The R in the ELR Process: Reflection and the Emotions of Pre-service Teachers. A Case Study.

Reflective practice in mathematical teaching improves teaching skills and confidence. This paper investigates affect-based critical moments as a reflective practice for pre-service teaching. An embedded case study is presented by one regional university as a discovery into the reflective phase of the Enhancement-Learning-Reflection process to uncover the types of emotions and themes from student chosen critical moments. An analysis of these critical moments found students’ expressed mainly positive emotions combined with the negative emotion of anxiety. Themes emerged around pedagogical content knowledge: teaching strategies; student thinking; and appropriate mathematical content knowledge.