Chapter 8: Reflective Practice

This chapter is designed to make explicit what has been implicit throughout this resource book—the idea of reflective practice. This resource book began with the suggestion that reform and change required forming and working in professional learning communities. The professional learning communities, however, were assumed to be engaged in a process of continuous improvement of teaching practice of teacher educators in teacher colleges. Each chapter consisted of appropriately summarized scholarly literature on the selected topic of importance and ended with an invitation to reflect on this literature in relation to your practice as teacher educators in your own unique context. Reflection, therefore, is a central element of this undertaking. The aim of this resource has not only been to propose the establishment of professional learning communities as a strategy for reform but to also encourage engagement in reflective practice as part of such communities.

After its introduction in the mid 1980s, the use of term reflective practice has spread like jungle fire in discourses of teacher preparation. The past two decades have seen an enormous popularization and uptake of the idea of reflective practice as a strategy for continuous improvement of teachers' professional practice. Educators' interest in it can be loosely judged by the fact that a simple search in the internet based databases of scholarly papers that apply the idea of reflective practice to teacher education returns over 13,000 items, of which 10,200 are written in or after 1991. However, with such widespread usage also come the fears of reflective practice becoming a rhetoric that is widely used but seldom practiced.

Those who are engaged in critical examination of the use of the idea of reflection have observed that it is not sufficiently clear as to how systematic reflection is different from other modes of thinking. If reflective practice is not adequately defined, it remains difficult to assess—often, any narrative about ones practice is called a reflective journal, resulting in the misuse of the term in practice. Furthermore, teacher educators and teachers have not attempted to clearly visualize what reflective practice must look like. As a result, many teacher educators are unable to see it when it is in practice and are likely to misconstrue any thinking practice as reflective (Rodgers, 2002). While it is well and good to emphasize reflective teaching as a central aspect of what it means to be a practitioner, a careful analysis of reflection—one that helps us understand the nature, aim and process of the activities associated with a particular view of reflection—is needed if this alternative to technical training is to be viable .

With these cautions in mind, we will proceed to define reflection and reflective practice, delineating it from ordinary thought, providing examples and also linking up with discussions in previous chapters where appropriate.

Notwithstanding its many merits, reflective practice, however, is a word that loses its proper relation with professional practice if not properly understood and delineated from other modes of thought and practice. This chapter elucidates the ideas of reflection, reflective practice and reflective practitioner. It also discusses some strategies that can support reflective practice within teacher colleges.

What is Reflection?

"The purpose of such reflection is not simply to study one's practice, but also to be able to act on it in order to improve it."

The meaning of reflection has multiplied over time. The term has its philosophical roots in the work of English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) who spoke of reflections as actions of the mind. He used verbs such as, perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and so on to describe these mental actions. Locke contrasted reflections with sensations, which were supposed to be actions related to external senses. How does this distinction between reflection and sensations help us understand knowledge creation as a human activity? Consider, as an example, Newton's contemplation on the simple observation of falling bodies. While the observation of falling produced a sensation, it alone could not result in the law of gravitation. The latter was produced through reflection—in this case manifested as contemplation of the falling bodies.

The objects of reflection do not have to be physical objects or phenomena. In social sciences and humanities, depending on one's discipline, the objects of reflection are human social, economic, political, cultural and psychological phenomena. In the realm of professional education, with which we are largely concerned in this chapter, the object of reflection is one's professional practice itself. In this case, reflection begins to resemble introspection. Notice that self-awareness is much like looking at your image in a mirror or any other reflective surface. Thus reflection requires production of images [or records] of practice. These images of practice take many forms, such as teaching journals, essays on one's own practice, multi media recordings, or any other tool to enable one to step back from one's practice to reflect on it.

The Reflective Practice and its Practitioner

It is important to delineate the ways in which the idea of reflection has been applied to education of professionals. While reflection on our observations and sensory experiences of the natural or social world can be readily understood as sources of knowledge in natural and social sciences, it is not, despite its importance, what we are concerned with in this chapter. Neither are we concerned with a simple contemplation on personal experiences. We are concerned with application of the idea of purposive reflection to one's own practice as a professional. The purpose of such reflection is not simply to study one's practice, but also to be able to act on it in order to improve it. Donald Schön, the pioneer of the idea of reflective practice as a method to educate professionals, defined a reflective practitioner as one who does not implement his or her craft thoughtlessly, but is continuously engaged in purposive thinking about various aspects of his or her practice in order to improve it (Schön, 1983a, 1983b). Through this continuous reflective engagement with one's own practice, a professional stands better chances of responding to the challenges involved in particular situations.

