The curmudgeon and the intern

It is worth noting that in none of these three models of reflection is there any scope for reflection to become an indulgent narcissistic practice. Reflection is in all its conceptions rigorous, and only to be engaged in where the goal is to achieve greater understanding and insight.

Given the diversity of educational institutions, we should also not be surprised to find that certain schools may be more amenable to reflective practice than others. US researchers in the early 1990s presented three vignettes of schools from different socioeconomic groups, in which it became clear that teachers at schools from more affluent areas seemed to engage in more reflection, and encourage critical reflection amongst their students.

At these schools, classroom practices allowed for the possibility that a textbook may not be authoritative, that there may be more than one answer to a question and that adopting a critical attitude could be an advantage in negotiating life after school. Since the staff were seeking to develop a spirit of enquiry and lifelong learning, enabling their students to become active citizens, they engaged in reflective behaviour as a means to move purposely towards this goal, and to model such behaviour for their students.

Whereas teachers at a school in a depressed socioeconomic area tended to behave in a less reflective fashion, treating the textbook as authoritative and discouraging the children from further enquiry. The staff here perceived the school’s aims to be cultural reproduction, expecting students to take their assigned place in society. Tradition and stability were prioritised as important goals, and a reflective attitude toward practice was regarded as destabilising, risky and self-centred.

Reflective practice in the classroom provides access to key knowledge that is unavailable in the peer-reviewed literature or through teacher-training courses. Since we have, so to speak, closed the laboratory, we must instead open our classrooms.

I predict a happy by-product of this endeavour is that the academy will enjoy greater approbation and confidence from the ranks of practicing teachers, who will increasingly see their own experience reflected in the findings of the faculty. Perhaps then the days of the curmudgeon ambushing the intern will finally be behind us.