Citation:
Danielowich, R. (2007) Negotiating the Conflicts: Reexamining the
Structure and Function of Reflection in Science Teacher Learning. Science Education (91) 4: 629-663.Key Constructs:
Reflection is often seen a tool used to fix problems in practice toward
a predefined goal. This study proposes reflection should be a complex,
socially-situated, intellectual act that can help teachers learn how to
shape their own goals and/or practices. Teacher reflection falls along a continuum: technical, interpretive and critical. When teachers reflect technically they try to align their goals and/or practice with predetermined learning ends.
When teachers reflect interpretively, they seek to establish an ongoing
conversation about how their students’ learning interfaces with their
teaching goals and practices. When
teachers reflect critically, they recognize their own moral and ethical
positions regarding the entire enterprise of teaching and learning and
act to change the conditions of schooling which produce inequities. When
teacher educators acknowledge that teachers are learning something
valuable when they begin to reflect interpretively and critically
rather than just technically, teachers themselves may be more receptive
to taking risks associated with actually changing their practices in
reform oriented-ways.Research Questions: 1) How did
these teachers reflect differently about their teaching while working
toward interpretive and critical goals they had not realized in their
earlier practice? 2) What do the patterns across these teachers’
reflections say about how reflection helps teachers learn to negotiate
the conflicts between their own goals and actual practices?Theoretical Framework: Critical Methodology: Ethnographic approach toward Descriptive Case StudyFindings: 1)
In general, teachers whose reflection shifted from technical toward
critical forms, did not indicate more clarity about how they could
modify their actual teaching practices toward those forms. Though they
all began to accept intellectual responsibility for shaping their own
goals and teaching decisions. 2) Teachers who recognized
moments of uncertainty in their actual practice were more likely to use
them as resources for further reflection than those who had already
begun to frame their actual practices with clearer teaching goals.
This suggests that when teachers choose to reflect on moments of
in-class decision making (reflection-in-action) that they might also be
searching for more coherent teaching goals, rather than
reflection-in-action being an automatic by-product of practice. 3)
Teachers whose reflection were more strongly interpretive at first,
played more prominent roles in socially-situated reflection analysis
than teachers whose starting reflections were more technical. Such
peer-to-peer reflection analysis, not only improves reflection but also
is seen as an integral component of a teachers’ identity formation
within a school community.Implications: The shifts seen
in all the teachers’ goals, indicate this approach to reflection may be
an effective way to introduce reform initiatives to teachers while
still honoring their intellectual autonomy. Teacher
educators should begin encouraging pre-service teachers to use moments
of reflection-in-action as resources for the more intellectually
complex endeavor of reflection-on-action where they can flesh out the
conflicts they face in their practice with their teaching goals.
Deliberate reflection, on these moments, is best facilitated by video
or journaling as soon after the lesson as possible and sharing their
reflections with their peers. When teachers invite their
peers to review video records of their actual practice, the group can
engage in social discourse that creates a new content for their
reflections and can help shape the social environment of the school,
allowing teachers to move forward in their individual practice while
also moving the community-practice of the school forward. Going Further:
Research is needed to explore the unique challenges science teachers
have in reflecting about the conflicts between their goals and
practice, in order to determine if the goals outlined by standards
documents and peer reviewed, reform oriented research are truly
viable.