Teacher Reflection as Teacher Change, and Teacher Change as Moral Response.

During the last decade or two reflection has been one of the most widely used terms in education. At a time when there is so much concern over schooling, it is little wonder that such a project would be important. In spite of the widespread use of the term reflection, however, it has become used so broadly, and often so shallowly, as to have become nearly vacuous. Because we felt the concept of reflection to be very important, a classroom teacher and I undertook a collaborative study to explore more deeply what teacher reflection is about. The teacher I worked with, Mary Thomas (a pseudonym), was an experienced teacher. When this study began, she had taught remedial reading and English at the secondary level for nearly 10 years. She had also taught previously at both the elementary and junior college levels. This study occupied nearly three years, the first two of which found me nearly every week in one or more of her classes. The types of data collected for this study included (a) a log kept by Mary; (b) fieldnotes I took as I attended Mary's classes, talked (sometimes formally and sometimes informally) with her every day and with students, and recorded observations; (c) audio and/or video tapes of some class sessions; and (d) student work. Normally, my researcher role in the classroom was the relatively detached researcher-as-participant level. At times I rose to the level of participant-as-researcher when Mary, or students themselves, asked me to work with them instructionally. In addition, I was nearly a full participant when I was the substitute teacher for an entire week while Mary was attending a professional conference. This paper first presents an incident taken from my fieldnotes which occurred during our study. This example will be used later in the paper to illustrate points related to teacher reflection. Next, the four main ways that teacher reflection is discussed in the literature are presented. Following that is an analytical rethinking of teacher reflection, ending with the idea of teacher reflection as moral response. The final section provides connections between this notion of teacher reflection and illustrative quotes illuminating this important point, and a conclusion. A Classroom Experience During the more than two years I worked closely with Mary, I watched her become aware of, and work to solve, a variety of professional issues. The following account is of one of these experiences. One semester Mary was struggling with discipline in one of her classes. From her perspective the problem was three boys in that class. She had already done the usual teacher things to deal with the problem. She had talked with the boys. They offered the reaction that, among other things, she treated them like children. Mary went to her high school principals, but they only suggested that she take their criticism seriously. This disappointed and upset her; it appeared to her as lack of support on their part. But after cooling down she decided to use one of her favorite information gathering strategies--an informal survey of student opinions. She handed out slips of paper with the following four questions on them to all of the students in all of her classes. 1. Do you perceive me as talking down to you or treating you like children? Yes or no. 2. If yes, what behavior is evidence? Can you show what I'm doing so I can do something about it? If no, list behaviors, activities, or evidence that show that I respect you or value you. If your answer is both, then address both. 3. What do you think is the biggest discipline problem in this class? 4. What suggestions do you have for handling it? What do you wish I would do to handle it? Mary told the students not to put their names on the sheet to preserve their anonymity, and that I had volunteered to type the responses so that Mary would not be able to know who wrote a particular comment. …