Engaging Student Teachers in Reflective Practice Through Photovoice

Why do we emphasize reflective practice so extensively in pre-service teacher education? What evidence do we have that frequent references to reflection are improving the quality of the teachers we prepare for certification and careers in teaching? Whatever reflection and reflective practice are, they are not ends in themselves; hopefully, they are means to the end of better teaching practices and better learning by students in schools. In this article I explore reflection and reflective practice from several perspectives, including my personal experiences as a teacher educator working with individuals preparing to become teachers of physics. The question asked in the title captures my fear that the ways teacher educators have responded to and made use of the concepts of reflection and reflective practice may be doing more harm than good in pre-service teacher education. To begin, I consider teacher education practices before and after the arrival of the term reflective practice. I then consider elements of Schön’s (1983) work and review five articles about reflective practice in teacher education; this is not a formal literature review, but rather an effort to show how virtually every article about reflective practice seems to be driven by its author’s personal perspective. The article continues with personal interpretations and illustrations and concludes with five generalizations about teacher education practices that indicate that much more work needs to be done if references to reflection are to do more good than harm in preservice teacher education programs.

Reflective practice enables educators to engage in self-examination of personal narratives and potential implicit bias that might impact their engagement with the learning communities they serve. Reflective practice informed by critical pedagogies supports educators in fostering learning spaces that affirm diversity, cultivate intellectual and personal growth, and invite community voices. Reflective practice work is grounded in deep trust, reciprocal mentorship, and a shared commitment to culturally sustaining education. As part of the Reflective Practice in Teacher Education project, the authors designed and discussed teaching for critical consciousness resources and reflective practice modules that allowed PreK-12 educators to delve into identity, implicit biases, culture, privilege, and resilience through a variety of methodologies (including dialogue, eloquent listening, journaling, mindfulness, portraiture).

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A key task of teacher educators is to help (student) teachers develop appropriate knowledge, competence, and values. Reflective practice is widely accepted as part of the theoretical basis and professional practice that new teachers should acquire. It has potential to promote improvements in both teaching and teaching about teaching. This chapter considers how teacher educators understand – and operationalise – the concept of reflective practice. It briefly reviews how reflective practice has been conceptualised in the field of education and analyses issues raised by its operationalisation in initial teacher education, and discusses some implications for teacher educators specifically. Evidence drawn from a small-scale research project is reported and analysed. Most teacher educators self-identify as reflective practitioners and promote reflective practice to their students, but differ significantly in how they understand and operationalise it in their professional lives. Their support for reflective practice is not based on systematic evidence from research about its value or impact; most receive no training in it. The full potential of reflective practice in teacher education is not yet realised. There is scope to work towards a shared understanding of what it means to be a reflective teacher educator and how this could translate into both professional practice and teaching reflective practice to students.

Many educators regard the practice of pedagogical reflection as a prime motivator in the professional growth of teachers. This idea has spurred the realization of the practice of reflection since the early stages of the university's teacher education program. Several scholars have developed their ideas regarding excellent practices in reflection throughout the years. They presented methodologies, concepts, and ways to construct the course of reflection from non-reflective to critical reflective by identifying the reflective thought process and underpinning the degrees of reflection. These ideas would also allow educators to create evaluations for reflective practice. However, this sound theoretical framework is frequently riddled with flaws that linger to the present time, particularly about the extent to which such activity will provide noteworthy growth for teachers, as well as the legitimacy of its reflexivity itself. This paper tries to revisit the origin of the concept, the development, and pinpoint the persistent issues. This, hopefully, would enable us to seek the deeper insight into the dynamics of reflective practice in teacher education program.

Self-reflection is an essential element of personal change (Dewey, 1991), and teachers should participate consciously and creatively in their own growth and development through reflection (Schon, 1987; Zeichner, 1999). Recently, there has been a gradual shift from the traditional transmission-based view of learning to a constructivist, process-oriented view of learning in teacher education (Candall, 2000). In the latter view, teachers modify and develop their personal theories with constant reflection on their own practice (Hacker & Barkhuizen, 2008; Williams, 2001). In Japan, the transmission-based view is still dominant in teacher education, and the importance of teacher reflection is not recognized. This paper explores the role of reflection and the views of student teachers on reflective practice in teacher education in Japan. The study was conducted in an MA program in English Education at a national university. The participants were eight first-year students enrolled in a teaching methodology course. The class met once a week for two semesters over a year. In order to enhance students’ reflection, the author asked students to submit a reflection journal every week. In these journals, the students reflected on what they learned in each class. In addition, they were expected to integrate theory and practice by reflecting on their own past experiences as a teacher and a learner. The author made comments on each journal to further enhance reflection. The students were also asked to submit a reflection report on their own micro-teaching they conducted twice during the second semester. They reviewed and analyzed videotaped micro-teaching. At the end of the course, an interview was conducted to determine how reflection journals and the reflection report helped the students to realize the importance of reflection and to engage in refection. Discussion is based on the analysis of the interview data, written journals and reflection papers.