This idea implies that professional practices cannot be improved without making them objects of reflection within the particular contexts in which they occur, and that a mere recourse to theoretical knowledge about better practices is not sufficient for reform and improvement. It draws on the insight that professionals have tacit knowledge situated in their practice.As Schön puts it, "There are actions, recognitions, and judgments which we know how to carry out spontaneously; we do not have to think about them prior to or during their performance. We are often unaware of having learned to do these things; we simply find ourselves doing them." (Schön, 1983a, p. 51). Reflection on action involves making the tacit knowledge available for scrutiny. Our tacit knowledge is hardened over time through repetition. For example, we manifest our tactic knowledge, developed mostly through apprenticeship of observation in the case of teaching (See Chapter 3), when we greet our students, open and close the lesson, ask questions, praise and reward students in similar ways. Reflection on action, which will be discussed in more detail in a subsequent section, can help us resurface and critique the tacit understandings that have "grown up around repetitive experiences" (Schön, 1983a, p. 61).

Reflective Practice and Teacher Education

Reflective practice in pre-service teacher education was advocated as early as 1904 by John Dewey. Dewey argued that teachers should have an inquiring disposition toward the problems of their practice. An absence of inquiry could lead to intellectual dependence on ready-made solutions for the problems of practice (Dewey & McMurray, 1904). Since the idea of reflective practice is at odds with the knowledge transmission modes of teaching and learning, and given the predominance of the latter in education, it remained peripheral to mainstream teacher education programs until it reemerged in the recent waves of educational reforms across the world. Currently, the use of the idea of reflective practice is frequently encouraged by practitioners and scholars together with a general thrust on LCE. This is because a reflective practitioner can be potentially more attentive to the unique challenges posed by LCE in the classroom settings. If the teachers want students to act as producers rather than consumers of knowledge, then they must also value construction of knowledge about teaching. Reflective practice is widely recognized as a way of creating valid and situated knowledge about the practice of teaching as well as a strategy of its continual improvement.

There has been an explosion of interest in reflective practice as it relates to teacher preparation. In the context of the United States, this popularity is attributed to a growing perception of teachers as professionals, a growing interest in the cognitive psychology about the ways in which thinking can influence practice, as well as the need to improve the quality of teaching in order to improve student learning (Valli, 1997). The idea of reflective practice also finds resonance with efforts to empower teachers to generate their own theories of teaching. Some scholars, such as Van Graan et al. (2005), use their research on reflective practice in teacher education in Namibia to highlight the need for teachers to "reflect on and try out different ways of solving problems and as such invent a theory that works in their particular context." (Van Graan, Pomuti, LeCzel, Liman, & Swarts, 2005, p. 9).

Types of Reflective Practices in Teacher Preparation Programs

"reflection... a mental process 'by which the mind observes and examines its own experiences and emotions; intelligent self-awareness, introspection.'"

Researchers observing reflective practice in teacher education programs have divided the observed reflective practices in five major categories. We will discuss them in some detail below. The classification of reflective practices has appeared in many places in the literature on reflective practices in teacher education. Our description is adapted and borrows heavily from Valli (1997).3 Our review of literature indicated that it captures most of types of reflection discussed elsewhere. The distinction between these categories will be based on the object of intervention in each type of reflection, as well as the ways in which the quality of reflective practice is to be judged. As Valli puts it: "Content for reflection refers to what teachers think about; quality of reflection refers to how they think about their teaching—the processes of thinking they go through. These two dimensions of reflection can be used to define and judge what good teaching is and to help teacher candidates determine whether they are making good decisions." (Valli, 1997, p. 74).

Technical reflection

Technical reflection refers to a strictly rule-governed application of research on teaching to the practice of teaching. The sites for intervention for technical reflection are teaching skills and techniques. The object of reflection is practice, as it should be for all reflection. However, in this case, the criteria for evaluating the performance are imposed externally. For example, consider the excerpt below from a paper that describes best practices to teach fractions to children with learning disabilities:

One concrete and meaningful way of representing fractions with both parts of whole and of sets is through fair-sharing activities…In fair-sharing activities, students must distribute commodities equally among a group of students. Given eight students and a pie, each student would receive one eighth of the pie. Given eight students and 24 erasers, each student would receive three erasers. In fair-sharing activities, teachers should include both whole units (e.g., pies, pizzas) and sets of units (e.g., erasers, paper clips, pencils, raisins) to be divided among the students. Care should be taken to reinforce that the basic activity is one of dividing or partitioning the original amount into equal subgroups.

