Reflections Skills for Pre-service Teachers

Ali, Sukri, Tahir & Md Said focus on the Malaysian Education Blueprint that states “students must be able to develop high-order thinking skills so as to prepare for the future employment.” Teachers, however, struggle to think on a higher level and have difficulty integrating thinking into their curriculum. Within the various conceptual definitions, critical thinking ultimately requires the acquisition of knowledge and continuous use of analytical skills. It enhances thinking through reflection and questioning. Ultimately, Ali et al explain how “critical thinking includes a wide area of thinking skills that leads toward desirable outcomes.” Along these lines, teaching requires reflection within the context of critical thinking in order to adapt new knowledge to complex situations. To explore the feasibility of using social media to facilitate development of reflection ability, two accounts were created: one for pre-service teachers, their colleagues and supervisors while the other was for pre-service teachers and their students. Coincidentally, and somewhat unintentionally, I currently have a similar dynamic: my original account includes reggae industry professionals, spiritual elders and my consulting attorney, formerly with UNESCO, while the second account has recently attracted a few thousand people from India and her surrounding countries. In the research, teachers improved in all areas that received adverse student feedback after hearing guidance from their peers and supervisors. This is comparable to how I use Facebook: information in the new account is used to measure the efficacy of messages being shared in my old account. To overcome all limitations, pre-service teachers need enough technological experience to integrate the online discussions into class interactions. I have these understandings; I use them to develop communication across cultures, facilitating our interactions with music, graphics, language, message design and computer programming concepts (i.e. algorithms).
 
Ali, M.F., Sukri, M.N., Tahir, M.L., and Md Said, M.N.H. (2017).  Developing critical reflection skill among pre-service teacher through collaborative inquiry using social media. Faculty of Education, University Technology Malaysia. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8064430
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