Reflective Practice and Teacher Education - Azim Premji University

Reflective Practice and Teacher Education: Marriage of Convenience or Soul Mates?
Dr. Mythili Ramchand
Director
RV Educational Consortium
Bangalore
In a recent newspaper article a physical fitness columnist rued the fact that for decades
people are being goaded on to take up regular exercises for the sake of long term health
benefits, but to no avail. Recently fitness enthusiasts have changed their advocacy tact
and started pitching for physical exercises as an instant feel good factor. The columnist
provides data to show that this has led to an increase in the number of people exercising 1 .
When it comes to education, while the banking concept of school education has been
questioned by many thinkers, this has not been challenged in the teacher education sector.
Student teachers are expected to go through their teacher preparation programme with the
inherent assumption that it would help them become effective and efficient teachers in
future. Essentially what they learn in the pre service teacher education programme is like
a “dead capital” that they would hopefully utilise once they become teachers (Dunne &
Pendlebury, 2003). At the same time, the expectations from prospective teachers are
enormous. At present, pre service teacher education is expected to prepare teachers for
the reenvisaged school education system as laid out in the National Curriculum
Framework (NCERT, 2005). This framework advocates providing each child with an
opportunity to think, to articulate ideas and participate actively in learning.
Constructivist principles enunciated in NCF, 2005 enforce the notion that in education
the learner is the core producer of learning and teaching is meant to give a boost to
learning.
There is now a realisation that the knowledge base of teacher education is “tentative and
fluid” (NCTE, 2009; p.19). The social context of any classroom is recognised as being
too complex for a set of principles or disparate theories to be of any practical use for a
teacher. Teacher education programmes are thereby moving away from prescriptive
approaches and increasingly focusing on engaging prospective teachers in extensive
questioning, reflecting and constructing knowledge (Fosnot, 1996). The emphasis is on
teacher empowerment.
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In India too, the National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCTE, 2009)
recommends that teacher education programmes focus on building prospective teachers’
capacities to construct knowledge, adapt to meet needs of diverse children and diverse
contexts, and equip them as professionals who can make independent judgments at times
of uncertainty and fluidity. The framework envisions a “liberal, humanistic” teacher
education programme drawing from an “integrative and eclectic thinking” and
emphasizing “dialogical explorations” (p.19). It identifies reflective practice as the
central aim of teacher education.
So, does the justification of positing reflective practice within a teacher education
programme lie in professional development alone or would it also help transform teacher
as a truly empowered person? Can reflective practice be more personally fulfilling for
student teachers in terms of promoting better understanding, developing insights and
helping make connections with her own life or is it a set of skills and strategies that
student teachers can pick up to help them deliver better, once they become teachers?
This paper attempts to interpret these, alongside basic questions like - What constitutes
reflective practice? How is reflective practice conceptualised in teacher professional
development? Can a teacher education programme itself be considered as reflective
practice? 2
The paper is not meant to be a comprehensive review of the vast and much discussed idea
of reflective practice. It is more in the nature of interpretive inquiry 3 . The vision of
NCFTE, 2009 is used as the broad framework for interpreting texts that are generally
acknowledged as seminal to building up the notion of reflective practice in teacher
education 4 .
The paper has three sections. The first section considers the works of thinkers who have
contributed to a conceptual understanding of reflective practice. The next section looks at
the positioning of reflective practice within teacher education. The last section analyses
the possibility of teacher education as reflective practice.
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Conceptual Framework of Reflective Practice
The genesis of reflective practice can be traced to Aristotle, although the distinction
between theory and practice is considered to be his legacy. Aristotle’s conception of
phronesis as the art of making informed, wise decisions acknowledges the importance of
judgments when faced with particular action-situation in a practical field. Phronesis then,
provides the practical wisdom to guide committed or ethical action (praxis) and
incorporates insight, perception and experience to help situate knowledge with relevance,
appropriateness and sensitivity to particular contexts (Polanyi, 1966; Rorty, 1998; Dunne
& Pendlebury, 2003).
