An Investigation into the Effects of GenAI-Supported Structural Reflective Scaffolds on Pre-Service Teachers’ Teaching Practice Reflection Competence

Due to the deep penetration of Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), the cultivation of pre-service teachers’ teaching practice reflection competence is confronted with risks of superficial reflection and excessive reliance. Providing learning scaffolds constitutes one of the effective means to address these risks. Based on this, relying on social comparison theory, this paper designs GenAI-supported structural reflective scaffolds and explores its impact on pre-service teachers’ teaching practice reflection competence through a randomized controlled experiment. Adopting methods such as questionnaire surveys, LDA topic analysis, and epistemic network analysis, this paper conducts analyses of inter-group differences in reflective thinking, quality differences in human-machine dialogues, and inter-group differences in reflection effectiveness. The findings reveal that the collaborative mechanism between intelligent technology and reflective scaffolds jointly facilitates the improvement of reflective thinking; GenAI-supported structural reflective scaffolds serve as a key factor influencing pre-service teachers’ teaching practice reflection effect by standardizing and deepening the cognitive process of human-machine dialogues and improving real-time interaction quality. This paper reveals the necessity and feasibility of collaborative design between technology empowerment and scaffold support in pre-service teacher education, and provides empirical reference for cultivating pre-service teachers’ teaching practice reflection competence in the intelligent era.