Beyond reflection: teacher learning as praxis

Reflection is increasingly used as a means to support teacher professional development, and ultimately to support teachers' efforts to improve the persistent underachievement of minority students. In this article, we identify the limits of the traditional view of reflection, argue that reflection is an artifact and a practice embedded in a larger process, namely teacher learning, and outline basic notions of a cultural-historical vision of learning as praxis in which reflection is embedded. Further, we argue that a new vision of critical, situated reflection must include both technical and political content and be based on a dialogic approach.

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TEACHER REFLECTION IS CONSIDERED an important means for developing subject matter, pedagogical, and pedagogical-content knowledge about how to teach. Within current test driven reforms, prepackaged curricula focus teacher reflection on efficiency and technical implementation. Reflection is generally treated as an isolated skill (Giroux, 1985; Lindsay & Mason, 2000); the link between teacher reflection and learning mediated by various artifacts (1) is not systematically addressed.

Dewey (1933) and Schon (1983) have argued that teachers' work is complex and requires deep and foundational reflective practices. Because teachers work in increasingly diverse schools where equity issues, multiple contradictory reforms, and power differentials abound (Ladson-Billings, 1999), reflection defined as a technical and isolated skill is insufficient to support meaningful teacher learning. Moreover, the experiences and status of racial minorities in schools require teachers to develop a political consciousness about the technical skills they are asked to acquire. In this way, teachers avoid having their work become "nothing more than the dissemination of rhetoric" (Morrow & Torres, 1995, p. 268) and thus subverting the equity their labor purports to accomplish. Reflection that develops a political consciousness might involve teachers "integrat[ing] curriculum around concepts and issues" that would be of current interest to both student and teacher, or "focus[ing] on inquiry and us[ing] literature to support that inquiry," thus helping their students "not only to be problem-solvers, but to become problem-posers" (Crawford et al., 1994, p. 174). As Freire (1972) has argued, problem posing and learner-generated avenues of reflection require teachers to be learners who become enlisted in self-emancipation rather than mere implementation.

However, Freire suggested consciousness alone is not sufficient; it must coexist with meaningful praxis. We define praxis as the dialectical union of reflection and action; praxis is at the heart of human nature since human "activity consists of action and reflection: it is praxis; it is transformation of the world. And as praxis it requires theory to illuminate it" (Freire 1972, p. 96).

The purpose of this article is to outline a vision of teacher reflection that is constitutive of teacher learning as praxis. The theoretical basis of this discussion is framed by (a) the legacy of Freire's education for freedom and (b) cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) (Engestrom, Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1999). These frameworks are well suited to address the contemporary challenges teachers face due to their explicit link between reflection-action and culture-learning, and their attendant concern for power. Before we outline this vision, we review briefly traditional conceptualizations of reflection.

Reflection and Its Limits

Since Dewey (1933), teacher reflection has been seen as an important avenue for enhancing teacher labor (Schon, 1983; Sparks-Langer & Colton, 1991). However, reflection on technical competence is ubiquitous. Disjunctures between K-12 school cultures that focus reflection solely on technical matters and the ideas teachers develop or receive in their teacher education programs often conflate the substance of teacher reflection (Grossman, Smagorinsky, & Valencia, 1999). Morrison argued that teachers do not explicitly reference educational theory in their reflection, and Tickle found that while teachers reflect easily on technical issues, "the elements of aims and values of educational theory were not a matter for extensive deliberation" (cited in Lindsay & Mason, 2000, p. 120). The majority of initial teacher reflection focuses on rule-governed practice, of how practice reflects or conforms to predetermined criteria (Lindsay & Mason, 2000).

Dewey (1933) and Schon (1983) argued for a proactive and learner-centered form of reflection in which the practitioner becomes the owner of, and subject in, the process of his or her own reflection. Central to this vision of reflection is consideration and action about the socio-historical and institutional contexts in which students are educated, particularly those from racially marginalized groups (Ladson-Billings, 1999). However, there are two issues related to a critical perspective on reflection. First, this view does not always make explicit how power issues intersect with culture and learning. Second, there is evidence that teachers are not always receptive to a critical perspective on reflection (Johnson, 2001; Zeichner, 1990); the problem is framed as one of resistance. The challenge becomes, therefore, how to create conditions for and support of reflection and learning so teachers become professionals committed to social justice education in schools serving predominantly working-class minority students. Before we grapple with this challenge, we outline how reflection has been addressed in the literature.