There is a strong contemporary focus, in teacher education, on preparing teachers as reflective practitioners. The notion of reflectivity has its roots in the work of John Dewey who maintained that teachers should approach their work thoughtfully and be given to analysis of their teaching, student learning, and the larger school context.
Reflective Teaching is a clinical laboratory-based instructional strategy designed to help education students carefully examine their teaching behavior. In Reflective Teaching, students are assigned to teach a small group of their peers, one of a number of short Reflective Teaching Lessons provided by their college instructor. Following the lesson, the "learners" are assessed on their achievement of the lesson's objectives and subsequently engage in a reflective analysis of the lesson presentation in a small group discussion with the designated teacher.
The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of discourse that takes places during Reflective Teaching small group discussions. Subjects were videotaped in the context of their normal involvement in Reflective Teaching during a course in general methods, and their statements were rated using a modified form of Zeichner and Liston's (1985) Reflective Teaching Index (RTI). The RTI is a discourse analysis instrument which categorizes thought units into a number of reflective and non-reflective categories.
The results of this study present a profile of participants' discourse and provide recommendations to teacher educators concerning effective implementation of Reflective Teaching.