Professional conversations are significant in teacher education, yet policy makers and practitioners differ in their understanding of what these involve. The purpose of this study was to identify and understand the critical elements of successful professional conversations; the elements that effectively contribute to critical reflection and evaluation of teaching practice. Insight is provided by 10 participants who took part in a discussion group, in-depth interviews and written reflections. All participants are involved in professional conversations for a teacher education programme in Wales, in their capacity as either a student teacher, practice tutor or mentor. Findings highlight that some of the significant elements needed for an effective professional conversation include adequate preparation time for the conversation itself, knowledge of programme requirements and professional teaching standards, along with knowledge about the student teacher's school context – these can all be described as 'hard' inputs; whereas the 'soft' inputs include effective listening and questioning skills, and being able to offer challenge to the student teacher. Similarly, outputs of professional conversations can also be recognised as 'hard': effective reflections contributing to progress against the professional teaching standards; and 'soft': collaborative working relationships that are honest and positive with two-way learning for the mentor and the student. It is concluded that the softer skills of questioning and understanding the student teacher's expectations must be developed effectively for professional conversations in teacher education to have a positive impact on all those involved. Received: 20 September 2024 | Revised: 5 November 2024 | Accepted: 16 December 2024 Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study. Author Contribution Statement Alison Glover: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Catharine Bleasdale: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Funding acquisition. Grace Clifton: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Angela Thomas: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing- review & editing, Visualization, Project administration.

Reflective practice in teacher education is one reform effort that has taken hold in the education community. This article shares some of the findings of a qualitative interpretive study that explored how five pre‐service teachers constructed meanings of reflective practice, and how these meanings informed their practice. The purpose of this study was to better understand reflective practice in teacher preparation. The theoretical framework originates in the works of Dewey and Schön, and applies a symbolic interaction theoretical and analytical framework to give voice to the pre‐service teachers within the historical and institutional contexts of a teacher preparation program. Nine themes were culled from the data and categorized within the symbolic interaction social processes of acquiring perspective, achieving individuality, and situating the act of reflection. These themes highlighted how the pre‐service teachers interpreted and practiced reflection in this teacher preparation program. The findings suggest that these pre‐service teachers had a general understanding of reflection and learned to reflect through various opportunities, and in different contexts. This study has implications for the ways in which pre‐service teachers learn about reflection, raises questions about innovative writing practices in reflection and is insightful for teacher educators who prepare pre‐service teachers to become reflective practitioners.

In this paper, I take issue with the overuse of reflective practice in teacher education, arguing that the term ‘reflection’ is often utilized without a comprehensive understanding of its quite diverse parentage. In efforts to clarify the term, I trace the ideological lineage of reflective practice in education, detailing the rationalist-technicist model offered in the work of John Dewey and the experiential-intuitive model as it appears in the work of Donald Schön, highlighting the key differences in their respective approaches to reflection through critique. I demonstrate that both models bifurcate knowledge and experience, privileging the former at the expense of the latter. I conclude with a brief exploration of Van Manen’s tacit knowing and its potential for reflective practice in teacher education. Ultimately, this work cautions against an uncritical adoption of reflective models, stressing that in doing so, the very spirit of reflective practice can be undermined.

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This chapter advances the contention raised throughout the book, that reflective practice, despite its pervasiveness in teaching and teacher education, is often applied to a wide range of distinct, and sometimes incongruent practices. In this chapter, the work of the authors contributing to this volume is drawn upon, alongside extant literature in the field, to examine what is meant by “reflective practice” and what forms of reflective practice are appropriate for whom, and when. Consideration is also given to who and what is driving the reflective practice agenda evident in teaching and teacher education, globally. The implications for teacher education and teacher professional learning of these considerations is examined, and a call for less politicized and more authentic and transformative approaches to reflective practice and its concomitant outcomes is argued.

This paper examined the import of adopting reflective practice in the preparation of teacher trainees in the colleges of education in Ghana. It looked at the various dimensions of the knowledge base of teacher education curriculum in Ghana and various policy documents, especially the Colleges of Education Act, Act 847, which elevated the status of training colleges to tertiary institutions. Data from varied documents were explored and analysed from a discourse analytic perspective to ascertain how reflective practice is integrated into the pedagogy of teacher education in Ghana. The paper identified the adoption of reflective practice, with emphasis on artistry, which is reflection-in-action, as a suitable pedagogical skill to complement what the colleges of education are currently doing to actualize their mission. Policy recommendations included the restructuring of the curriculum of the colleges of education to address the development of students’ tacit knowledge by interfacing theory and experience. Research recommendations included an action research on teacher effectiveness using reflective practice.

Through a Bakhtinian approach, this paper works to highlight concepts of dialogue, genre, and heteroglossia within one beginning teacher’s practice. Through a case study of this pre-service teacher’s reflections over the course of one academic year spent student teaching in US public schools, this article illustrates how reflective practice, framed through Bakhtinian notions of dialogue, genre, and heteroglossia, can unite the consideration of context with reflective practice. Though the goals of this inquiry seek to outline tenets of a dialogic approach to reflective practice, implications importantly suggest ways that teachers and teacher educators, in employing a Bakhtinian conceptual framework to the study of teacher reflection, can continue to stress reflection’s connection to action.

This is a practitioner-based research inquiry into reflective practices during an in-service professional development course for Emirati early childhood teachers at a university in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The course focused on child-centred learning through play. During the course, reflective strategies were explicitly modelled by the lecturer through thinking-aloud protocol, sharing of reflective diary entries and interactive discussions. Students reflected on their teaching practices in reflective diaries and on their experiences of explicit modelling of reflective practices in semi-structured interviews. The inquiry’s three phases examined: (a) the content of teacher educator reflective practices; (b) how participants reflected on their teaching and, (c) how participants benefited from the explicit modelling of reflective practices during the course. Findings showed the teacher educator reflected on essential elements of teacher reflective practice. Importantly, students also evidenced reflection on key concepts and on how their developing reflective awareness had positive repercussions for child-centred, play-based practices.

Learning and Sharing through Reflective Practice in Teacher Education in Italy