Using poetry as a means to scaffold reflection on a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) training course
Jane Speare Jane works as a tutor in teacher education (Lifelong Learning) at The University of Greenwich. She enjoys reading and writing poetry and is interested in supporting students with their reflective thinking. With Amanda Henshall (Research Fellow at The University of Greenwich) she undertook research to explore whether and how reading poetry might scaffold students' critical reflections on their teaching practice. Jane can be contacted on
j.i.speare@greenwich.ac.uk
Introduction and rationale This paper presents a small scale exploratory project which sought to find out if the collective experiences of reading and discussing poems that take education and teaching as their themes could scaffold trainee teachers' reflective thinking.
Students who train to be further education teachers on a full time course have approximately nine months within which they are expected to reach and demonstrate a range of standards of competency. Many of these competencies are framed and assessed as technical abilities, for example, planning lessons or writing schemes of work. However, underpinning these skills are decisions which rely on values and priorities: what kind of teaching and learning strategies should we use with our students and why? To answer these questions trainees are encouraged to become critically reflective, to asks questions about their everyday practices, to develop metacognition of their reasoning and the principle values behind it. However, research has shown that the practice of reflection brings with it significant challenges. As far back as 1980, Petty and Hogben cautioned against “impression management” whereby trainees feel obliged to second-guess what they think tutors would like to read in reflective assignments. Dennison (2010) has queried the value of written reflection itself, arguing that writing about decisions can prematurely limit scope of thought, and Atherton (2012) has argued that the concept is overburdened. He has called for more collective and oblique methods of reflection.
Methodology The research took place between May and July 2012, at the end of a PGCE course, and consisted of three poetry group meetings where poems were read and discussed between seven volunteer PGCE students. The students were training to teach a variety of subjects, three being specifically trained as Literacy/English teachers. However, only two students were familiar with poetry or read it for pleasure. One student, Sandra, shared that she had 'no experience of reading poetry since “O” level and school. I didn't like it. I didn't understand it.'
Ground rules for the group were that there was no obligation to join in discussion and no expectations that members would write poems. Students were also reassured that this was not an “A” level class and the experience would not include close readings of the poems reliant on expertise in jargon. All that was asked for was an interest in discussion and an appreciation of differing points of view. The names of those who participated in the group were anonymised.
The six poems discussed were: 1. “Mrs Krikorian” by Sharon Olds 2. “Learning the Trees” by Howard Nemerov 3. “The Choosing” by Liz Lochhead 4. “In Mrs Tilscher's Class” by Carol Ann Duffy
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