Shifting genres: a dialogic approach to reflective practice in teacher education

Abstract

Through a Bakhtinian approach, this paper works to highlight concepts of dialogue, genre, and heteroglossia within one beginning teacher’s practice. Through a case study of this pre-service teacher’s reflections over the course of one academic year spent student teaching in US public schools, this article illustrates how reflective practice, framed through Bakhtinian notions of dialogue, genre, and heteroglossia, can unite the consideration of context with reflective practice. Though the goals of this inquiry seek to outline tenets of a dialogic approach to reflective practice, implications importantly suggest ways that teachers and teacher educators, in employing a Bakhtinian conceptual framework to the study of teacher reflection, can continue to stress reflection’s connection to action.

Keywords:

• dialogue
• genre
• reflection-on-action
• pre-service teachers

Notes

1. This research study was supported through the New Faculty General Research Fund Program (NFGRF) at the University of Kansas.

2. All names of people and places are pseudonyms.