Implication & Challenges Faced by the Teaching Profession - Essay Example

Implication & Challenges Faced by the Teaching Profession Introduction Teaching and learning about teaching are demanding tasks because they centre on complex, interrelated sets of thoughts and actions, all of which may be approached in a number of ways. This is true from the perspectives of both student-teachers and teacher educators. Therefore, in teaching, there is not necessarily one way of doing something. The more proficient one becomes in the skills of teaching, the more an understanding of the relationship between teaching and learning may influence practice, and the more deliberately a teacher considers his or her actions the more difficult it is to be sure that there is one right approach to teaching, or teaching about teaching. Because of the complexities of teaching and learning about teaching, various approaches to pre-service teacher education have evolved over the years. However, one aspect of teacher education that continually receives attention in both curriculum and research is the way teachers think about their practice. Since at least the time of Dewey, such thinking about practice has been termed reflection and in teacher education courses there has been a focus on developing reflective practitioners. Programs designed to ‘make’ reflective practitioners have been vigorously pursued in pre-service and in-service education. One reason for this is the perceived common-sense link between reflection and learning, hence the value of its use in teaching and teacher education. Reflection is an important human activity in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it. It is this working with experience that is important in learning. The capacity to reflect is developed to different stages in different people and it may be this ability which characterizes those who learn effectively from experience. (Boud, Keogh and Walker, 1985, p. 19) But how might reflection be conceptualized and how might a teacher become a reflective practitioner? In Dewey’s (1933) revised edition of How We Think he clearly states what he defines as reflective thinking. In so doing, it becomes immediately obvious why reflection is so central to teaching and learning. Reflective thinking, in distinction from other operations to which we apply the name of thought, involves (1) a state of doubt, hesitation, perplexity, mental difficulty, in which thinking originates, and (2) an act of searching, hunting, inquiring, to find material that will resolve the doubt, settle and dispose of the perplexity. (Dewey, 1933, p. 12) In illustrating the utility of reflection, he describes the relationship between reflection and some of the attributes of teaching and learning. In many ways his writings could equally be an appropriate preface to some modern day studies into the enhancement of teachers’ professional knowledge and student learning (e.g., Project to Enhance Effective Learning (PEEL) project, Baird and Mitchell, 1986; Baird and Northfield, 1992). Dewey has much to say about searching for a balance between teaching that is transmissive as opposed to that which is solely student-centred, and how a reasoned approach to teaching by reflecting on that balance might impact on student learning. Dewey writes in a manner which builds an argument from opposing view points in order to demonstrate both the strengths and the weaknesses of the contrary positions. He then introduces his views in terms of a balance between the two to show that the best value is gained by considering alternatives rather than dogmatically adhering to one view or another. He therefore illustrates well how dichotomous views in relation to teaching and learning are counterproductive and how the use of reflection for stimulating and directing thinking can bridge the dichotomy. Although the dichotomy is a wonderful rhetorical device designed to capture attention and to sharpen the lines of argument (Shulman, 1988), in reality, teaching and learning are not so readily separated into such distinct boxes. Reflection is a process that may be applied in puzzling situations to help the learner make better sense of the information at hand, and to enable the teacher to guide and direct learning in appropriate ways. The value of reflection in teaching and learning is that it encourages one to view problems from different perspectives. Dewey sees reflection as a way of helping teachers to use their artful skills to help students learn in meaningful ways, thus leading to genuine understanding. Through this, the teacher is then able to ‘supply the conditions that will arouse intellectual responses: a crucial test…of his art as a teacher’ (1933, p. 260). To supply the appropriate conditions, the artful teacher needs to ‘cultivate the attitudes that are favourable to the use of the best methods of inquiry and testing’ (p. 29). By cultivating these attitudes, preparedness for, and use of reflection, might be enhanced. Dewey (1933) outlined three attitudes that he considered important in predisposing an individual to reflect. He continually demonstrates through his writing that it is not sufficient to ‘know’, there also needs to be an accompanying desire to ‘apply’. The attitudes which he sees as important in securing the adoption and use of reflection are open-mindedness, whole-heartedness and responsibility. Open-mindedness, as the term suggests, is the ability to consider problems in new and different ways, to be open to new ideas and thoughts that one may not have previously entertained. To be open-minded is to be ready to listen to more sides than one, to be an active listener, to be prepared and able to hear thinking that may be contrary to one’s own, and to be able to admit that a previously held belief may in fact be wrong. Whole-heartedness is displayed when one is thoroughly involved in a subject or cause. It is being enticed and engaged by thinking. It is associated with experiencing a flood