Critically Reflective Practitioners: Exploring Our Intentions as Teacher Educators
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-2013
Abstract
The pervasive presence of teacher reflection in the research literature is indicative of its prominence in education. As teacher educators, engaging in reflective practices is an essential professional development tool, yet we often share our successes rather than shed light on our errors and blunders. In this paper, we describe the challenges we experienced across one year of working with a cohort of pre-service teachers. Through our engagement in the three stages of critical reflection via the use of concentric narratives, we were able to reposition ourselves from placing blame on the students to ownership of our roles in creating a negative cohort experience. We close by discussing implications of this work for the development of teacher educators as critically reflective practitioners.