The role of reflection in the teachers’ development process

Reflection is a widely researched area because it seems to be necessary to impact on teacher development, and today there is a considerable body of literature that emphasises its importance. Schön’s (1983) term “reflective practitioners” contributed enormously to the debate and to its popularity. He criticised the positivist epistemology of the then dominant

‘technical rationality’ model of professional knowledge, which seemed to him inadequate in accounting for many features of expertise. He distinguished between reflection in action (the process of decision making by teachers while they are engaged in teaching), which is context specific, and reflection on action, which occurs outside the teaching situation and is not immediately bound to the context and the actions. Schön made a case arguing that reflection enables practitioners to examine their practices and assumptions and thus to identify why they might need to change them. As Day (1999: 27) put it, his merit is to have “legitimized teaching as knowledge-based, intellectual activity in which teachers are not only capable of deconstructing but also reconstructing experience”. Another of Schön’s merits is to have established an operative direction for teacher education.

The need for language teachers to reflect – as the path that may lead teachers to review their own beliefs – is recognised by many researchers and it is now paramount in teacher professional development initiatives to help teachers to reason about their teaching role and practice (Shulman 1987; Day 1999, Richards & Lockhart 1994; Loewenberg Ball & Cohen 1999; Johnson & Golombek 2002). Action research⁴³, is advocated for its potential to lead teachers to reflect. Carr & Kemmis (1986), for example, argue that it is important for teachers

43 Action Research usually refers to those forms of inquiry in which teachers engage in investigations of their own practices, cf. Carr & Kemmis (1986).

Teachers’ beliefs Innovation

Policies Lifelong learning

to investigate their own practices and beliefs within their own contexts.

Richards (1998) argued for reflection as a key component of teacher development that helps teachers move to higher levels. He considers reflection a process whereby an experience is consciously recalled and evaluated for a broader purpose. Assuming a reflective view of teaching enables the teachers “to develop pedagogical habits necessary for self-directed growth” (Richards 1998: 21). This accords with Day (1999: 22), who states that:

[…] teachers who reflect in, on and about the action are engaging in inquiry which is aimed not only at understanding themselves better as teachers, but also at improving their teaching.

Bailey et al. (2001: 26-44) share a similar view, highlighting other aspects involved in reflection: the major benefits consist of becoming cognisant about oneself, promoting self-awareness and self-observation and adopting a critical attitude towards oneself by challenging one’s own personal beliefs about teaching. The authors argue that teachers must learn to be reflective, but at the same time indicate that, because reflection involves affective and cognitive processes, changing is not an easy task and may even be “threatening” (Bailey et al.

2001: 44 quoting Birch 1992).

Despite its uncontested potential, many studies have highlighted the limits of reflection.

Reflection is perhaps necessary, but not sufficient for expertise (Day 1999: 2). When time is short, the scope for reflection is limited (Eraut 1994: 144). Also the depth of reflection may depend

on energy level, disposition of the teacher and ability to analyse not only the practice but also the context in which the practice is occurring – all within an extremely short time-frame. Even if longer in-class time for reflection (e.g. when students are engaged in individual reading or writing or self-directed group work) were possible, it would not provide time for deliberative reflection (Day 1999: 27).

Zeichner & Liston (1996: 1) warn against simplistic conceptions of reflection. They point out that simply thinking about teaching does not necessarily imply reflective teaching:

If a teacher never questions the goals and the values that guide his or her work, the context in which he or she teaches, or never examines his or her assumptions, then it is our belief that this individual is not engaged in reflective teaching”.

Day (1999: 28) specifies that reflection may not lead to development, instead it may actually reinforce experience without re-evaluation, and may be unlikely to result in critical reappraisal or change. In a similar vein, Eraut (1994: 126) states that “most expert performance is ongoing and non-reflective”. Richards (1998) conducted a study to investigate the nature of reflective thinking with in-service TESOL teachers and to determine whether journal writing could activate reflective thinking. He had disappointing and inconclusive results. There was little significant change in the extent to which the teachers developed a greater degree of reflectivity over time (ibid. 167).

Essentially, however, the very meanings of reflections are not easy to explain, as the contributions so far show. Reflection gains in significance as attempts are made to understand and to widen its scope or its purpose. Without denying the value of reflective acts for teachers, some researchers have addressed the insufficiency of the construct of reflection.