of ideas and thoughts. Interest is maintained and ideas are sought in ways in which an enthusiasm and desire for knowing is enacted. ‘A teacher who arouses such an enthusiasm in his pupils has done something that no amount of formalized method, no matter how correct, can accomplish’ (Dewey, 1933, p. 32). Responsibility is bound up in the need to consider the consequences of one’s actions. It is the need to know why; to seek the meaning in what is being learnt. Intellectual responsibility underpins knowing why something is worth believing. Responsibility is often thought of as a moral trait, but it is equally important as an intellectual resource. Possession of these attitudes is important if learning is to be embarked upon in a considered and thoughtful way. Therefore, cultivating these attitudes as essential constituents of a readiness for reflection is clearly valuable in pre-service teacher education. Dewey characterized reflection as comprising five phases. The phases need not necessarily occur in any particular order but should fit together to form the process of reflective thinking. The five phases are suggestions, problem, hypothesis, reasoning and testing. Suggestions are the ideas or possibilities which spring to mind when one is initially confronted by a puzzling situation. The more suggestions available, the greater the need to suspend judgment and to consider each in an appropriate manner. Therefore, suggestions are an impetus for further inquiry. Problem or intellectualization is when the puzzle is seen as a whole rather than as small or discrete entities on their own. It is seeing ‘the big picture’ and recognizing the real cause for concern. It is understanding the perplexity of a situation more precisely so that courses of action may be more fully thought through and intellectualized. Hypothesis formation is when a suggestion is reconsidered in terms of what can be done with it or how it can be used. Acting on a working hypothesis involves making more observations, considering more information and seeing how the hypothesis stands up to tentative testing. In so doing, ‘the sense of the problem becomes more adequate and refined and the suggestion ceases to be a mere possibility, becoming a tested and, if possible, a measured probability’ (ibid, p. 110). Reasoning is when the linking of information, ideas and previous experiences allows one to expand on suggestions, hypotheses and tests, to extend the thinking about and knowledge of the subject. ‘Even when reasoning out the bearings of a supposition does not lead to its rejection, it develops the idea into a form in which it is more apposite to the problem’ (ibid, p. 112). Testing is the phase in which the hypothesized end result may be tested. In so doing, the consequences of the testing can be used to corroborate (or negate) the conjectural idea. Overt testing is the opportunity to find out how well one has thought through the problem situation, yet results of the test need not always corroborate the thinking that preceded the actions. In reflection, failure is instructive. ‘It either brings to light a new problem or helps to define and clarify the problem on which he has been engaged. Nothing shows the trained thinker better than the use he makes of his errors and mistakes’ (ibid, p. 114). Testing may also occur as a covert action whereby a ‘thought-experiment’ is conducted to test an hypothesis. In outlining his five phases of reflection, Dewey (1933) discusses ways in which the phases may overlap one another and how some phases might be expanded depending on the problem at hand. He places the phases of reflection in context by referencing the learning to both past and future actions and experiences; reflection is not only ‘looking back’ and it can persist for extended periods of time. Rflection both is appealing and applicable in work with pre-service teacher education students, especially so if they are to master not only the technical skills of teaching but also to be thoughtful, purposeful and informed decision makers. Clearly this can only be achieved if student-teachers question their own actions, reconsider their knowledge and understanding in the light of experience, and use this to shape the way they approach helping their students to learn. Similarly they need to experience this as learners themselves in their pre-service teacher education programs if they are to adopt this approach in their own professional practice. Schön (1983) recognized this need in other fields of professional practice in which he described reflection in terms of the knowledge gained from a practitioner’s own experience. Through his observations of professionals’ thinking in action he drew a distinction between technical rationality and the knowledge of practice. Therefore, reflection was seen as an important vehicle for the acquisition of professional knowledge. Schön (1983) described two forms of reflection; reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action. Reflection-on-action is the basis of much of the literature pertaining to reflective teaching and reflective teacher education, and is similar to Dewey’s notion of reflection. This form of reflection is seen as ‘the systematic and deliberate thinking back over one’s actions…teachers who are thoughtful about their work’ (Russell and Munby, 1992, p. 3). Reflection-in-action is understood through ‘Phrases like thinking on your feet, keeping your wits about you, and learning by doing [and] suggest not only that we can think about doing but that we can think about doing something while doing it. Some of the most interesting examples of this process occur in the midst of a performance’ (Schön, 1983, p. 54). Reflection-in-action comprises the reframing of unanticipated problem situations such that we come to see the experience differently. The attention by Schön to reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action was the start of a new wave of research and learning about