Abstract
Teachers' ability to reflect on teaching is one of the basic attributes that enhances quality of their instruction. However, it cannot be assumed that teacher students will be equipped with advanced/professional competences for writing reflections without this aspect being developed during their pre-service training.
One of the possible opportunities to explore this area are courses focused on the concept of professional vision which appears in pedagogical literature in terms of students' ability to reflect on observed lessons. The aim of this contribution was to describe the initial competencies of pre-service chemistry teachers (N=24) in observing (video) lesson and their ability to determine critical moments and design their alterations before entering an Observation Practice course which is focused on forming their professional vision, i.e. their ability to notice key aspects of educational process.
For the analysis of the written reflections, a modified version of Sherin and van Es' (2009) methodology (coding into information units focused on the actor, aspects of PCK and depth of annotation, analysis and alteration) was used. The results show that student-teachers focus primarily on teachers as actor in teaching and that they do not pay enough attention to the subject side of the lesson when writing a reflection.
At the same time, they are also unable to find proper alternatives in case of malfunctioning education.