Teaching Student Teachers to Reflect

Abstract

Conventional teacher education programs follow an apprenticeship model and, in so doing,aspire to provide student teachers with pedagogical skills and techniques derived from a preexisting body of knowledge. In this contribution to HER's special series, "Teachers, Teaching,and Teacher Education," Kenneth M. Zeichner and Daniel P. Liston argue that the conventional approach inhibits the self-directed growth of student teachers and thereby fails to promote their full professional development. Illustrating an alternative model, the authors describe and assess the elementary student teaching program at the University of Wisconsin,Madison — a program oriented toward the goals of reflective teaching, greater teacher autonomy,and increasing democratic participation in systems of educational governance.

One foot on the dock and one foot on the boat: Differences among preservice science teachers' interpretations of field‐based science methods in culturally diverse contexts

“…Case studies may not be able to foster long-term changes in future teacher's framing of educational problems. Some preservice teachers invoke variety of strategies as education students that may hinder or deflect intended outcomes of even the most thoughtful course design (Abell et al, 1998;Goodman, 1984;Lacey, 1977;Pajares, 1992;Tann, 1993;Zeichner & Liston, 1987).…”

“…As science education faculty in a rural, Southern college of education that annually produces large populations of teachers, we had recognized our university's teaching mission as overemphasizing the social efficiency approach (Gore & Zeichner, 1991;Zeichner & Liston, 1987) and inadequately addressing the social reconstructionist perspective of teacher education for addressing such issues as longstanding racial inequity in the local schools. We were also aware of recent challenges to the assumptions that theoretical knowledge or practical advice offered in course readings and university campus lectures are easily translated into practice by novice teachers and that preservice teachers acquire professional knowledge before experience rather than in communion with experience (Feiman-Nemser & Remillard, 1996;Russell & Munby, 1991).…”

“…Certainly there is ample evidence that preservice teachers may deflect and undermine courses intended to challenge deeply held beliefs (Goodman, 1984;Lacey, 1977;Pajares, 1992;Tann, 1993;Zeichner & Liston, 1987) or that preservice teachers may attend to assignments in a largely pedestrian manner while harboring a completely different set of beliefs. Bryan and Abell (1999) argued that "teachers' preexisting views of teaching and learning are so pervasive that unless teacher educators personally engage students and directly challenge these deeply rooted beliefs, attempts to bring about change in students' views will be ineffectual" (p. 122).…”

Student Teachers’ Reflective Practice on a Tutorial Teaching Approach

“…In education, reflective practice refers to the process of teachers studying their own teaching methods and determining which is the most efficient for the students, including the consideration of ethical consequences of classroom procedures on students (Zeichner & Liston, 1987). Reflection-in-action assists teachers in making the professional knowledge obtained from their teaching experience an explicit part of their decision-making (Schön, 1983).…”

Supporting the reflective practice of tutors: what do tutors reflect on?

“…The three categories of reflection identified by van Manen (1977) and further developed and renamed by Zeichner and Liston (1987) are technical, practical and critical. Our coding system was based on the modified version of the categories described by Grushka et al (2005, particularly Technical reflection is 'concerned mainly with means rather than ends' and a 'technical application of educational knowledge ' (van Manen 1977, 226).…”