Reflective Practice and Teacher Education - Azim Premji University

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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. 6
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 7
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Reflective Practice and Teacher Education - Azim Premji University

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