Can reflective practice be taught?

Abstract

Professional educators often advocate reflective practice; it is less clear that they model it and provide explicit instruction. Working with illustrations from initial teacher education, this paper describes the author’s own reflection‐in‐action that resulted in an explicit strategy for helping new professionals experience the potential benefits of reflective practice through their program of professional preparation. The author concludes that reflective practice can and should be taught. The results of explicit instruction seem far more productive than merely advocating reflective practice and assuming that individuals will understand how reflective practice differs profoundly from our everyday sense of reflection.

Acknowledgements

Funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada supported data collection.

Notes

* Faculty of Education, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada. Email: [email protected].

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tom Russell*

* Faculty of Education, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada. Email: [email protected].