Beyond Technical Teacher Education: Effects of a Dialectical Program on Pre-Service Teachers' Reflective Practice

Abstract

Initial teacher education faces the challenge of promoting reflective practice that goes beyond the technical aspects of teaching; however, evidence regarding programs structured within a dialectical framework remains limited. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of the Dialectical Reflection Program on the development of reflective practice among education students at a public university in Ayacucho, Peru. A quasi-experimental design was employed with a control group (n = 42) and an experimental group (n = 31), both assessed through pretest and posttest measurements. The intervention was conducted between May and July 2025 through sixteen face-to-face sessions organized into three units based on the laws of materialist dialectics. Reflective practice was assessed using a nineteen-item Likert-type questionnaire comprising three dimensions, with adequate internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.91). The assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variances were verified before the inferential analysis. No differences were found between the groups in the pretest, confirming their initial equivalence. The experimental group showed a significant increase between the pretest and posttest (t(30) = 15.77; p less than 0.001; d = 2.83), whereas the control group remained stable (t(41) = 0.44; p = 0.661). In the posttest, the experimental group obtained higher scores than the control group in overall reflective practice and in all three dimensions, with effect sizes ranging from d = 2.01 to d = 4.15. It is concluded that the Dialectical Reflection Program produced a favorable effect on the development of reflective practice, providing empirical evidence on the value of structured dialectical interventions in initial teacher education.