Many researchers and teacher educators propose that reflection is an important way teachers can think about changing their views and practices. The hierarchical constructs used to describe reflection, however, are often interpreted in ways that promote reflection as a tool teachers use to elevate their views and practices toward ideal "end goals" rather than as a more complex intellectual act that could help them learn how to shape their own goals. This research explores how four early career science teachers learned to negotiate the conflicts between their own goals and actual practices by situating their reflections in multiple contexts. They were invited to become aware of those conflicts through interviews and discussions of classroom observations and then to address them by actually teaching toward their own unrealized goals. The data generated from these activities were described with a rubric based on M. van Manen's reflection construct (1977) but were framed with certain perceptions each teacher had about her or his own science teaching. Several patterns emerged across the four teachers' cases that challenge the use of reflection as a tool and suggest how science teachers can reflect as a way to take greater ownership over and responsibility for their own lifelong learning.
Although classroom video is well recognized as a valuable reflective resource for student teachers, we know very little about how university supervisors' pedagogical practices are shaped by creating and using videos with their student teachers. This study explored how 12 supervisors developed greater stances of inquiry toward their practices as they experimented with video and shared their experiences with peers. Patterns in project meeting and interview transcripts revealed how these experiences not only enhanced their existing personal approaches toward supervision and helped them "anchor messages" they wanted to communicate to their student teachers about teaching methods, but also challenged their roles as observers and prompted them to build messages about teaching dispositions directly from video. The findings show how a community of practice encourages supervisors to take considerable responsibility for their own growth as teacher educators and provides a coherent framework others can use to pursue similar professional development initiatives.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.