Measuring student teachers development of metacognition and self-regulated learning in professional dialogue

Teachers are often considered to be the most important agents in reforming education and in bringing about change in practices (Lieberman & Mace, 2008). Since the publication of ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’ (Donaldson, 2010), the teacher education sector in Scotland has gone through significant changes. One of the key changes is to allow teachers to develop as reflective practitioners. Reflection on one’s own perceptions, experiences and practices is at the heart of all activities that teachers do. Reflective practice enables learning by thinking back and articulating the acquisition of knowledge and strategies. For teachers at the pre-service stage, this can be particularly powerful and even transformative (Kramarski & Kohen, 2016). More recently, researchers have argued that the development of reflective skills can be enhanced by combining reflection with professional dialogue (Simoncini et al., 2014), enabling teachers to ‘maintain an awareness of their learning and be attuned both to evidence of changes to content and pedagogic knowledge as well as to the impact on professional and personal identity that can be revealed through the conversations themselves’ (Lofthouse & Hall, 2014, p. 759). This paper addresses this important aspect of teacher education. We aim to investigate how student teachers on a Scottish teacher education programme learn by reflecting on their professional dialogue experiences. We are particularly interested in the self-regulated learning (SRL) and metacognitive processes in their reflection.