Reflective Pedagogical Thinking: How Can We Promote It and Measure It?

Abstract

The Collaboration for the Improvement of Teacher Education (CITE) is a pre-student teaching program that promotes students' reflective thinking about curriculum, methods, and sociopolitical issues through blocked classes and structured field experiences. The Framework for Reflective Thinking, a coding scheme, was developed to evaluate students' ability to reflect on pedagogical principles underlying teaching decisions, contextual factors affecting the application of the princi ples, and moral, ethical, or political issues surrounding a teaching experience. The initial evalua tion indicated that CITE students were beginning to apply pedagogical principles in making teach ing decisions. Above average students were able to adapt these principles to a specific context. Two additional studies indicated that CITE students showed significantly greater gains in reflection than other methods students not in the CITE program and that the Framework for Reflective Thinking could be used with experienced teachers to note changes in reflective thinking in a year- long staff development effort.