Reflection on Actions a Panacea for Professional Development of Student Teachers

Professional development refers a systematic process to improve the capabilities of teachers by providing them access to connoisseur education and training opportunities within and outside the schools for advancement of their skills and professional knowledge. Teaching and reflection always goes together. Teachers usually reflect over their professional practices, relationships with colleagues and students, to maintain classroom discipline and to overcome shyness, shivering, repetition of words during teaching learning process. This paper aims to study the role of reflection-on-action on the professional development of student teachers during practicum. Findings of the paper based on quantitative and qualitative data collected from 800 student teachers through questionnaire and observation. Descriptive analysis of the data was made to see the tendencies of the responses and then variables were computed to test the hypotheses. Majority of student teachers reflect on their actions after class, but they not know that they are involved in reflection on action. Linear regression model summary revealed that involvement of student teachers in reflection on actions significantly contributed towards the professional development of student teachers. The R2 value=.567 indicated that ‘ROA’ explain nearly 57% of the variation in the dependent variable ‘understanding of professional mistakes’. In other words reflection of prospective teachers over students discourteous attitude, shortcomings of lesson, effectiveness of teaching, learning outcomes and reflection over weakness of teaching method increased 57% chances to understand and rectify professional mistakes. The results revealed that majority of student teacher seen involvement in reflection on action as positive and substantial for their own professional development.