Abstract:

Promoting the development of the reflection of teachers during their initial training in Chile has led the institutions in charge to look for innovative methodologies that allow progress toward more complex and challenging models in order to achieve this basic and necessary “meta competence” which “would allow to arrange the resources needed for a person to act effectively” in teaching (Correa et al. 2014). Mention that few are the approximations that have been made in order to verify the conditions of the effectiveness of the devices used in this process. This study aimed to identify the profile of movement within the planes of thought (Labarrere and Quintanilla 2002) that the trainee teachers of chemistry and biology had when using an innovative methodology which enabled that the teachers relive their practice by using 360° video recordings, and also how this methodology allowed a deep reflection about their own practice, making a comprehensive and also in-depth analysis possible, as well as observing the impact of it on their students, as we consider that the practice of teachers in training is a process of cognitive and affective nature (Vanegas 2016), where the one who reflects should be the author and analyst of their action, thus enabling that the problematization of their practice does not depend exclusively on the expert peer. In Chile we still face challenges to develop a critical reflection that has an actual impact on professional practice. This is provided in a context where the figure of the expert teacher is still a guide and a reference of “good practice”, enabling the perpetuation of naturalized and inherited practices (Sanyal 2014). It is common that the reflection is carried out within a procedural-operational plane of action, based exclusively on techniques, where the situations that intent the analysis of scientific thinking in students and their emotions (Hugo 2008). This leads us to inquire what other methodologies might contribute to the observation of the other, and how do we solve the problem of the good and not so good modeling of the practice during initial teacher training. Although the studies on the use of video recordings in teacher training date back to more than 50 years, they still focus on the observation of the procedures, where the expert identifies critical moments, and the trainee teacher explains the decision-making. The methodology was based on the analysis of the discourse of a personal interview done to 12 trainee teachers, in which they had to observe -with special lenses- a 15-minute extract of a 360 video recording of a biology and chemistry class given for students aged 13 to 17. As it was expected, a predominance of the analysis from the procedural-operational plane could be categorized. However, it could be also identified that the methodology allows the trainee teacher to slowly delve deeper into an analysis of the extract of the class from a personal-significative plane, which allows the construction of new meanings about teaching and learning. Despite this, an approach to the relational-social plane was not expected. Although it had a still insufficient frequency, teachers focused their attention on the other, which is their students, in this case. It is in this exact point that we consider that, unlike other methodologies, the used here allows that the trainee teachers do not focus their reflection solely on their performance, and that they be able to focus also on how students learn.

Keywords:

Reflection upon the practice, Pre service teachers of science, Planes of thought, 360° Video recordings.