Description
Reflection has become widely recognised as a crucial element in the professional growth of teachers. Terms such as 'reflective teaching', 'enquiry orientated teacher education', 'teachers as researchers' and 'reflective practitioner' have become quite prolific in discussions of classroom practice and professional development. It is frequently presumed that reflection is an intrinsically good and desirable aspect of teaching and teacher education and that teachers, in becoming more reflective, will in some sense be better teachers, though such claims have been rarely subject to detailed scrutiny.
Each of the chapters in this book is concerned with exploring the concept of reflection and considering its contributions to teacher education. The papers range across different stages of professional development, some focusing in particular on pre-service education, others on in-service or professional development generally. Some of the papers are concerned with particular strategies for promoting reflection and how they might operate in a teacher education context, others dwell more upon a theoretical appreciation of how reflection facilitates in the processes of professional development, and how it relates to issues of quality in teacher education.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1 Reflective Teacher Education Programs: An Analysis of Case Studies 2 A Conceptual Framework for Reflection in Preservice Teacher Education 3 Theory, Theorizing and Reflection in Initial Teacher Education 4 Eliciting Student Teachers’ Personal Theories 5 Life-History Accounts as Mirrors: A Practical Avenue for the Conceptualization of Reflection in Teacher Education 6 Tutors’ Professional Knowledge of Supervision and the Implications for Supervision Practice 7 Changes in Beliefs about Learners among Participants in Eleven Teacher Education Programs 8 Critical Attributes of a Reflective Teacher: Is Agreement Possible? 9 Supporting Reflection in Teachers’ Learning
