Towards a non-prescriptive, pre-service teacher-initiated approach to reflection within peer-group mentoring during teaching practicum

The doctoral dissertation by Outi Tiainen demonstrates that pre-service teachers’ own observations during teaching practicum, along with the insights emerging from the practice, constitute a core component of professional learning. The study sheds light on how pre-service teachers’ reflective thinking can be supported when they act as initiators of the process and address questions central to their own professional development. The research highlights joint reflection in peer-group mentoring as a promising approach for supporting learning to teach.

Prior research has identified various challenges in supporting pre-service teachers’ reflective skills. Although mentoring aims to strengthen pre-service teachers' independent thinking, there is a risk of the mentor's role becoming overly dominant. A directive and too rigidly defined mentoring may restrict the development of pre-service teachers’ professional thinking. At worst, it bypasses the pre-service teachers’ current understanding of teaching work, which may lead them to perceive their own professional reflection as having secondary importance. This can impede the development of personal practical knowledge, which is essential in the teaching profession, and decelerate growth into a reflective practitioner and lifelong learner.

In this research, reflection emerges as a personal and flexible learning process that progresses without externally predetermined content. When the process is constructed based on the pre-service teachers’ own needs, reflection becomes meaningful. This supports a core objective of both Finnish and international teacher education: professional growth into a research-based expert.

The research applied a case study approach, and its data consisted of peer-group mentoring sessions during teaching practicum. Video recordings of the lessons pre-service teachers taught were utilized during mentoring. Reflection was implemented in a non-prescriptive manner, meaning that the students themselves selected the meaningful situations and phenomena from the videos that they wished to analyze together with their peers and mentor.

Joint reflection enabled deep processing of practicum teaching-learning experiences and expansion of understanding. Peer support and joint reflection within the peer-group established a learning environment that sustained each pre-service teachers’ individual learning trajectory. Simultaneously, the traditional mentoring hierarchy was flattened, as the mentor also participated in the discussions as a peer, making the learning reciprocal.

This doctoral research contributes to the current international debate on reflection and mentoring in teacher education. It extends the theoretical and practical understanding of how the reflective process progresses and how it can be appropriately supported during teaching practicum within teacher education. The study introduces an alternative to traditional mentoring approach by emphasizing the benefits of non-prescriptive, pre-service teacher-initiated reflection in peer-group-based practices.

The findings indicate that it is vital for teacher education to deliberately design pre-service teacher-centered mentoring situations and practices. The role of the mentor is critical in how experiences during teaching practicum are nurtured and how pre-service teachers are assisted in constructing personal practical knowledge that translates into future practices.