Impediments to Reflective Practice: toward a new agenda for research on teaching

Abstract

I explore two related observations on the role of reflection in teachers' professional lives. The first observation is that many teachers who engage in systematic inquiry into their practice do so secretly, behind closed doors or away from their places of work. The second is that while the concepts of reflection and reflective practice have become mainstream in the academic and educational research community, professional contexts do not encourage or support reflective practice or reflective practitioners. I draw on Jersild's (1955) analysis of the relationship between self‐understanding and education, as well as other relevant research, to frame a discussion of the contexts within which teachers learn and work and what I see as the major impediments to reflection that teachers face. I argue that the conditions under which teachers work have generated feelings and psychological states that militate against reflective practice and professional growth. By working conditions I refer to external structures imposed by schools and school systems, the profession, government, and the public at large; by psychological states I refer to the internal structures of anxiety, fear, loneliness, meaninglessness, helplessness, and hostility created in response to such imposed structures. In so doing I suggest that researchers of teaching need to shift their attention away from how teachers think about their work, or that they need to, to consider how it might be made possible for them to do so. I suggest that researchers take a more active role in working with and for teachers to prepare educational contexts more conducive to their learning and growth.