It seems to be common ground among teacher educators that the reflective practitioner is what we want to see as a professional teacher. However, with freshmen students this is a big challenge. What techniques have you used to support young students on their way to give up those cut-and-dried, egded in stone "truths" about the nature of teaching and the professional knowledge of teachers? I find that many of them learn the theories and know what to respond to the "reflection" tasks. But if I look for authentic conceptual change, I doubt if I have actually reached the students.
What is your experience?
Thank you for any ideas and perspectives.
I am training designers, not teachers but I might add my two cents anyway.
For reflective thinking you need (1) experience and (2) theories embodying viewpoints and values trough which this experience can be understood. My experience with freshmen is not that they do not reflect: when I overhear conversations about their love lives, these are perfectly reflective. My experience is that they do not reflect professionally. But can we really expect students who lack both the theories and the experience to do so?
If this is so, we can stimulate and train reflective thinking by turning to topic students are at least experienced and preferably somewhat knowledgeable about....
Do you have to understand the students epistemological needs, a) then do a diagnosis on his concepts and particular learning style; b) Show them the different kinds of logical and pragmatic relationships for the ideas inside a paper and c) teach them how to build an analytical introduction and conclusion
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