The Cross-Cultural Reciprocal Learning Program’s Influence on Chinese Pre-service Teachers’ Reflective Competencies

This chapter explores the transformation of Chinese pre-service teachers from mere participants in the project into reflective practitioners. Twenty-two Chinese pre-service teachers from Southwest University (SWU) in China who participated in the Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Program (RLP) and had teaching placements at local schools in Windsor in 2017 were selected as research participants. Guided by a narrative methodology, this study adopted a qualitative approach, consisting of a combination of participant observations, field notes, and individual interviews to explore the development of Chinese exchange pre-service teachers’ reflective competencies brought out by the RLP. Through data analysis and in-depth interviews, we uncovered the cross-cultural RLP’s impact with respect to changes in the reflective competence of Chinese pre-service teachers. During their three-month participation, they received full support towards both their personal and professional growth. In general, we can summarize the influence of the RLP on the reflective competence of Chinese pre-service teachers into two aspects: one was to inspire them to have a deeper understanding of teachers and teaching, learners and learning, and the teacher-student relationship; the other was to promote their reflective competence about their own approaches and understandings of teaching, including reflective consciousness, reflective process, and reflective level.