Teaching development grants final and financial report: Promoting digital evidence-based reflections in teaching practicum by using iPads for early childhood student teachers

Teaching practicum is essential for student teachers to gain experiences in real educational settings. However, supervisors’ feedbacks are often based on limited authentic evidences from retrospective memory and the quality of supervision is affected. This proposed project builds on a previous pilot project that aimed to promote evidence-based reflection of early childhood education (ECE) student teachers by using iPads. In this proposed project, 200 pre-service student teachers (from the full-time H.D. & B.Ed. programs in 2015-16, ECE Department) and 20 supervisors and 60 preschools will be invited to participate. Supervisors will use iPads to capture relevant teaching moments in digitalized forms to stimulate students’ reflective thinking during post-teaching conferences. Further, students will form peer groups to reflect on these digitalized materials in an online platform (Mahara). Through this vigor of reflection and learning, students’ teaching efficacy is anticipated to be increased (compared between the pre- and post-project period). Students and supervisors will be surveyed and interviewed on their attitudes about using iPads at the end of the project. The proposed project is expected to validate the significance of using iPad in promoting the quality of supervision and build up a professional peer-evaluation culture for ECE student teachers.