This study investigates the extent to which mentor teachers experience reflective moments during mentoring dialogues. Any description of the phases of professional growth includes the degree to which explicit action goes hand in hand with deliberate consideration and thinking. There is little known about the thought processes of mentor teachers during their dialogues with students in the workplace. This study analyses 60 dialogues of experienced mentor teachers, both before and after they receive training in supervisory skills. Two methods of investigation are used: firstly, a stimulated recall interview following the dialogue, which traces reflective moments and secondly, a specially developed push-button device used to record these moments as they occur. During mentoring dialogues, the mentor teachers' behaviour comprises few reflective moments. Significantly, these occur more frequently after training. This seems to not only confirm the view that much of professional behaviour occurs automatically and instinctively, but also to support the premise that cognitive processes are important in the acquisition of supervisory skills. The combination of both methods of recording seems to make it possible to achieve a more accurate registration of the number of times these moments occur.
Social work is a profession that is very much part of and contributes to an ever changing and evolving society. It is therefore essential that social work is able to respond to the diverse and dynamic demands that it may encounter in that society and in the future. The critique of social work is, however, present and growing. The profession can no longer deny or ignore the need to legitimize its value and effectiveness. In this article, a research project – entitled Procivi – aimed at developing a method of legitimizing social work is presented. The method developed in Procivi proposes a way of legitimizing social work through the development of reflective professionals. The method teaches professionals to take a research frame of mind towards their own practice and helps them develop a vocabulary to describe their work to different audiences. The paper discusses whether and how this method forms a viable way of legitimizing social work and as such could be an alternative for the growing demand for social work based on scientific evidence (evidencebased practice, EBP).
MULTIFILE
In secondary school philosophy classes students learn to reason critically about social and scientific issues. This study examined the effects of a whole-class, teacher-led philosophy classroom dialogue intervention on students’ value-loaded critical thinking. Value-loaded critical thinking is logically consistent, self-reflective reasoning focused on making moral value-judgments about what is right to believe or do. In a quasi-experimental study (N = 437 students) with a pre-test post-test design, we investigated whether engaging in classroom dialogues in which the teachers implemented five design principles for promoting value-loaded critical thinking and transfer thereof, positively affected students’ (n = 150) value-loaded critical thinking in transfer tasks. The results were compared to two comparison conditions: students (n = 149) who participated in regular teacher-led philosophy classroom dialogues and students (n = 145) who followed a regular 10th-grade curriculum without philosophy classes. Results showed that students in the intervention condition outperformed students in both comparison conditions on referring to moral values. Regarding critical reasoning, we only found significant effects compared to the students who followed the regular 10th-grade curriculum. Findings indicate that a specifically designed dialogic intervention can enhance students’ capacities in value-loaded critical thinking.