Grenfell (1998) for example, although recognising that reflection and the reflective practitioner are indeed “powerful metaphors”, he neverthless questions their validity:

But do they exist in reality? Is reflection anything more than a romantic notion?

We all reflect in a manner. […] In other words, human beings are by nature reflective creatures. Is the ‘reflective practitioner’ therefore anything more than a truism [...]? (Grenfell 1998: 15).

The considerations he makes suggest that reflection is a developmental construct: first he points to personal and biographical experiences that can have an impact on the “reflective practitioner” (ibid. 12; 15) and further to the fact that, as teachers progress over time in their experience, there is much more to reflect upon besides the immediate teaching situation:

“What there is to reflect upon grows in line with experience as this too grows” (ibid. 15). Also Lawes (2003: 25) sounds very critical about reflective practice as the “guiding principle” of most of professional development. She has doubts about what many proponents of reflective practice seem to accept, namely, “that insights and personal beliefs constitute all the theory that is needed”, her argument being that reflection is insufficient for a teacher to progress toward professional competence. If reflective practice does not provide a sufficient basis for the development of theoretical knowledge in foreign language teaching, then what does?

Analogous to Greenfell, Lawes’ (2003: 26) answer is an attempt to broaden the scope of reflection, by arguing that teachers need to engage in systematic study of the foundation disciplines of education, otherwise they would only hold “faulty interpretation and simply false beliefs about theories”.

The necessity to address the purpose of reflection is manifest in Williams’ (1999: 18) questions:

“For example, is the outcome of the reflection to be an engagement with and reformulation of personal theory? Is it to be an increased self-awareness, a deeper understanding of classroom processes or a mapping of public theory onto personal theory?”.

These questions are, according to Williams (ibid. 18), closely related to the teachers’ way of regarding teaching.

Other attempts to broaden the concept of reflection are evident in Jung’s (2010: 46) view that each reflective action leads to the development of competence “when ‘the new’ is linked to its realisation, implementation, exploration”. From this perspective reflection will translate into competence only when it is related to action. This involves an active role on the part of the

learners, who are able to connect the inside with the outside, and setting a dynamic cycle in motion. Jung (2010: 47) offers an interesting view of reflection because it is linked to both competence and competence acquisition (cf. Chapter 2.2.1). In his view reflection is one of the components among the innovative processes by which professionals develop competence:

Jedes Nachdenken über eine verbesserungswürdige Lebenssituation, die Optimierung eines Tätigkeitsvollzug – und sei dieser noch so trivial – wird dann zur Kompetenzentwicklung, wenn das „Neue und Bessere“ nicht nur gedacht wird, sondern Wege der Verbesserung realisiert (erprobt, vollzogen, optimiert, reflektiert) werden.

A similar perspective is adopted by Vieira & Marques (2002: 4-5), who emphasise the emancipatory function of reflective practice for teachers:

Professional reflection is empowering in some important ways: it entails a continuous mediation between pedagogical goals and situational constraints, thus promoting not only teachers’ awareness of how their action is historically determined, but also their sense of agency in transforming the conditions of teaching and learning.

Their understanding of critical reflection comprises self-reflection (intended as reflection on one’s own projects) and includes ‘meta-competence’. In these terms Vieira & Marques’ view of teachers’ reflective ability accords well with Jung’s (2010) and Eraut’s (1994) accounts of competence:

Reflection is best seen as a metacognitive process in which the practitioner is alerted to a problem (Eraut 1994: 145).

It also accords with what Scarino (2005: 50) terms “awareness”, intended as “an ongoing active and critical process of interpreting and interrogating their [student teachers’] own beliefs, theories, practices, research and those of others”.

To summarise: relevant insights gained from the studies on reflection reviewed above indicated that teachers seem to benefit from self-reflection and that they should be supported in this effort. One of the functions that reflection has acquired is related to the teachers’ ability to become increasingly aware of their own teaching practices and their underlying beliefs.

Reflection seems to be related to self-cognition, and some scholars, Jung (2010) and Vieira &

Marques (2002) for example, have highlighted its manifestation in action. Overall, from the above I conclude that reflection is a process of appropriation: of self (self-awareness) and of tools (knowledge, theories and experiences). The fragility and the limits of reflection have also been emphasised in the above discussion. These findings should not suggest that the value of reflective approaches is flawed. Although insufficient in themselves, they remain one of the most promising proposals for boosting professional development. Another element mentioned above which is considered important in increasing teachers’ awareness as learning

professionals is theoretical knowledge, to which I turn in the next section.