Fostering teacher development using simple technologies to listen and respond to accounts of learning from experience

This paper illustrates and explains four simple technologies used to introduce individuals enrolled in a pre-service teacher education program to ways of documenting their professional learning. Each technology provides a way of listening to a teacher candidate's account of professional learning experiences with a view to responding in ways that support and encourage skills of reflection-in-action and learning from experience. The context for these data is a pre-service course on the teaching of physics at the secondary level. There are usually 15 to 20 students in the course that is part of a teacher preparation program at Queen's University leading to a Bachelor of Education degree and certification as a teacher in the province of Ontario. The methodology is self-study of teacher education practices, as I review my comments to students with a view to identifying more productive ways of responding to their accounts of their professional learning. The excerpts selected to illustrate the four technologies are rich in opportunities for reframing of experience. Analysis of my responses to students suggests the need to attend more closely and carefully to their moments of reframing.