Structured Reflective Communication as a Meta-Genre in Teacher Education: Creative Uses of Critique in a Teacher Education Program

Abstract

IntroductionThis paper develops an expanded, collaborative and structured view of the process of critiquing observed lesson fragments and shows how this process can be used as a model for developing students' understanding and thinking about teaching and learning processes. We introduce Carter's (2007, 392) notion of a meta-genre, " [a] way of doing instantiated in written genres" to frame this overall approach. We show how a specific meta-genre "structured reflective communication" can be used in two ways: 1) to challenge beginning teachers to articulate a personal teaching theory in response to an observation of a videoed teaching excerpt and 2) to show how its use can inform lesson planning. In this process of viewing, reflecting and re-contextualising critical reflection within a meta-genre of structured reflective communication, new opportunities are created for the use of critique. As Kumaravadivelu (2006) advocates, this process helps make explicit beginning teachers' views about the roles of students and teachers and how they connect with personal teaching theories. Although there is an extensive literature in the area of critical reflection (Smyth, 1989;Schön, 1983;1987;Harrison et al, 2005), in much of teacher education, critical reflection is a gloriously fuzzy concept, a synonym for a personal reflection exercise as well as for both structured and unstructured discussions. Within educational contexts, critical reflection is often associated with spoken discourse and because of its flexible character, it is viewed as a central part of teacher education for unpacking privileged positions and empowering participants to adopt valued professional positions (e.g. Krull, Oras & Sisask, 2007;Harford & MacRuairc, 2008;Fernandez, 2010).In developing theories of teaching in teacher education programs, there is often a focus on personal reflections in response to concrete examples of teaching (such as in microteaching or in video-based teaching segments where the teachers can see examples of the various practices). These practices use critical reflection to enable teachers to explore multiple possible perspectives while also building in opportunities to compare and contrast those perspectives to make more salient specific elements of what they have observed (Zhang, Lundeberg, Koehler & Eberhardt, 2011). Since many of these perspectives are partial (Beyer & Davis, 2009), a consequence of acknowledging and incorporating them into teacher education processes is that they open up multiple ways of thinking about teaching.The personalised nature of critical reflection allows individuals to highlight selective aspects of what has been observed. This is a key point in its strength because appropriate scaffolding allows the different positions to be contrasted with one another and their motivations and consequences explored. However, the backward-looking nature of this strength (the focus on what was observed) is also one of its weaknesses. Without explicit direction forward, there is often no automatic connection with...

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