Dewey’s book How We Think (1933) is seminal to the development of the notion of
reflective practice in education. In the book he describes the difference among impulsive
action, routine action and reflective action. The latter arises out of a need to solve a
problem and involves persistence and careful consideration of practice. Dewey was of the
view that we begin to reflect on a complex situation when we face it and ask ourselves
what needs to be done. This changes the situation from an “indeterminate” one to a
“problematic one” (p.109), which is then taken up for examining and exploring in terms
of action. Reflective teaching therefore is a “chain that involves not simply a sequence of
ideas but (has) a consequence” (p.4). It entails decision making in the immediate context
and practice. Dewey defines three attitudes as prerequisites for reflective teaching: open
mindedness, responsibility and wholeheartedness. These attitudes and a command of
technical skills of inquiry and problem solving define a teacher who is reflective,
according to Dewey. He also goes on to describe an unreflective teacher as one whose
practice tends to be biased by personal prejudices and uninformed pedagogy. Reflective
practice thereby becomes imperative for “overcoming the inertia that inclines one to
accept suggestions at face value” (p.13).
Dewey had pioneered the idea of a teacher as an intellectual leader and reflective
practitioner. More than six decades ago, he has argued against dictating subject matter
and methods to teachers and warned that excluding teachers “from opportunities to
exercise intelligent judgments will tend to reduce their sense of responsibility” (Dewey,
1948 quoted in Hare, 2000; p. 2).
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R S Peters while emphasising the role of philosophy in teacher education, points out the
need for philosophy of education to help teachers develop a critical and experimental
attitude towards teaching, by providing them with a way to connect theory and practice
(Peters, 1970). Though he has not specifically endorsed reflective teaching, he states that
“teachers must learn to think on their feet and experiment with different ways of teaching
different types of subjects to different types of students” (Peters, 1977; p. 165). This is
akin to Aristotle’s phronesis and Dewey’s reflective practice.
Schön brought reflection into the centre of an understanding of what professionals do. He
presented concisely the developing discourse on reflective practitioner. Schön gives an
alternative epistemology of practice by arguing against “technical rationality” as the
grounding of professional knowledge and positing knowledge inherent in practice as
“artful doing” (Schön, 1983; p.68). A practitioner constructs a new theory of each unique
case and is not dependent on the categories of established theory and techniques, even
though she draws from it.
Schön coins two terms, reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. Reflection-in-action
lies in the mediation between general and particular. It requires one to be not only
perceptive in sizing up particular situations but also flexible in applying general
knowledge. It is an almost instantaneous reflection wherein the practitioner draws upon
her repertoire of knowledge and skills from her accumulated experience both to
understand the situation at hand and to change it. Reflection-in-action involves thinking
at a meta level about the process in which one is engaged. This differs from Dewey’s
conceptualisation of routine action. Reflection-on-action happens after the event and is
deliberative and conscious. This leads to critically examining reflection-in-action,
reformulating and testing practice through further action. Development of professional
knowledge and improvement in practice go together, as practitioners build up their
repertoire of images, ideas, examples and actions that they draw from. “The familiar
functions as a precedent or a metaphor or an exemplar of the unfamiliar” (Schön, 1983;
p.138). As did Dewey, Schön also believed that professionals who are encouraged to
think carefully about what they do while they do it, learn in more profound ways.
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Among others, Solomon (1987) critiqued Schön’s conception of reflective practice and
pointed out that the social and discursive dimension of teaching learning was missing.
He suggested reflection as a social practice in which articulation of ideas to and with
others was crucial to the development of reflective practice. Core features of reflective
practice include situated, goal directed activities and dialogues. Reflection is not wholly
contained in the mind of the individual but is “distributed” across the “situated learning
discourse community” (Hoffman-Kipp et al, 2003).
In India, there is a strong tradition of reflection (Kumar, 1995). The ideal of a ‘Guru’ has
been to continuously develop oneself as an individual and as a teacher, be committed to
the growth of one’s students, and have deep concern for the society (Sharma, 2008).
Swami Vivekananda identified a teacher as “one who can convert himself, as it were, into
a thousand persons at a moment’s notice” (Swami Vivekananda, 1941). For Tagore, “the
highest education is that which does not merely give us information but make our life in
harmony with all existence” (Tagore, 1921). Gandhi’s constructive programme including
his system of basic education was similar to Swami Vivekananda’s educational aims and
Tagore’s holistic approach to education. Like Tagore, Gandhi also believed that the
ultimate goal of education was to develop the whole person – body, mind and spirit. The
essential aspects of Gandhi’s philosophy of education include developing character,
drawing out latent talents of students and revealing the qualities of the spirit (Richards,
2001). To Krishnamurti, education is spontaneous perception which makes one free. All
his addresses to teachers were innately geared towards reflective practice. For example,
he stipulates that a teacher must be “constantly alert, intensely aware of his own thoughts
and feelings, of the ways in which he is conditioned, and of his activities and his
responses” (Krishnamurti, 1953).
