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As an integral part of successful teaching (Woolway et al., 2019), reflection is crucial to teachers’ professional development (Brown et al., 2021; Buschor & Kamm, 2015; Jarvis et al., 2014; Van Braak et al., 2022) in that it not only provides teachers with opportunities to bridge theory and practice but also supports self and peer guidance (Woolway et al., 2019). In essence, there is a great deal of variation in how reflection is perceived, conducted, and evaluated, as well as in how much focus is given to it (Tight, 2023). Different from individual reflection, collaborative reflection refers to the procedures by which members of a specific community reflect through the outcomes of this process (Jiang & Zheng, 2021), prompting teachers to think through their professional responsibilities that they were not previously aware of or even ignored (Lin et al., 2013). Therefore, collaborative reflection among teachers emphasizes and prioritizes collective teaching and learning feedback and critical thinking in an educational context (Kalk et al., 2019; Shin, 2021).
Given its socially interactive nature, collaborative reflection is inevitably affected by multiple sociocultural factors, such as values, beliefs, ethics, cultural diversity, norms, and social relationships (Jiang, 2019; Jiang & Zheng, 2021). However, Korthagen (2004) revealed that teachers’ collaborative reflection was often limited to superficial aspects of behavior. Tigelaar et al. (2008) emphasized the importance of teachers’ beliefs and values to collaborative reflection, pointing out that teachers tended to focus narrowly on technical issues (the “how to”), but paid less attention to the underlying moral, political, and emotional dimensions. Kelchtermans and Hamilton (2004) specified the moral dimension as beliefs about codes and rules, norms and values, expectations and professional identity, while the political dimension was believed to refer to relationships with others including interests, power, loyalty, and responsibilities. Kreijns et al. (2003) argued that face-to-face interactions transmit visual and nonverbal cues, which are of great value in forming, establishing, and maintaining social relationships in a group context. Jiang and Zheng (2021) explored the hurdles that kindergarten teachers encountered in collaborative reflection and how to overcome these obstacles. Through underscoring the collaborative dimensions of teacher reflection and framing collaborative reflection as both a metacognitive mechanism and a social practice, their study emphasized the critical roles that team identity and cohesion played in successful collaborative reflection in a collective-minded cultural context.