Developing and Sustaining Critical Reflection in Teacher Education

It is interesting to speculate on the reasons for the recent upsurge of interest in what might be broadly described as a reflective approach to teacher education. While there is a good deal of contention at the moment as to precisely what this might mean, it is clear that we have been down a very similar track before, most notably with the work of Dewey (1904/1965) earlier this century. So what makes the current revival so significant? For an answer to that question we have to look carefully at the social, economic, and political times in which we live and at the way in which the emphasis on reflective approaches represents something of a calculated response to the prevailing views about the nature of schooling and knowledge. There can be little doubt that as we rush headlong into this era of neoconservative ways of thinking and acting educationally, the reflective approach represents an interesting and challenging counter discourse to the ensconced technicist views. At the same time that we are being increasingly courted and urged by technologically minded policymakers and educational reformers into believing that all our social and economic ills will somehow magically dissolve if we place our faith in their capacity to get the mix of techniques right, significant questions are being asked as to whether the applied science mentality that lies behind their thinking and their strategies has the efficacy to resolve the complex issues in the ways being suggested.