of the intern's feelings.

Praise may be a short statement: "Nice idea," "Good effort," or "I like how you described your experiences this week." Encouragement prompts the intern to elaborate and might include such statements as: "Tell me more," or "I would like to read more about your ideas on questioning."

Imagine a journal entry that expresses high self-doubt whenever the novice teacher attempts new instructional strategies. From a cognitive-structural approach, such responses may suggest that the intern lacks confidence and avoids taking instructional risks (concrete conceptual level). In this case, the mentor teacher's response should offer frequent encouragement. Conversely, if the beginning teacher expresses confidence and high interest in undertaking new instructional strategies, King and Kitchener's theory theory of reflective judgment and Hunt's theory of conceptual development would tell us that the person needs only occasional support. Less is more in this case.

This category is quite similar to category 1; however, it includes only supervisor acceptance and/or clarification of the intern's ideas, values, and beliefs, not acknowledgement of feelings. Once again, interns will express ideas, values, and beliefs, in qualitatively different ways depending on their cognitive-structural development. Some teachers will perceive knowledge as fixed and desire to employ a single "tried and true" model of teaching for all students. Thus when a belief surfaces in the journal, the mentor should offer a written response that relates the beginning teacher's idea to observed events. If, on the other hand, the beginning teacher perceives knowledge as a process of successive approximations and employs a diversity of models of teaching, the mentor should accept and/or clarify the ideas expressed. For example, when the beginning teacher writes about a lack of success with cooperative learning strategies, the mentor could paraphrase the intern's statement, restate the idea more simply, or summarize two or three ideas that were described in the journal.

This is the final category in the indirect domain of journal responding. This category implies that the supervisor is raising questions that warrant an answer. They are not rhetorical. It may be helpful to mention to beginning teachers or interns that questions are an important part of professional judgment, portfolio assessment, and journal dialogue and should be given a thoughtful written response.

If the intern's journal rarely includes much reflection on the teaching/learning process, then the developmental response is to ask questions about observed events in teaching/learning vis a vis comprehension and application questions. If, on the other hand, the intern or beginning teacher consistently reflects on diverse aspects of the teaching/learning process, the supervisor's or mentor's matching written response would ask questions that encourage analysis, evaluation, divergent thinking, and synthesis of theory/practice and broader societal issues.

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