The conceptions of reflective practice in education have their roots at least partly in the work of Dewey, who describes reflection as "the active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends" (Dewey 1933, p.9).…

The majority of teacher preparation programs do not address neuroscience in their curricula. This is curious, as learning occurs in the brain in context and teachers fundamentally foster and facilitate learning. On the one hand, merging neuroscience knowledge into teacher training programs is fraught with challenges, such as reconciling how…

This article addresses educational supervision as a platform for promoting the principles and foundations of social justice in K-12 schools in the United States. Fraser's components of recognition, redistribution, and representation served as the foundation to examine socially-just supervision as a socio-culturally, politically, and economically…

In this commentary, theoretical principles pertaining to the role of epistemic cognition in teaching and professional development, synthesized from the content of this special issue on reflection and reflexivity, are proffered. These theoretical notions are then followed with a critical analysis of specific challenges encountered in enacting these…

Reflection in action research is a complex matter, as is action research itself. In recent years, complexity science has regularly been called upon in order to more thoroughly understand the complexity of action research. The present article investigates the benefits that complexity science may yield for reflection in action research. This article…

In this article, I aim to vindicate the belief that many teachers have that their intuitions, insights, or perceptions are legitimate--and indispensable--guides for their teaching. Perceptions can constitute knowledge. This runs counter to some number of views that emphasize "reflective practice" and teachers as "reflective…

This essay considers the relation between academic development, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and educational research. It does so with reference to questions of academic identity and disciplinary expertise, arguing that as developers we need to consider carefully the ways in which we frame how we approach attempts to foster reflective…

Patrick Slattery is a professor of Curriculum Development and Philosophy of Education at Texas A&M University. He holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Teaching, Learning, & Culture and Educational Administration & Human Resource Development. He is a former president of the Arts-Based Educational Research Association, an…

Despite the ubiquity of reflective practice in education, mandating reflective processes within sanctioned frameworks is inherently problematic, as it may lead to reproduction, standardization, and forced universalities, rather than the critical and innovative pedagogy they intend. This article engages with reflection through both the metaphor and…

In this article, I will discuss the idea of teachers as knowledge translators, not in a pedagogical or didactical sense, but in a "professional" one. A professional practice is supposed to be theoretically informed by academic research. In the name of effectiveness and efficiency, current policies in teaching and higher education…

The high-poverty urban school building is a prime environment for racial misunderstanding between teenagers and adults: most teachers are white and middle class, while most students are nonwhite and live near the poverty line. In this reflective essay, Jay Wamsted, a white teacher, examines the complicated nature of a teacher-student relationship…

This article is designed to facilitate guided teacher reflections about teaching-learning practices so that more educators recognize and appreciate that they already employ many constructivist strategies, techniques, and activities on a frequent basis. And, that the most appropriate consultants to help them become even more constructivist teachers…

This article provides a reflective commentary on the modification of the lead author's professional practice in a secondary academy in England. The modification of practice has been as a result of work conducted on a postgraduate Masters module, which has focused on practitioner development of an exemplar grammar lesson devised for Year Nine…

The article addresses the problem of defining and attributing pedagogic essence to the mechanisms of personality identity development. It is based on the general mechanism of social interaction. Its structure contains, on the one hand, pedagogic interaction, including the forms of pedagogic assistance and pedagogic support; on the other hand, it…

The cultivation of teacher dispositions is an important topic within contemporary discourses of teacher development. The construct of dispositions, however, is still in need of conceptual refinement. In this article, we use the philosophical theory of "Bildung" (the educating and forming of the self) to explore how the cultivation of…