Teaching development grants final and financial report: Promoting pre-service teachers agency beliefs, pedagogical awareness and lesson quality through prior classroom observation training for reflective practice

The present study is aimed to enhance sense of agency and pedagogical awareness and subsequent lesson quality during teaching practicum. A digital course on classroom observation training with e-learning activities that require reflective engagement of learners and professional dialogues with peers will be developed as an intervention tool to promote student teachers’ agency beliefs and pedagogical awareness. Comparing to student teachers who will not enroll in the course, those who will enroll are expected to show better observed lesson quality in their lessons in teaching practicum, and more likely to adopt multiple lenses to positively reflect on their own and others’ lessons. Agency beliefs will be measured by teachers’ control, agency, and means-ends belief questionnaire (Malmberg et al., 2004), pedagogical awareness by scale to be developed, and lesson quality by the Quality of Teaching Scale (van de Grift, 2007). The effects of personal characteristics and contextual factors on observed lesson quality (e.g., emotional and instructional support, classroom organization, and students’ engagement) will be investigated. Structural equation and multilevel models will be conducted to explore the variability over time, within lessons, and between teachers. Findings will have strong implications on using classroom observation as a reflection tool in teacher education.