Teacher educators and teachers must be leaders in developing learner-centered standards for preparing teachers. Standards can help teachers build their own knowledge and understanding of what helps students learn. As schools undergo restructuring, teachers will be responsible for students, not just subject-matter information; for understanding how…

This study compared the level of reflection achieved by preservice versus inservice teachers. The study sample included 23 preservice teachers in a Master of Education program and 12 inservice teachers in a Master of Arts program. In the summer of 1996, the preservice teachers received a 3-hour training on reflective thinking and were involved in…

This book presents an ethnographic study which examines the ways first-year college students make sense of, engage, resist, and learn from the critical literacy approach practiced in the composition program at one Midwestern college. It argues that first-year students typically enter composition classes with an idea of writing and an understanding…

This monograph addresses the importance of and strategies for improving education through reflective practice, defined as cognitive processes and an open perspective that involve conscious self-examination in order to gain understandings and improve the lives of students. Chapter 1 provides an overview and explains origins of reflective practice…

This study explores how an Inquiry-Based Demonstration Classroom (IBDC) professional development program affects the extended inquiry instruction of secondary science teachers and how teachers view their extended inquiry practice while involved in the IBDC professional development program. To assess the impact of the program on participants'…

This study examines the attitudes of eight white teachers, plus the principle investigator, who characterize themselves as anti-racist and what experiences contributed to the development of those attitudes. The analysis reviewed present teacher education courses and cited research about alternative programs and at-risk students. The driving force…

When a constructivist professional development program was introduced to elementary teachers in a school district, some of the teachers who teach in self-contained classrooms (N=59) elected to participate in a yearlong professional development project. To explore the impact of professional development, a purposive sample of participating teachers…

This paper discusses reflective teaching and critical thinking skills in novice teachers and examines potential best practices for the 21st century. The paper shares findings of a 3-year qualitative study regarding the effect of four procedures on the developmental dynamics of reflective teaching and critical thinking skills in beginning teachers.…

This paper seeks to explore how beginning elementary school teachers (N=161) in Singapore conceive the scope and nature of science and to understand the relationship between those views and their present approach to, as well as their past experience of, science teaching and learning. Results of an inquiry into the teachers' views indicate that…

The qualitative research described here studied interactions between first-year teachers and their teacher colleagues in an effort to understand how beginning teachers construct their interactions and employ them to master the curriculum, understand the grade level being taught, and gain control of classrooms. Seven beginning elementary school…

The first chapter of this book makes a case for preparing teachers to be lifelong students of teaching. Impediments to that goal are enumerated, and suggestions are made on how they might be overcome. Some of the means by which teachers can be made more reflective about their teaching are presented. In chapter 2, teachers are encouraged to become…

This paper reports on a preliminary look at the student teaching seminar as a vehicle for encouraging reflective thinking about teaching and learning. The seminar group was composed of 32 undergraduate and graduate students, student teachers in the secondary school disciplines. A preliminary self-analysis essay written by the student teachers…

Research suggests that the formal socialization teachers receive in teacher education programs may be the least influential factor in determining their beliefs about teaching and pedagogical practice. The beliefs prospective teachers have developed about teaching as a result of their long immersion as students in the culture of schooling appear to…

This paper considers the theoretical positions that ground teacher education programs and asks whether these theories reflect the experiences and voices of all society or merely those of the dominant culture. The paper proposes the incorporation of elements of critical pedagogy as taught by Paulo Freire and reflective thinking according to John…

A description is given of the Social Studies Professional Semester at the State University of New York at Albany, a program attempting to provide the elements necessary for the development of reflective teaching. The 16-week program is designed to reduce the separation between clinical field experiences and professional education studies for…