Background/Purpose An assumption often made about teachers' reflective practice is that reflection begun during pre-service teacher preparation will carry over to the classroom and continue developing over one's professional life (Freidus, 1996, Morin, 1995). The purpose of this study was to examine the development of physical education teachers' pedagogical knowledge during advanced Masters coursework by examining a series of prompted reflections.
Method Nine PE teachers enrolled in a Masters Degree Program comprised of PK-12 teachers across content areas completed a series of five prompted reflections during a 12-credit course sequence. Participants signed consent forms approved by the HSRB of the researchers' university.
Analysis/Results The text of each reflection was read and each portion carrying a specific idea/concept became a unit of analysis categorized into one of six emerging themes: Assessment, Change Agent (CA), Community of Practice (CP), Empowerment, Self-Awareness (SA), and Teacher as Learner (TL). A total of 637 units were analyzed qualitatively: 37% of these related to TL, 24% to SA, and 15% to Empowerment. CP and CA yielded 9%, while Assessment had 8%. Results also revealed positive changes in the quality and depth of reflection over the course sequence.
Conclusions Since the reflection prompts align with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards which are designed for generalists, participants' responses demonstrate specialists' perspectives regarding the application of valuable pedagogical knowledge into their practice. This study contributes findings on ways programs can use reflective data to examine PE teachers' development and consider the program's impact on teachers' thinking.