A Study Of The Use Of A Private Chat Room To Increase Reflective Thinking In Pre-Service Teachers

I quantified the students' reflective thinking by identifying the number of reflective thinking phrases used in each class's chat room each day. A graduate student also counted these phrases as a reliability check. The average number of reflective thinking phrases per day, as defined in Appendix 1, was recorded. These data were analyzed to determine if there was an increase, decrease, or no significant change in the number of reflective thinking phrases in each of the three classes over the time period of one semester.

Profiles of students' responses for five randomly selected students from each of the three classes (fifteen students total) was maintained. These profiles were then analyzed using Robert K. Yin's procedures for case study research (Yin, 1993, 1994). This analysis entailed developing a set of categories or domains (in this case, based on Arthur Costa's "Twelve Characteristics of Effective Thinkers," see Appendix 1). The participants' responses were then sorted into these domains. This gave a broad picture of what the fifteen students learned from the chat room process, as evaluated by their responses. These data were also studied to identify and define common participation patterns.

Three focus groups were held using randomly selected students from each class to determine student satisfaction with and evaluation of this process. Throughout the semester, all class members were encouraged to give feedback on and suggestions for the course to their Student Management Team. Reflective questions based on the work of Borko, Michalec, Timmons, and Siddle (1997) were used (see Appendix 2). These focus groups provided another avenue of information about various reactions to the private chat room experience.

Triangulation was achieved through: (1) quantitative analysis of number of reflective thinking phrases over time; (2) case study domain analysis and generation of profiles of fifteen individual students' responses; and (3) qualitative analysis of focus group responses.

To insure objectivity, a graduate student was responsible for data collection and for facilitation of the three focus groups. I conducted the data analysis. The graduate student then conducted a blind data analysis to establish reliability of my results.

Results

There was no clear pattern of increase in reflective phrases over time. The number of reflective phrases used by participants appeared to be topic-dependent. For instance, a discussion on a video about racism on college campuses generated more overall responses as well as more reflective phrases, even though it was a topic discussed at the beginning of the semester, than did a discussion on developmental needs of middle school students which occurred more than halfway through the semester.

In addition, some topics seemed to generate more of one type of reflective phrase than other topics. For instance, a discussion of Kohlberg's theory on morality generated much discussion, including bible-quoting and name-calling, and extremely strong opinions. Using Costa's list of twelve reflective thinking categories, there were many phrases which demonstrated persistence, questioning, checking for accuracy. However, there was a decrease in listening to others with understanding and empathy. In contrast, the previous discussion topic, coping strategies for teachers, had a plethora of empathetic responses. Thus, no clear pattern regarding the use of reflective phrases emerged.