Going beyond the gap between theory and practice: Rethinking teacher reflection with poststructural insights

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article aims to formulate and answer the question of how insights from poststructuralism can inform our pedagogy of reflection that is based on the inseparability between theory and practice. To meaningfully situate this discussion in the context of preservice teachers’ reflection on their community-based field experience, we draw on our own teaching experiences in the U.S. early childhood teacher education programs. In this article, we provide illustrative examples of several strategies we have found useful in helping preservice teachers engage with poststructurally inspired, theoretical reflection or reflective practice to examine their multiple and competing discourses that shape their understandings, relationships, and interactions with themselves and the children in their field sites such as Head Start programs and homeless shelters. In this process, we highlight how preservice teachers began to rethink their “at risk” discourse concerning children, coming from certain racial/ethnic, language, and social economic class backgrounds. Going beyond instrumental view of practical (ir)relevance of theory in the current evidence-based practice model, this article addresses the needs for providing epistemological diversity in teacher education to allow multiple readings of field experiences and disrupt the legitimacy afforded to dominant discourses in education.