Internship reports as causes of reflection?

Reflection between professionalization hope and coping with practice in the first phase of teacher training

Abstract

This article examines the question in what way the request to prepare internship reports can stimulate reflection processes of students. Based on the manifold hopes of professionalization connected with reflection in the discourse on university teacher training, the structural-theoretical approach according to Helsper and reflection-theoretical statements of Häcker are compared with each other and thus characteristics of reflection elaborated (chapter 1). Then – partly in contrast to these positions – the understanding of reflection of the Praxeological Sociology of Knowledge according to Bohnsack is unfolded. According to this, reflection can be differentiated into implicit and theoretical reflection (chapter 2). Based on open questions arising from the approaches, the questions for data analysis, the project context (accompanying seminar to a professional field-related practical study) and the methodological approach (analysis of 26 student internship reports with the use of the documentary method) are revealed (chapter 3). Using one case as an example and including selective comparative cases, forms of reflections are then traced in internship reports as they had to be prepared by the students in the context of the accompanying seminar. The result shows to which practice implicit reflections refer and which form of theoretical reflection occurs (chapter 4). Based on these results, the potential of internship reports for initiating reflections of student is discussed. It is also examined how university teacher training might look like, based on reflections already carried out by students (chapter 5).