reflection. Books, papers, conferences and teacher education courses were forums for debate about what reflection is and how it might be developed. One way of describing and categorizing this literature was outlined by Grimmett and Erickson (1988) and MacKinnon (1989a) and encompassed three groupings. The first is a view of reflection as thoughtfulness about action, the second is reflection as deliberating among competing views of ‘good teaching’, and the third is reflection as reconstructing experience. Grimmett and Erickson (1988) describe Schön’s work as being situated in this third grouping: His focus is on how practitioners generate professional knowledge in and appreciate problematic features of action settings. As such, Schön’s contribution to reflection is distinctively important. He builds on and extends Dewey’s foundational properties of reflection… The reflection that Schön focuses on takes place in the crucible of action. And it is his marked emphasis on the action setting that sets Schön’s work apart. (p. 13) Interestingly though, ‘when Schön’s Reflective Practitioner struck the consciousness of educationists in the mid-1980s, it was not always as a re-embracing of Dewey’s notion, but as the discovery of a new concept’ (Richardson, 1990, p. 3). But the impact was such that it caused many teacher educators to reconsider the structure and curriculum of their pre-service teacher education programs. Attempts to develop ways of encouraging student-teachers to develop as reflective practitioners have led to a variety of approaches and structures which have also played their part in shaping the pre-service program. Teacher Education: Structures to Promote Reflection One structural feature is that of seminar group discussions. Goodman’s (1983, 1984) research into the value of seminars in education generally concludes that such sessions can serve three important functions. They can counter the notion that there is one good way to teach through their liberalizing role which encourages unique and creative approaches to teaching. They can also serve a utilitarian role whereby student-teachers can reflect on the relationship between educational principles and practice, and they can serve an analytic role. In the analytic role there is an opportunity for student-teachers to raise specific educational issues or problems and jointly analyze the underlying principles and implications of the issue. Goodman’s work (1983) illustrates that although seminars are capable of fulfilling these roles, it does not necessarily follow that the desired outcomes will occur. He states that in order for these roles to be served it is fundamental that: …to help student teachers become more reflective about education, the atmosphere within seminars must be open and relaxed. It is difficult under the best of conditions for individuals to question their beliefs and to explore the implications of their actions. Challenging students to reflect upon their experiences and ideas must be done with sensitivity and respect for the individuals. If healthy dynamics are not established, challenging students to think may result in defensiveness, not insight, (pp. 44-48) Therefore the role of the teacher educator in the seminar becomes very important if the purpose for the implementation of that particular structure is to be fully realized. It is not enough to include structures to encourage reflection, teacher educators must embrace them in appropriate ways to insure that they do indeed serve the function for which they are intended. Another tool for reflection is the use of journals. These are designed to encourage student-teachers to document their thinking about learning and teaching. It is anticipated that by writing about experiences, actions and events, student-teachers will reflect on and learn from those episodes. Approaches to journal writing in teacher education vary from the unstructured methodology of ‘writing what one thinks about an experience’ or a ‘stream of consciousness’ through semi-structured tasks which require a response to given ‘prompts or cues’, to highly structured formats which require the writer to adhere to prescribed criteria. For me, the purpose of journal writing is to help the writer look back on (or forward to) an event in the hope that it will be a catalyst for reflection. Another tool used to aid reflective thinking in student-teachers is the use of video-tapes of particular teaching and learning situations. The use of video-tapes may be of oneself or of others and generally focuses on the teaching performance. Micro-teaching is one approach to the use of video-taped experiences of one’s own teaching whilst the observation of someone else teaching is usually designed to give the observer a vicarious experience of a particular teaching approaches or episode. In each case, observing the teaching on video-tape, coupled with discussion and debriefing after the event, is seen as a way of encouraging reflection. A valuable extension to this form of ‘guided reflection’ is the observation of one’s own teaching through video-taping teaching in action in the school setting. MacKinnon (1989a) spent a considerable amount of time with his student-teachers video-taping their teaching and their debriefing sessions with their school supervisors. Through this work, MacKinnon found that the video-tapes offered his student-teachers new ways of reliving and reviewing their experiences, and that with an appropriate working environment and supervisory support, reflection was not only encouraged but was also enhanced and valued. MacKinnon’s work hinted at a necessary and fundamental shift in focus for the development of reflective teachers through pre-service education. He started to look at the supervisor as a role-model for the student-teacher. As he explored Schön’s (1987) three conceptions of modeling in the practicum, he started to uncover the influence of modeling on student-teachers’ learning about, and development of, reflection. It