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Critical reflection as a framework for

transformative learning in teacher
education
a
Kat rina Liu
a
Curriculum and Inst ruct ion, Universit y of Wisconsin-Whit ewat er,
Whit ewat er, WI, USA
Published online: 21 Oct 2013.
To cite this article: Kat rina Liu , Educat ional Review (2013): Crit ical reflect ion as a
framework for t ransformat ive learning in t eacher educat ion, Educat ional Review, DOI:
10.1080/ 00131911.2013.839546
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Educational Review, 2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2013.839546
Critical reflection as a framework for transformative learning in

teacher education
Katrina Liu*
Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI, USA
This paper presents a framework for critical reflection that teacher educators can
employ to analyze prospective teachers’ reflection and support their transforma-
tive learning. The author argues that teacher educators should not only pay
attention to the cognitive processes of prospective teachers (how they reflect),
but also the content of their thinking (what they reflect on), the goals of their
Downloaded by [Katrina Liu] at 18:29 22 October 2013
thinking (why they reflect), and how their thinking influences their teaching
practice in the classroom (what transformative learning they experience). The
paper provides implications for both teacher education and teacher research.
Keywords: critical reflection; reflective teaching; transformative learning
I think critical in a sense the word means harsh criticism. But I also think it means a
vital … so what were the vital aspects of your teaching that makes your reflection
critical. So for example, in a critical reflection, you need to have specific example of
what you are criticizing. (Karla, interview on March 31, 2009)
When I conducted my research on enhancing prospective teachers’ critical reflection,

I asked prospective teachers for their understanding of critical reflection; a typical
answer is shown in the quote earlier. From this answer, critical reflection simply
means looking at the things that go well as well as the things that do not go well.
What are the criteria for judging whether things going well or not? What is the thin-
ker supposed to do with the information once they have made their judgments?
Why should any of this occur at all? There are no clear answers to these questions
in the prospective teacher’s statement.
When posing the same question to teacher educators in Midwestern Univer-
sity where the study is situated, answers varied. For some faculty members,
critical reflection involves an important process of rethinking and challenging
previous assumptions with an eye to finding alternative explanations for the
problems:
Critical reflection is challenging one’s assumptions, looking at issues in a deeper way.

You’re questioning the framing, the problems and situations that have been framed in
certain ways, instead of just accepting them because the problem often times is the
way the problems have been framed. (John, a teacher educator, interview on June 19,
2009)
*Email: liuy@uww.edu
© 2013 Educational Review

2 K. Liu
To some faculty members and educational staff, reflection in itself is always critical.
From this point of view, the reflection that directs teachers to think about and
improve student learning is itself critical reflection. For example, one faculty mem-
ber suggested that when teachers ask questions about what to teach and how to teach
in order to be effective with their students, they are being critical.
I mean one of the things that the program tries to do is for prospective teachers to
think, not only should you ask yourself what you are going to teach, but also why you
are going to teach. So it’s critical from the standpoint of saying what should you do,
how should you go about teaching in a way that best facilitates learning for the stu-
dents that you’re working with. (Kant, a teacher educator, interview on February 23,
2009)
When reading teacher education program mission statements or conversing with

teachers and teacher educators, a frequently heard phrase is “critical education.”
However, looking at literature, it is not hard to find concepts of critical reflection in
teacher education echoing what the quotes earlier demonstrate: that there is a lack of
clear definition of what critical reflection is, specific guidelines to how to reflect crit-
ically, and clear statement of the ultimate purpose of critical reflection. The quotes
earlier also demonstrate a gap between the understandings of prospective teachers
and teacher educators: teacher educators show a more sophisticated understanding of
critical reflection while prospective teachers’ understanding is very general. This gap
is hardly surprising, but it does raise important questions about the effectiveness
of teacher education programs in enhancing critical reflection among prospective
teachers.
How can teacher educators foster prospective teachers’ reflective practice into a
more sophisticated, critical practice that will in turn transform their learning – that
is, learning that results in changes in understanding, attitudes, and especially behav-
ior as a teacher? Guided by this research question, the purpose of this study is to
provide a framework to understand critical reflection as an alternative for teacher
educators to analyze prospective teachers’ reflections with the goal of promoting
transformative learning.
Background
Although the West has a philosophical tradition of reflection as old as that of
Confucius, the great teacher (551 BC–479 BC) in ancient China, it was not until the
1930s that John Dewey first proposed that teachers are reflective (Dewey 1933), an
idea further developed into the notion of the teacher as reflective practitioner by
Donald Schön (1983). In the 30 years since Schön’s Reflective Practitioner was first
published, reflection has come to be regarded as a vital skill for teachers to develop,
and many teacher education programs have taken on the goal of developing
reflective teachers in the United States (Brookfield 1995; Darling-Hammond 2006;
Feiman-Nemser and Beasley 2007; Fendler 2003; Valli 1992, 1997; Zeichner
and Liston 1996; Zeichner and Liu 2009) and throughout the world (Calderhead and
Gates 1993; Grimmett and Erickson 1988; Handal and Lauvas 1987; Hatton and
Smith 1995, Symth 1992; Tse 2007). The movement advocating reflective teaching
was a response to the call for educational reform to transform teachers from techni-
cians rigidly and obediently following a prescribed curriculum into teachers able to
analyze and adapt their teaching to particular students in particular social, cultural,
Educational Review 3
and political contexts (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, and Bransford 2005;

