STUDENT TEACHERS’ REFLECTIVE INQUIRY QUEST FOR EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING

Reflective practice is one of the fundamental bases of professional development of teachers. The present study estimated how often student teachers engage in self-dialogue and the level of inquiry urge among them in relation to their teaching experience. This study employed procedures associated with both qualitative and quantitative paradigm. The participants (500 student teachers) in this study were drawn from student teachers at secondary level. The participants were asked to maintain the structured reflective journal developed by the investigators throughout their practice teaching period to document their daily teaching experiences. The content analysis was employed to identify the focus, reflective categories and levels of reflectivity of the reflective journals. In order to find out the student teachers' reactions to the journal writing the investigators prepared and standardised a questionnaire and administered it to the same sample of student teachers and analysed quantitatively. It was found that student teachers have given more emphasis to reflection on the delivering of their teaching than planning and preparation and were engaged in self-dialogue very frequently and also have above average level of inquiry urge to identify the reasons of the success/failures of teaching- learning outcome. They have above average level of positive reactions to the journal writing and science, mathematics and language student teachers were found to have more positive reactions than those of social science student teachers.