Starting from Aristotle’s crucial conceptualization of exercising judgment, Dewey’s
moral and ethical aspects, R S Peters’ account of teacher autonomy of professional
judgment, to Schön’s idea of harmonizing theory and practice in professional
development, and Indian thinkers’ insights, the notion of reflective practice straddles a
wide spectrum. Several writers and researchers have extended and extrapolated these
ideas of reflective practice within teacher professional development. This is elaborated in
the next section.
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Reflective Practice and Teacher Professional Development
The philosophers and thinkers briefly described in the previous section established
reflective practice as much more than thinking about teaching. An important feature of
reflective practice is its relationship with professional knowledge and practice. An
understanding of what constitutes professional knowledge and practice is itself evolving.
From an attempt to identify teacher proof modes of practice to a recognition that personal
qualities and that too not just cognitive abilities are what make a teacher who she is, has
not been a smooth transition or even complete transformation. Nevertheless substantial
work has been done in extending understandings of the practice of education and
professional development of teachers. Current conceptions of philosophy of education
recognise that education is a human practice and cannot be subject to objective
theorisation. The practice of education lends itself to reflection, which if it is to “remain
true to its task”, involves a “different kind of thinking” from that which informs
theorising (Hogan & Smith, 2003; p. 167-168).
This “different” kind of thinking is emerging from critical thinking and pedagogy among
other developments 5 . Critical theory places critique near the centre of educational
concerns. As conceptualized by Habermas, it values emancipation and self determination
as the general aims of education. These values are not “chosen” to be imposed on a
curriculum but are “constitutive and central to the very processes by which that
curriculum has been furnished in the first place” (Blake & Masschelein, 2003; p.47).
A critical theory perspective on teacher education implies an understanding and analyses
of linkages between schools and the larger society in terms of inherent values, ideologies
and power relations. Critical theory helps focus on integrating theory into practice in new
ways (Beyer, 2001).
Self reflection and dialogue are central to critical pedagogy. Schools should be places
where “children and teachers share and reflect on their individual and collective
experience without fear of judgment” (NCF, 2005; p.24).
The epistemology, knowledge, processes and approaches of teacher professional
development for schools such as those envisaged in NCF, 2005 are briefly interpreted in
this section.
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Epistemological underpinning and knowledge base
In bringing reflective practice centre stage, Schön had bemoaned that professional
education undervalues practical knowledge and grants privileged status to intellectual,
scientific and rational knowledge forms (Schön, 1983). Increasingly, it is being
recognized that the “foundationalist stance” for teacher professional development has
been promoting a transmission model of education wherein officially prescribed
knowledge and competences form the core (Hogan & Smith, 2003; p.172).
This has led to questioning the excessive reliance on general theories in teacher
preparation programmes and the validity of theories on the practice of education.
To quote but a few examples, Polanyi (1966) has pointed out that too close a scrutiny of
the particulars makes us lose sight of the larger entity. In the words of Dunne &
Pendlebury (2003) “theorising a practice has tended to involve attempts to disembed the
knowledge of skill implicit in the performance of its characteristic tasks from the
immediacy and idiosyncrasy of the particular situations in which they are deployed and
from the experience and character of the practitioners they reside in. Through this
disembedding it is supposed that what is essential in the knowledge and skill can be
encapsulated in explicit generalisable formulae, procedures or rules” (p.197).