Darling-Hammond 2006; Zeichner 2006). This quality is especially important to
teach those students who are culturally, ethnically, and racially different from the
majority of society (Au 2009; Grant and Sleeter 2007; Valenzuela 2005;
Ladson-Billings and Tate IV 1995; Ladson-Billings 2001, 2009; Sleeter 2001).
Within this reflective teaching movement, some researchers and teacher
educators have argued that it is important to foster “critical reflection” in order to
produce qualified teachers (Carr and Kemmis 1986; Mezirow 1990; Noffke and
Brennan 1988; Smyth 1989; van Manen 1977). There are multiple definitions of
critical reflection (notably Cherubini 2009a, 2009b; Dinkelman 1999, 2000; Howard
2003; Liston and Zeichner 1991; van Manen 1977), which, while certainly related,
contain enough variation to interfere with conceptual clarity. This lack of conceptual
clarity is particularly visible in research reporting prospective teachers’ critical
reflections, much of which contains multiple and unresolved definitions. Drawing
from the work of van Manen (1977) and Liston and Zeichner’s (1991) social Recon-
structionist perspective, Dinkelman (1999) defines critical reflection as:
deliberation about wider social, historical, political, and cultural contexts of education,
and deliberation about relationships between educational practice and the construction
of a more equitable, justice, and democratic society. (p. 332)
In his inquiry into the development of critical reflection in secondary student teach-
ers, Dinkelman (2000) later defines critical reflection as “deliberation on the moral
and ethical dimensions of education practice” (p. 195). Howard (2003), however,
offers a framework of culturally relevant pedagogy as ingredient of critical reflec-
tion. In other words, these models seem to require specific content for reflection to
be considered critical, but leave unexamined both the process and the ultimate goal
of reflection.
Given the fuzzy conceptions of critical reflection, it is no surprise that there is a
lack of research on the content of prospective teachers’ reflections, as well as a pau-
city of effort to rethink strategies for fostering prospective teachers’ critical reflection
(Day 1993; Zeichner 2008). The first step to remedying this situation is to fully clar-
ify the concept of critical reflection in terms of content, process, and goals. If we
believe in the potential of reflective teaching for teacher learning and development,
it is necessary for teacher educators to go beyond the notion of reflective teaching in
general and teach and foster critical reflection among prospective teachers. In order
to do so, teacher educators first have to gain a deep understanding of the theoretical
underpinnings of critical reflection and use this knowledge to analyze prospective
teachers’ reflections so as to provide appropriate support for achieving this ambi-
tious goal. The examples of reflective teaching reviewed by Zeichner (1992) show
that there is much research on preparing reflective teachers, but most of it focuses
on prospective teachers’ perceptions and self-reported results, with little
consideration of their reflection in terms of process or the presence (or lack) of a
critical nature. If the ultimate goal is to prepare critically reflective teachers, then,
given the need for both clarification in the concept of critical reflection and analysis
of the nature and quality of prospective teachers’ reflection, two main questions
need to be addressed: (1) What does “critical reflection” mean in the context of
teacher education? (2) How can teacher educators analyze prospective teachers’
reflections in order to foster critical reflection and achieve transformative learning?
4 K. Liu
In order to answer these questions, this paper first proposes a critical reflection
framework by synthesizing existing frameworks for and definitions of reflective
practice and critical reflection, including those of John Dewey (1933) and
Donald Schön (1983, 1987); van Manen’s work on reflection (1977, 1990, 1997),
Jack Mezirow’s transformative and emancipatory learning (1990, 1991, 1997, 2000),
and Stephen Brookfield’s adult education (1987, 1988, 1995). By juxtaposing these
scholars’ ideas with the author’s empirical research described later, this paper then
discusses how this framework will enable teacher educators to analyze the nature of
prospective teachers’ reflections in order to enhance their transformative learning. It
further argues that this framework is able to provide theoretical and practical
guidance for transformative teacher research.
This paper uses data drawn from a one-and-a-half year long empirical study on
prospective teachers’ reflections in an elementary teacher education program in a
large Midwestern university from spring 2009 to summer 2010. Prospective teachers
in this five-semester program are required to use an electronic portfolio (ePortfolio)
to document their teaching and learning, evaluation results of which are reported to
the state department of public instruction along with recommendations for licensure.
The ePortfolio is thus expected to function both as a platform for reflection and as a
summative assessment for determining licensure. The teacher education program,
like many across the United States, proclaims the production of reflective practitio-
ners as a major goal, along with advancing social justice and equity through both
classroom practice and community interaction.
The primary participants included 25 prospective teachers. The ePortfolio arti-
facts for the third, fourth, and fifth semester of all participants were analyzed; in
addition, four participants were followed closely through two semesters of classroom
observations, two interviews per semester, and a follow-up interview at the end of
spring 2010. For program context, interviews were conducted with 15 teacher educa-
tors (five faculty and 10 graduate students), some of whom were methods instructors
or student teaching supervisors and who worked closely with these participants.
Also included were seven cooperating teachers for the four followed participants.
ePortfolio artifacts and interview transcripts were coded and analyzed by the
researcher and two colleagues (to achieve inter-rater reliability of 0.9). All names
used in the data and in this paper are pseudonyms.
Reconceptualize critical reflection based on existing theoretical underpinnings

