Developing pre-service teachers’ critically reflective practice through a writing scaffold of sequenced vignettes

Reflective practice is a well-established goal for pre-service teacher development, yet remains a contentious concept in practice, development, and value. Critical reflection is central to initial teacher education having impact on pre-service teacher thinking for school change though many approaches to support the development of reflection have not achieved critical reflection. In this article, I outline the development of a structured writing scaffold designed to initiate pre-service teacher development of critical reflection. The writing scaffold involved pre-service teachers writing a sequence of vignettes following their first in-school professional experience to move from descriptive to critical reflection, incorporating peer reflection and metareflection to support skills and understanding. Using Ward and McCotter's 'Rubric for Reflection' to analyse vignettes from 17 pre-service teachers, I show how the writing scaffold supported the development of critical reflection and the potential for this structure in initiating reflective practice to be built on throughout initial teacher education and early career teaching with the aim of adaptive expertise and transformative practice. Analysis of the vignettes also sheds light on factors that inhibit deep, critical reflection, along with the detrimental impact of teacher education reforms away from reflective practice.