In this context, the Kena Upanishad has two interesting verses:
If you think you know it well, little indeed do you know. (KU 2.1)
I think not that I know it well. Yet I know it is not unknown to me. (KU 2.2)
(Translation: Aurobindo, 2001) 6
The discourse on reflection in teacher professional development has shifted focus from a
narrowly conceptualized epistemology that puts a premium on objective “third person
perspective that yield generalised findings with clearly formulated, publicly agreed
procedures” to practical reasoning, personal judgments and interpretations 7 (Dunne &
Pendlebury, 2003; p.195). As van Manen (1995) succinctly puts it, the concept of
reflective practice is “an attempt to address the gap that teachers find between what they
learn about teaching and what is required in the practice of teaching”. The purpose of
reflective practice therefore is to enhance awareness of one’s thoughts and action as a
means of developing genuine praxis. Along with Habermas’ critical theory, discussed in
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the previous section, this view of reflective practice offers an emancipatory role to praxis
and suggests an interpretive role of knowledge that must inform the formation of this
praxis. This knowledge is more of a Socratic nature, provisional and uncertain. The
complex processes involved in teaching/learning preclude universality or finality of
knowledge. This does not mean a capitulation to relativism. Nor does it mean that
theories have no role to play in teacher professional development- after all how will a
teacher be able to identify the peculiarity of a particular case if she is not aware of what is
general? General theories are definitely required, though not as a legitimisation for
practice but as an aid/prop to reflect on the nature and implications of practice. The
thinness of general theories needs to be augmented with thickly descriptive studies.
These would utilise a variety of narrative modes and be reflective in character
(Greene,1994; Bruner, 1996).
As mentioned earlier, the role of theory is for interpretation and not explanation.
Reflective practice provides the much needed tool for such interpretations and helps
evolve situational knowledge and robust personal theories.
Processes and Approaches
The absence of finality of knowledge in teacher education implies that a teacher has to
formulate her own theories which are thought through and internalised. She has to bring
them out into open to be questioned and challenged both by others, and general canonical
theories. Dialogues therefore become a crucial approach towards reflective practice in
teacher professional development programmes (Kegan, 2000).
There is a long history of dialogues in our country. A majority of the Upanishads are in
the form of dialogues. The preferred method of teaching in the Vedic period was through
a gradation of questions and answers (Mookerji, 1989, p.192).
Dialogues help develop one’s understanding by means of engaging with others’ multiple
perspectives as well as bringing to light one’s “presumptions from previous experience”.
This promotes the “integrity of education as a critical and constructive practice” in lieu of
“theoretical and coercive undertakings” (Hogan & Smith, 2003; p.173-174).
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Stories and parables have been a powerful pedagogic tool across cultures. They are
meant to widen perspectives and help make sense of profound knowledge, by relating it
to the familiar. Then again, the appeal of stories lies in the fact that there is no one
singular truth, but opens up multiple interpretations, depending on one’s experiences.
The common form of education of the laity in India has long been through stories
(Mookerji, 1989).
Dialogues and stories/narratives, in consonance with reflection, not only informs but also
transforms knowledge and helps formulation of praxis, as seen in the previous section.
Praxis in this sense is informed, committed action and not simply action based on
reflection. According to Gadamer (1979), there is continual interplay between ends and
means, thought and action, and developing praxis involves interpretation, understanding
and application in one “unified process”. Needless to say, the reflective practitioner’s
repertoire is constantly refined in the work setting.
Deliberate promotion of this kind of nuanced and layered reflective practice in teacher
professional development programme is a challenge. While there has been a rhetoric of
reflective practice “as an interpretive dialogue that enriches the self and enhances
professional practice” (McLaughlin & Hanifin, 1995), actual examples in practice are
sparse 8 , even though a number of teacher professional development programmes in the
US, UK and Australia purport to promote reflective practice 9 .
In India, the NCFTE (2009) envisages a humanistic and liberal teacher education
programme, with reflective practice as the central aim. Its goal is to prepare humane
teachers who are thinking professionals. In the light of our own past experiences
(Khader, 2008) and those of other countries (Zeichner & Liston, 1996), should there be a
rethink in our conceptualisation of teacher education if the goals of NCFTE (2009) are to
be met? This is considered in the following section.
