1. The role of reflective teaching in teacher education

Critical Reflection
Reflection at this level demonstrates an awareness that actions and events are not only located in, and explained by, multiple perspectives but are also located in, and influenced by, multiple historical and sociopolitical contexts. This is, in addition to the dialogic quality of reflection, showing an awareness that the same actions and events, maybe seen in different contexts and with different associated explanations. It takes into account the social-political context in which events take place and decisions are made, for example, roles, relationships, responsibilities, status, gender, etc. Teachers reflecting at this level can see how their actions and efforts are shaped by moral, socio-political, economic, and institutional structures. They can also discover whether and how the ideologies used in their teaching are in conflict with the pupils’ interests. This type of thinking leads to deeper questioning about educational issues, based on moral and ethical dimensions of the experience. Among all the four levels of reflection, critical reflection is the deepest, where the professional practitioner applies critical approach to all the facets involved in professional practice. It brings a teacher’s own teaching practice under scrutiny and results in improvement of one’s teaching practice on a continuous basis. For example; teacher had planned to teach metals and non-metals. This topic is a bit difficult to understand. Teacher was aware of this and had prepared a chart of metals and non-metals, so that, the students could comprehend my explanations. Teacher believed that providing a clearly laid out chart on what are metals and what are non-metals, would bring about greater clarity. Teacher explained the concept, but observed that some students were not able to understand the concept. On reflection, teacher thought it was not an effective strategy. Teacher should have adopted different approaches like searching the internet for resources like video clips, showing the external and internal models of metals and non-metals, and by zooming in it would have been possible to bring to their notice the internal model of the micro level concept of metals and non-metals. Teacher should have shown them metals and non-metals to explain how the physical and chemical properties of metals and non-metals differ? Teacher did think of this option earlier, during the planning stage but was reluctant as it involved special arrangements like seeking official permission for using the computer lab and also taking the students there or bringing the metals, non-metals and reagents in the class.