(Brigham, Wilson, Jones, & Moisio, 1996, p. 5, emphasis supplied)

Notice that this is a straight forward advice to a teacher who is teaching fractions to children with learning disabilities. Teachers can reflect on their performances through the criteria being supplied by this excerpt. In technical reflection, the content of reflection is teaching behavior, and desirable performance means implementing the expert advice derived from research. As Valli puts it: "The content that prospective teachers think about are the general teaching behaviors that have been derived from research on teaching. These include things like time-on-task, wait-time, active learning, student engagement, homework review, and prior knowledge. Prospective teachers would think about findings from this research and try to match their performance to those guidelines" (Valli, 1997, p. 75).

Reflection in and on action

We have already discussed these types of reflections as described by Donald Schön. Here we must add that technical reflection described above is also a kind of reflection on action. The difference, however, is in the content of reflection as well as in the criteria for determining the quality of refletive practice. In this type of reflection, the object of reflection is a teacher's own unique problem setting. The quality of reflective practice is determined ultimately by whether the reflective practioner was able to take and defend appropriate pedagogical decisions best suited to his or her own context. As Valli puts it, in this type of reflection, "the teacher's voice is regarded as expert rather than the researcher's. Reflection-in and on-action values practical, craft knowledge" (Valli, 1997, p. 76).

Reflection on action becomes especially important when we attempt to practice new ideas about teaching and learning that come into conflict with our tacit understandings. Consider the idea of LCE (Chapter 3) to understand this point better. We can learn about LCE by reading about, thinking about and discussing it. Through such readings and deliberations, we may become convinced that LCE offers an improvement over knowledge-transmission modes of teaching and learning. However, it is only after articulating these ideas in the unique setting of our professional teaching practice that we experience the challenges and uncertainties entailed by implementing new ideas in our classrooms.

A number of teacher scholars have documented their attempts at re-crafting their practices in accordance with the reform ideas and making sense of unanticipated experiences that follow. These accounts also describe the ways in which these teacher scholars develop ways of managing the uncertainties and dilemmas encountered in their attempts to change their practice (See, for example, Ball, 1993; Ball & Cohen, 1999; Lampert, 2003). Research by teacher educators and teachers on their own practice is sometimes also referred to as Action Research. The relationship between action research and reflective practice as strategies to improve teaching practice is well documented (Gore Kenneth & Jennifer, 1991; Kemmis, 1985; Leitch & Day, 2000; McKernan, 1996). We will discuss it in more detail in a subsequent section.

If reflective practice implies taking our own professional practice as an object of contemplation in order to improve it, then it makes sense to ask what aspects of practice form a setting for reflection. Traditional problem solving processes are reductive in the sense that problem solving refers to selecting some aspects of the situation and bring to bear on them established technical tools for the solution of the problem. Mathematical word problems are an example par excellence of such problem solving. In reflective practice, however, the emphasis is not as much on problem solving as on problem setting. As Schön puts it:

From the perspective of Technical Rationality, professional practice is a process of problem solving. Problems of choice or decision are solved through the selection, from available means, of the one best suited to establish ends. But with this emphasis on problem solving, we ignore problem setting, the process by which we define the decision to be made, the ends to be achieved, the means which may be chosen. In real-world practice, problems do not present themselves to the practitioner as givens. They must be constructed from the materials of problem situations which are puzzling, troubling, and uncertain.

(Schön, 1983a, p. 40)

Problem setting is defined as "a process in which, interactively, we name the things to which we will attend and frame the context in which we will attend to them." (Schön, 1983a, p. 40). Please note that problem setting here is not a pre-existing situation, but refers to a problem set by the practitioner. Problem setting refers to methods that teachers use to work their way through the teaching situations riddled with dilemmas (Feldman, 1994). What this may look like in practice may be imagined with reference to practicing LCE in your own classroom. In implementing an LCE lesson, you may become more troubled by the inability of a particular student to participate in the discussions your own ability to manage the discussion or some other aspect of the teaching situation. Whatever aspect of the teaching situation attracts your interest will depend on your unique teaching situation. The process of reflection will focus on the particular aspect of the situation selected by you.

Deliberative Reflection

Deliberative reflection privileges neither expert advice nor the uniqueness of practice context. It is more holistic inasmuch as it encompasses a range of judgments including the expert advice as well as the elements of a practitioners' context (Valli, 1997; Wellington & Austin, 1996). The content of reflection in this type of reflection covers not just one's teaching behavior, but also the knowledge of subject matter, particular relationships with students, social and cultural elements of the teaching situations, as well as the school organization to name a few. The quality of reflection, however, is judged by the quality of decisions taken by teacher educators and teachers as practitioners to promote the learning of their students.

