Being one of the most popular theories of professional knowledge in the last 30 years, reflective practice has been widely adopted not only by practicing teachers in their working environment, but in pre-service teacher education as well. Meeting the need to respond to the challenges posed by the society nowadays, higher education is undergoing radical changes calling for the proper implementation of student-centered studies. In the context of such a paradigm shift there is a strong urge for the concept of reflective practice to be examined more carefully so that it could be put into effect in the studies of higher education. The paper seeks to respond to this problem by offering an in-depth analysis of the attributes characteristic of the concept of reflective practice in the paradigm shift. Based on the thorough review of scientific works dealing with the concept of reflective practice in teacher education, the current study reports on the insights regarding the development of this concept for reflective practice to be successfully applied in the process of teacher education.
As the carried-out research study shows, proper interpretation of the concepts of reflective learning, the reflective practitioner and the experiential learning theory in the context of higher teacher education provides a solid theoretical background for the analysis of the teaching-learning process of pre-service teachers’ reflective practice and the support to be provided by teacher educators. By employing the method of the scientific literature review, the current research paper aims to investigate the roles of teacher educators within the framework of the afore mentioned theories that are considered to ensure adequate assistance to pre-service teachers in their becoming reflective practitioners. As the results show, in order to carry out effective facilitation, teacher educators should acknowledge and adopt a wide variety of roles while developing pre-service teachers’ capacity of reflective practice.
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