Abstract
This chapter introduces the concept of infusing critical thinking and reflection as part of professional development for teachers, as well as provides recommendations for schools to promote critical thinking and reflection as part of teachers' daily practice. Constructs, such as problem posing and dialogue, are introduced to provide examples of promising practices to consider implementing as a means to enhance critical thinking and reflection amongst teachers when participating in professional development. Additionally, professional learning communities and self-directed professional development are introduced as spaces for teachers to practice these constructs to transform their praxis. Providing opportunities for critical thinking and reflection is one of many steps schools and districts must take, to bring about the positive change required for future success of the education system.
TopIntroduction
In today’s classrooms, teachers are inundated with extensive curricula along with the pressure of increased accountability and high-stakes testing. To be effective in the modern educational environment, teachers are required to think about their lesson plans; interactions with students, peers, and parents; grading; alignment of curricula to standards; promoting student engagement and learning; and development and analysis of formative and summative assessments.
In practice, efforts to promote critical thinking about all of the facets of modern teaching practice are limited to lesson plan templates and data meetings centered around Tier II intervention decisions. Largely absent is ongoing support to promote critical thinking as a tool to improve practice and better manage the plethora of daily demands placed on teachers. Essential to this support is the role of teacher reflection. Critical reflective thinking helps teachers understand the specific contexts of their classroom environments and develops their professional artistry of their practice.
Teaching is not a neutral act (Freire, 2000). In fact, what occurs outside the classroom affects what happens inside the classroom with teaching and learning. Students’ lives, teachers’ lives, the social, cultural, and political happenings that occur outside the classroom do not stop at the schoolhouse door. This can be seen today in the current politically charged climate were are currently experiencing in the United States and seeing over and over on television, social media, and on radio. Teachers and students do not forget about these happenings when they enter schools. Therefore, teachers need opportunities to critically think and reflect on how these outside social and political forces impact what happens in their classrooms. For example, if one teaches at a school, located in an impoverished area where students of color are constantly moving from one foster home to another and never really feeling like they have a place to call home, the teacher should understand that what is happening outside of the school to these students impacts what happens inside the classroom. Students may have experienced trauma, violence, death of a parent, abandonment, etc. They may not have the support they need in their foster home to help them learn coping skills; so many of these children’s needs go unheard and untreated. As a result, the student goes to school traumatized, scared, hungry, sick, etc. Some of these children may act out while others disengage but yet teachers expect them to learn without even knowing what is really going on in their lives. Critically reflecting how governmental institutions like the foster care system work and what it fails to do for some of these children will help teachers find ways to navigate the school system in a way to reach their students so they find some kind of success in their schooling.
Another example would be if teachers teach students who live in a neighborhood where their community is constantly under surveillance by the police. When these students come to school they may see school resource officers as a threat rather than a resource. Teachers would need to critically reflect on their discipline policies and determine if school resource officers are being used as resources or as a punitive measure when the behavior could have been addressed in the classroom where the teacher has a sound discipline policy. How can they de-escalate a situation in the classroom and work with the student to bring about dialogue and understanding? Critically thinking and reflecting on the social and political forces that exist outside of the classroom can help teachers learn to be deliberate and intentional in their classroom (Bognar & Krumes, 2017).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Praxis: Praxis is an iterative, reflective approach to taking action. It is an ongoing process of moving between practice and theory. Praxis is a synthesis of theory and practice in which each informs the other ( Freire, 1985 ).
Reflection: To be a reflective teacher means to question the goals and values that guide one’s teaching, the institutional and cultural contexts in which he or she teaches and examining the assumptions one brings to the classroom relative to one’s students’ cultures and lived experiences (Zeichner & Liston, 1996 AU25: The in-text citation "Zeichner & Liston, 1996" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ).
Reflection on Action: This occurs before and after an action in the classroom. Schon (1983) asserts that teachers reflect before a lesson, when they think about their lesson and after execution of the lesson when they reflect on what occurred during the lesson.
Self-Directed Professional Development: Professional learning that is driven by oneself. While it should depend on a collaborative peer network, it occurs in the absence of administrative oversight, unsolicited coaching, or policy structures which require regular meeting, documentation, or other actions.
Professional Learning Communities: While “there is no universal definition of a professional learning community,” a professional learning community can generally be defined as a group of individuals which regularly collaborate to critically reflect on their practice for the purpose of individual professional growth as well as advancement of the group ( Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006 ).
Dialogue: According to Freire (1995) , dialogue is a co-operative activity that involves respect. Dialogue contributes to a more transformative learning environment and removes the traditional “banking” model (a deposit of concepts taught in the professional development space by the instructional coach or the professional development facilitator).
Problem Posing: According to Freire (1970) AU24: The in-text citation "Freire (1970)" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. , problem posing is a method that transforms learners (in this case, the teachers) into “critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher” (in this case the facilitator of professional development workshop, a coach, or mentor) (p. 68).
Reflection in Action: This occurs during instruction. Teachers reflect an unexpected student reaction or perception and attempt to make immediate adjustments to instruction as a result of these reactions ( Schon, 1983 ).
Critical Thinking: The process of mapping out relationships between observations to understand the causality and interconnectedness between events.