is not surprising that, as in the case of seminars, journal writing, supervisory meetings and teaching debriefings, the influence of the teacher/role-model is crucial if student-teachers are to develop their skills of reflection. Richert (1987, 1990) also recognized the importance of teachers as role-models for their student-teachers’ learning about and learning through reflection. However, even though research suggests there is implicit value in effectively modeling reflection, there is little to suggest that this explicitly occurs in teacher education programs. Gunstone et al. (1993) outlined the importance of modeling in pre-service education and linked this with the need for pre-service educators to reflect on their own practice in accord with their expectations of their students’ thinking about learning. It may very well be obvious that this should be the case, but it is not uncommon to hear of teacher educators presenting cooperative learning, group work, problem solving or many of a number of other interactive learning approaches, by systematically detailing the approach via a monologue in a lecture, defeating the purpose of learning from and with others. Understanding Reflective Practice Reflective thinking can be described as the ‘Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends’ (Dewey, 1933, p. 9). Understanding such thinking in pre, during and post teaching experiences is a guide to how reflection influences practice. To explore these periods of reflection the four student-teachers’ interview-observation-interview episodes from the video-taped lessons were analysed. However, it is important to remember that these times of reflection are very much context dependent. Context embraces domains such as: content knowledge, experience, time, action, feelings and self-confidence. All of these vary in different situations. Understanding the context for each of the four student-teachers is important in understanding the analysis of their reflection and how it influenced their thinking and practice. The work of Schön (1983, 1987) has been a catalyst for the recent resurgence of interest and research on reflection and varying conceptions of the nature of reflection have been well documented. Zeichner (1983) and Tom (1985) described some of these: teachers as action researchers, inquirers, problem solvers, hypothesis makers, self-monitors and analysers. It is little wonder then that teacher educators have sought to introduce and develop reflection in pre-service education courses; student-teachers should be encouraged to develop along the lines of these descriptors. Through my teaching practice I hope to encourage student-teachers to develop the pedagogical habits, skills and attitudes necessary for self-directed growth, and in so doing better understand the development of their reflective processes. Erickson (1988) poses the dilemma that confronts many teacher educators as they attempt to facilitate student-teachers’ learning about teaching, and hence, learning about reflection. Reflection that occurs in the context of ‘the giving of reasons to the learner’ must also be mediated by a consideration of what is ‘reasonable’ in a particular learning situation. And it is precisely in this mediation process between these two principles that Shulman [1988] claims ‘the traditions of technical rationality…and reflection and action must come together. These are not competing principles.’ (p. 196) I believe that if student-teachers are to learn about reflection, they need to continually be given opportunities to view it in action. As reflection is a cognitive process, access to such thinking needs to be possible in ways that allow it to be observed and understood across a range of teaching and learning contexts and in a number of observable forms: thus the incorporation of the ‘thinking aloud’ approach teaching, and an open and honest personal reflections on the teaching and learning. It is also important to me that individuals are able to draw their own conclusions about the use, value, and development of reflection on practice. Finally, the ability to develop student-teachers’ reflective processes is also related to the concerns that influence their thinking and learning throughout their pre-service program. As student-teachers become more at ease with their role as a teacher, there may be a shift in their concerns as the focus moves from themselves to their students. Hence, their concerns move toward the relationship between their teaching and their students’ learning. At this time, their ability to reflect, and the quality of that reflection, noticeably improves and the influence of this reflection on their teaching practice is at an optimum. In modeling reflection for my students, both thinking aloud and journal writing depend heavily on a trusting classroom environment and good tutor-student-teacher relationships. Even so, both serve their purpose well in demonstrating that teaching, and learning about teaching, are enhanced through reflection. Giving student-teachers immediate access to thoughts and concerns during teaching demonstrates for them that even experienced teachers continue to find teaching problematic. Student-teachers often perceive experienced teachers’ lessons as moving smoothly and methodically from an introduction to a conclusion. To them, it may sometimes appear as though each step, including students’ responses and actions, are known in advance to the teacher. By being privy to the thoughts that influence my practice this belief is demystified as they see and hear my pedagogical struggles (both cognitive and affective) with their learning about teaching. One of the most heartening aspects of this modeling is how it encourages students to be comfortable with similar struggles with their own pedagogy and helps them to realize that this is an important part of teaching. It also highlights for many that even though their fellow class members are party to the same pedagogical