Personalistic reflection

This type of reflection may be undertaken in addition to the more technical, in and on action, as well as deliberative reflection. Its concern is not just learning, but life as a whole. A reflective practitioner practicing the personalistic reflection will be concerned with the ability of themselves and their students to live a good life as a whole. A consideration of the content of personalistic reflection also pushes the boundaries of the meaning of education and of professional practice.

Critical reflection

Critical reflection pushes the content of reflective practice further, beyond the person, into the social and political arenas. The content of a reflective practitioner practicing critical reflection is the educative actions that can help transform and improve the conditions of life in the society as a whole. Commitment to educational justice, inequities, and social action and reform remains a vital concern in this kind of reflection. Programs that encourage critical reflection will be concerned with implications of behavioral advice to teachers. Consider, for example, the use of questioning skills. A critical reflective practitioner will consider the social consequences of the use of questions, "to consider the way questions and wait time are distributed. Are certain kinds of students systematically ignored? Do some students too often receive negative feedback? What messages are communicated to students who go through the school day without an opportunity to contribute to classroom dialogue or without a positive instructional interaction?" (Valli, 1997, p. 79).

At the end of this brief discussion about the types of reflection, we should also note that these distinctions, especially between the technical and more critical types of reflection, are also contested. Fendler, for example, points out that while dedicated educational researchers are concerned about the role of schooling in the promotion of social justice, the alleged opposition between technical reflection and social reconstructionist reflection is a false dichotomy (Fendler, 2003). For instance, educators engaging in technical reflection may believe that the efficient mastery of subject matter by their students is the most effective means of redressing social inequities. Thus, even when the "reflective practices seem to be technical and instrumental, they may still embody a profound sense of moral and political commitment to improving society." (Fendler, 2003, p. 21).

Strategies of Reflective Practice

Reflective practices of all types assume that it is possible to turn our own professional practice into an object of contemplation. Reflection is premised on existence of an object of reflection. While reflection on the physical world is facilitated by its objective existence, such is not the case with one's own teaching practice. Practice consists of the series of purposive actions that we take as teachers. In order to reflect on these actions, they need to be objectified and thus turned into objects of reflection. Objectifying one's practice into an object of study demands innovative tools that must enable a student teacher or a teacher educator to step back from his or her practice in order to examine it. Therefore, nearly all reflective practice is contingent upon creating records of practice. These records of practice work as the object of practitioners' contemplation forcing them to assume the roles of reflective practitioners. The records of practice assume different forms such as journals, anecdotes and concept maps of one's practice. Below we will discuss some popular strategies used for reflective practice.

Reflective journal writing

We share the assumption of many teacher educators that reflective writing can promote reflective thinking (King & Kitchener, 1994; Ross, 1990). With Bolton (2010), we think of writing as an artistic process, which can harness one's memories and thus produce highly personal records of practice.

Prospective teachers can be asked to make journal entries regularly in order to keep track of their learning. Writing becomes particularly useful when used to record students' planning of their teaching practices and their accounts of the actual implementation of those plans in the classroom settings. These records are used by prospective teachers to examine both their successes and failures and to identify opportunities for refinement and change (Spalding, Wilson, & Mewborn, 2002; Valli, 1997).

Action research

Action research brings to bear the methods of systematic investigation on one's own practice. Because the goals of action research, like those of reflective practice, are improvement of practice, some scholars claim that reflective practice and action research are two different names of the same practice (see, McMahon, 1999). Emergence of both reflective practice and action research are widely seen as parallel to the widespread acceptance of constructivist and LCE approaches toward education reforms (Jennifer & Zeichner, 1991). Valli defines action research as a "systematic and in-depth inquiry into some aspect of one's own teaching practice and context" (Valli, 1997, p. 82). Irrespective of the actual methodologies used, action research can embrace all types of reflections mentioned above (Grundy, 1982).