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Teacher Education as Reflective Practice
Zeichner & Liston (1990) suggest four paradigms of teacher education:
� Behaviourist paradigm which aims at producing followers/innovators who imbue
specified competences
� Personalistic paradigm wherein the goal is to produce effective and efficient
teachers who can construct their professional beliefs and perceptions around
students’ perceived needs
� Traditional craft paradigm promotes a good employee model with the assumption
that good teaching results from assimilating the tacit knowledge of expert teachers
� Inquiry-oriented paradigm that wishes to develop reflective professionals who
would skillfully and reflectively act upon ethical, political and pedagogical issues
involved in their daily practice
Reflective practice as interpreted in this paper calls for a fifth paradigm - that of teacher
education itself as reflective practice. This would entail developing a collective praxis
based on dialogues and interpretations. Through these, student teachers would realise
that they would be operating under complex conditions which include uncertainty,
uniqueness and many a time value conflicts. Teaching and learning are as much social as
they are individual endeavours. Hence it is also desirable that they develop an
understanding that “school learning is not just an effect of teachers’ knowledge but a
social production accomplished by teachers and students acting and thinking in concert
with one another” (Floden & Buchmann,1989; p.32). More importantly a teacher
education programme conceptualised as reflective practice would help bring plurality of
choices centre stage.
This becomes all the more imperative in the present context where schooling is being
legitimatised as the only form of education. Not only has schooling become a socio
economic necessity, but has also acquired a legal mandate in the form of Right of
Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. Options to make schooling a
meaningful experience to all children abound in our country, with the NCF, 2005 leading
the way. Gandhi’s basic education, Krishnamurthy’s notion of freedom, Tagore’s
conceptualisation of school 8 finds an echo to this paper’s interpretation of reflective
practice. It is time teacher education rises up to the challenge and recasts itself as
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eflective practice instead of only considering reflective practice as its aim, even if it is
central.
1. Deccan Herald article dated 25-08-2012
Notes
2. Prof. Seshadri helped clarify my initial ideas. I am indebted to him for this.
3. This inquiry has been informed primarily by Smith, J. 1992. Interpretive Inquiry: A practical and
moral activity. Theory Into Practice. 31 (2) p.100-106 and Arnett R. 2007. Interpretive inquiry as
qualitative communication research. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication. 8(1).
p.29-35
4. Review throws up a plethora of literature. For the purpose of this paper, frequently quoted
meta studies across countries were considered.
5. Prominent among these are post structuralism, post modernism, feminism, pragmatism,
phenomenology and theories of ethics and caring. All these different philosophic traditions of
enquiry have contributed to educational practice and its discourse.
6. It was Prof. Kashyap, SAKSI who drew my attention to this verse.
7. Interpretation draws from Gadamer’s hermeneutic approach which defends practical reason
against domination of technology based science. He shows that in all human activities including
education what leads to better understanding is interpretation and not explanations. Neither,
“objectivity” nor “conclusive answers” are possible (Hogan & Smith, 2003; Dunne & Pendlebury,
2003; Gadamer, 1979).
8. Specific examples include Stenhouse’s conception of teacher as researcher and Kolb’s experiential
learning.
Prominent among the meta studies are:
Zeichner (1987) who gives an overview of instructional strategies employed in pre service teacher
education
Cases and critiques of reflective teacher education provided by Linda Valli (1992)
Grimmet et al (1996) who provide a summary of perspectives of reflective practice in teacher
education programme
Zeichner & Liston (1996) who give an overview of the traditions of reflective practice
A list of action strategies for promoting reflective thinking in teacher compiled by Taggard (2005)
Pollard (2008) who suggests a framework of reflective practice that attempts to synthesise
understanding reflective practice thus far, connecting the theoretical conceptions and studies of
characteristics of reflective practice in action
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9. Bould & Walker (1998) have criticised that teacher education colleges seem to promote reflective
practice on demand and the processes they use have no link to conceptual framework. More over
they fail to encourage student teachers to challenge accepted teaching practices, which is at the
heart of reflective practice.
10. Gandhi was highly critical of the homogeneity that schooling offered (Dharampal, 1983) and its
coercive powers, which he said was an affront on human dignity (Fagg, 2002). The pedagogy he
offered had immense emancipatory power with the knowledge base coming from the hitherto
marginalised communities of craftsmen (Kumar, 1992).
Krishnamurti emphasised freedom in the true sense of the word. Systems of thought and patterns
of action were anathema to him. Again in truly hermeneutic character, Krishnamurti says “it is far
more important to understand the manner of our approach to any problem than to understand the
problem itself” (Krishnamurti, 1974).
Tagore’s concern was on harmony. To him school was a place that would have organic
connections to its surroundings and provide such an education that would help children be in touch
with their “complete life – economical, intellectual, aesthetic, social and spiritual” (Tagore, 1921).
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