Becoming a Reflective Practitioner (part 2): Reflective teaching in Tuzla’s classrooms – the research
Becoming a Reflective Practitioner (part 2): Reflective teaching in Tuzla’s classrooms – the research

Summary/Abstract: According to the Education Reform Strategy that BH authorities presented in November 2002 or, more exactly, according to its Pledge 2 the quality of teaching needs to be improved. In other words, it is necessary for the education system to reach and remain at acceptable standards throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to become efficient and up-to-date, as the country’s citizens deserve it. Improvement can only be achieved by training teachers in modern teaching methodologies as well as developing standards for their licensing and certification. However, in the last three years little has been done on this field. The teachers are still receiving most of their training through their university methodology courses in the pre-service stage of their professional development. At the beginning of their careers in schools they get a mentor to work with. Mentors mostly do not do any work with the novice teacher, or they do the mentor work poorly because the standards that would describe and explain it do not exist. The explanation for the existing situation that we, the teachers, have been given is the lack of money. Thus, instead of sitting and waiting for the Ministry of Education to find the resources and start doing what they have pledged to, I have decided to do the research whose results are hopefully going to serve as a kind of help for all of my colleagues entangled in the mentorship web. The objective of the research is to examine the way classroom observation influences the development of a trainee teacher and their understanding what the notions of the reflection and the reflective practitioner mean. The mentoring and the research itself were performed with Alisa Joguncic, an English teacher at the Vocational High School in Tuzla. Bosnia and Herzegovina. The training period started in September 2005 and it lasted till May 2006. The first portion of 10 classroom observations was conducted during the winter semester (September-December 2005) in the premises of Catholic School Center High School, the school I, as Alisa’s mentor, teach in, and the second half was held during the spring (February-May 2006) at the premises of Alisa’s school.

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