When teacher educators and prospective teachers engage in action research, they go through the cycle of planning action, implementing it, recording it in order to examine it systematically using the available methodologies and research tools, finding ways of improving it based upon such examination, and, finally, fine tuning and improving the original plans of action (for details of different steps involved in action research as well as examples of its use in pre-service programs, see, Gore Kenneth & Jennifer, 1991; Kemmis, 1985; Leitch & Day, 2000). Valli (1997) refers to the use of problem solving in formulating the problems that student teachers want to address, demining the kind of information needed to understand the problems better and deciding upon the best ways of collecting that information. Based on this information, the student teachers generate ideas about changing practice and are encouraged to defend their ideas. Valli sums up these observations as follows: "By engaging in action research, teachers take a more active role in directing and improving their own teaching. They also work on their observational, data-collecting, and problem-solving skills. Prospective teachers are encouraged to reflect on relevant research as well as on their own situation and to get feedback from mentors and peers." (Valli, 1997, p. 82).

The use of action research is also extended to blur the distinction between university-based researchers and school-based teachers by turning teachers into researchers. Teacher researchers are, by definition, action researchers whose research is used for improvement of their own practice, but also published and presented in conferences for use by other professionals (Ball, 1993; Lampert, 2003; Parsons et al., 2002; Patterson, 1993).

Using life histories as the basis of reflection

Life histories are defined as "any retrospective account by the individual of his life in whole or in part, in written or oral form, that has been elicited or prompted by another person" (Watson & Watson-Franke, 1985, p. 2, cited by Knowles, 1993, p. 72). If you recall from above, retrospection is one of the meanings of the term reflection. Reflection on action is always retrospective. Furthermore, personalistic reflection, as described above, involves reflection on practice as part of ones overall life context. Records of life histories of prospective teachers can, therefore, potentially be most useful in making sense of ways in which their observations as children, the so-called apprenticeship of observation, influences their choices as teachers. According to Knowles (1993), "life histories are…illuminating windows on the processes of reflection that prospective teachers have utilized through their long experiences of being students"(pg.70).

We believe a reference to life histories is particularly important in contexts in which reform ideas, such as LCE, are likely to conflict with entrenched ideas about teaching and learning. Reflecting on, and becoming aware of, the ways in which teacher educators' and prospective teachers' early experiences may be influencing their current perspectives on teaching and learning can go a long way in finding viable ways of changing their practice.

Portfolios

Portfolios are compilations of students' work. For prospective teachers, these compilations can be designed as records of practice teaching. As such, they can be used as tools for nurturing reflective practice (Sparkes, 1994). The potential for the use of portfolios as tools for reflection has been a major motivation for their use in teacher education (Fredrick, 2009; Wade & Yarbrough, 1996).

Students could use portfolios to record their decisions regarding particular teaching strategies in the process of planning their teaching. They could document and explore issues faced during their practice and describe responses to the problems of practice and justify them. By way of critical reflection they could also deliberate upon the cultural, social and historical contexts of their practice and ways in which their actions affected student learning (Olson, 1991).

Anderson and DeMeulle (Wade & Yarbrough, 1996; K Zeichner & Wray, 2001) have documented the use of portfolios in 24 different teacher education programs in the context of the United States, Canada and the Netherlands. Their research shows that "portfolios encourage pre-service teachers to reflect and think about their work in deeper and more thoughtful ways than they have in the past" (Anderson & DeMeulle, 1998, p. 26).

Concluding Notes

This chapter has discussed the increasing use and relevance of reflective practice in education, especially as it relates to LCE and constructivism. As professional teacher educators participating in professional learning communities, reflective practice is an essential element of what takes place in these communities. Reflective practice is sometimes overused and not well understood. This chapter describes different types of reflective practice in education and how these types of reflection may come to influence all aspects of one's teaching. Reflective practice is more than just 'thinking back'. It has multiple perspectives, purposes and outcomes. The seminar below may help you understand reflective practice and provide you with the foundation for thinking through reflective practice and carrying it out.

Seminars

Seminar 1. Understanding reflective practice

Introduction

This seminar is designed to help you understand and differentiate between the different types of reflective practice.

Specific Tasks

1. Based on your reading of the chapter, make a matrix which shows your understanding of the different types of reflective practice. You may decide to make groups of two or more teacher educators to develop their own matrix and then compare. Some of the elements of reflective practice you may include are: definition, how practiced, purposes, impacts and relevance for your context.
2. Share you matrices with each other and discuss.
3. What type of reflective practice, if any, goes on within the college? Individually describe if and how you carry out reflective practice in your work at the college.
4. What type of reflective practice are you most interested in and why? Are there any barriers to reflective practice in your college? If so what are they? Are there ways to overcome these barriers?
5. How do student teachers learn about reflective practice in the college? Is it part of the curriculum—either hidden, intended or implemented curriculum? If yes, discuss. If not, discuss whether reflective practice should be made an explicit part of the curriculum and why or why not?

References