experiences, they do not experience the same learning outcomes from those experiences. This is important for two reasons. The first is that it parallels the position of their students’ learning when they are teaching, and it also demonstrates that there is not one way to teach particular content. Both of these points are important when considering the development of student-teachers’ views of reflection. In the case of their teaching and their students’ learning, they can see, by experiencing it themselves, that to enhance learning across the range of students in a class, pedagogy must be responsive to different learners. To do that, reflection on practice is fundamental. The second point is important in terms of their own view of their development as teachers. There is an old saying that a teacher can have ten years’ experience or one year’s experience ten times. ‘How do student-teachers develop in their use of reflection?’ must be an important question for teacher educators who hope to develop reflective practitioners through their teacher education programs. It is clear that the use of the three times of reflection (anticipatory, retrospective and contemporaneous) varies depending on a number of factors, but that development of reflection is increasingly complex from anticipatory, through to retrospective and finally into contemporaneous reflection. In the rush and bustle of classroom practice, what student-teachers (and perhaps teacher educators) say about reflection and what they do about reflection are sometimes two different things. However, an important link between saying and doing is seeing. Student-teachers who become accustomed to seeing their experiences from different perspectives, and who are able to be more detached from their personal feelings about their teaching, tends to develop their reflection more readily than those who do not. This seeing becomes a most important issue as it opens up new avenues for thinking about teaching and new ways of learning from experience. It is also an important aim of modeling, which in this case, through the method adopted, attempted to encourage student-teachers to recognize the need for teachers to ‘see’ and for them to then apply that to their own teaching experience. The relationship between student-teachers’ concerns and their use of reflection is also important. These concerns shift throughout their pre-service education program and inevitably influence the three times of reflection, how they are used, and to what extent they are employed in practice. As student-teachers move from concerns about self to concerns about their students’ learning, they become more able to reflect on their practice as their recognition of problem situations encourages them to respond. This is most apparent during teaching when opportunities for contemporaneous reflection are recognized and seized so that teaching practice can be more responsive to student learning. The distinction between reflection as a deliberate, purposeful act (similar to Schön’s reflection-on-action) and reflection as a spontaneous perhaps subconscious act (similar to Schön’s reflection-in-action), may well be related to how well student-teachers develop, adapt or become more at ease with contemporaneous reflection. As their repertoire of suggestions, experiences of problem situations, hypotheses, reasoning and testing skills increases, their ability to reflect during teaching is enhanced. Through so doing, the amount of time and the extent of thoughtful deliberation necessary to overtly reflect on practice might be reduced (and then it perhaps resembles something like reflection-in-action) as it begins to emerge as an extension of this important pedagogical skill. Reflection is something that when understood and valued (by teacher educators and student-teachers) can be developed through teacher education programs where teacher educators practice what they preach. By approaching teaching in pre-service education in this manner teacher educators will encourage their student-teachers to do likewise. Reference: Baird, J.R. And Northfield, J.R. (1992) Learning for the PEEL Experience, Melbourne, Monash University Printing. Boud, d., keogh, r. AND walker, d. (1985) Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning, London, Kogan Page Ltd. Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think, New York, Heath and Co. Erickson, G.L. (1988) ‘Explorations in the field of reflection: Directions for future research agendas’, in GRIMMETT, P.L. and ERICKSON, G.L. (eds) Reflection in Teacher Education, New York, Teachers College Press. Goodman, J. (1983) ‘The seminar’s role in the education of student teachers: A case study’, Journal of Teacher Education,34, 3, pp. 44-8. Goodman, J. (1984) ‘Reflection and teacher education: A case study and theoretical analysis’, Interchange,15, 3, pp. 9-26. Gunstone, R.F. and MACKAY, L.D. (1975) ‘The self perceived needs of student teachers’, South Pacific Journal of Teacher Education,3, 1, pp. 44-51. Gunstone, R.F., SLATTERY, M., BAIRD, J.R. and NORTHFIELD, J.R. (1993) ‘A case study exploration of development in preservice science teachers’, Science Education,77, 1, pp. 47-73. Mackinnon, A.M. (1989a) ‘Conceptualizing a “reflective practicum” in constructivist science teaching’. Unpublished Doctoral thesis, University of British Columbia. Mackinnon, A.M. (1989b, March) ‘Reflection in a science teaching practicum’. A paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco. Russell, T. and Munby, H. (1992) Teachers and Teaching: From Classroom to Reflection, London, Falmer Press. Schon, D.A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, New York, Basic Books. Shulman, L.S. (1988) ‘The dangers of dichotomous thinking in education’, in Grimmett, P.P. and Erickson, G.L. (eds) 1988. Reflection in Teacher Education, New York, Teachers College Press. Zeichner, K.M. (1983) ‘Alternative paradigms of teacher education’, Journal of Teacher Education ,34, 3, pp. 3-9. Read More