Reflective Communicator Roles in Preservice Teacher Team Email Discussions

摘要

The objective was to model a type of effective team participant, reflective communica ors, and their communications roles during four, eight-person preservice teacher team email discussions of their classroom observations. An aggregate statistical analysis revealed significant correlations between the quality of reflective observat ons provided, and the number and quality of responsive messages received from other team members. Conversely, hign responsive message senders were associated with low quality messages. Reflective communicators were theorized to occupy a distinctive niche in the team, both as a source of high quality reflective observations and who engaged in high requency, bi-directional responsive communications. Based on these criteria an individual analysis of the data revealed 13 reflective communicators among the 32 participants. Reflective communicators tended to communicate with other reflective communicators in groups containing multiple reflective communicators and increased these communications ove time. Issues were raised concerning the rights of teams to assure them access to reflective communicator leaders.