In his book, How We Think (1933), Dewey starts with an explanation of the term
thought and points out that thought is related to belief. Dewey differentiates two
types of thought: one is accepting a belief with slight or almost no attempt to exam-
ine the evidence that supports it; the other is seeking the grounds or basis for a
belief and examining their adequacy to support the belief. The latter he calls “reflec-
tive thought” that constitutes “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any
belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and
the further conclusions to which it tends” (p. 6). According to Dewey, this is a habit
of “critical examination and inquiry” (p. 29) that needs to be inculcated through
training. Based on this major difference, Dewey presents his concept of reflective
teaching and discriminates between action that is routine and action that is reflective.
From Dewey’s definition of reflective thought, we can find some pre-figuring of
post-structuralist critical theory, such as that developed by Habermas (1983),
Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), and Foucault (1972). Dewey’s insistence that
reflective thought must examine the grounds for belief, and his use of the word
“evidence” (1933, 8), clearly sets him apart from earlier philosophers, whether
idealists like Kant and Hegel (who see the practice of critique applying to “pure”
questions as well as evidence-based ones), or materialists such as Hume, Locke, or
even Descartes, for whom the materiality of experimental science nevertheless is
bound to reveal ideal laws. For Dewey, belief itself must be grounded on evidence
that can be examined both in terms of its basic truth and in terms of its ability to
support belief. In other words, one cannot engage in immanent analysis to reach the
truth, as Kant suggested, nor can one infer universality from material evidence as
Hume et al. argued. Rather, one has to examine belief in relation to the evidence that
makes that belief possible, which is precisely the basis upon which Habermas
critiques modernity as an ideology, Horkheimer and Adorno critique market
capitalism as hegemony, and Foucault critiques the institutions of science as
instrumental to power.
In addition, Dewey lays out three attitudes1 that are integral to reflective action.
Zeichner and Liston (1996) comment that Dewey’s concept of openmindedness is a
quality of critical believers who are willing to enter sympathetically into opposing
points of view because they realize that all belief systems have weaknesses and can
be strengthened by the confrontation with different beliefs. That is to say, when
teachers are able to be open to different points or even the ones that are greatly
opposing to their own belief systems, they are more likely to reflect in a manner to
seek different alternatives to the problems that need to be solved. This openminded-
ness quality is important in critical reflection, but it is not easy to cultivate. As
Brookfield (1995) illustrates, one of the hardest disciplines for teachers to learn in
order to reflect critically is the discipline of openmindedness. According to Zeichner
and Liston (1996), teachers who are responsible not only reflect on whether or not
they have met the objectives or goals they make for their teaching, but also on their
teaching in general by asking broader and open questions such as, “are the results
good, for whom and in what ways” (p. 11).
The quality of openmindedness can be demonstrated by the example of a
prospective teacher’s reflections on the issue of race. On a bus ride with African
American students to school, a White prospective teacher Judy heard the bus
coordinator, who is also African American, say that she has to keep the students
under control to prevent them from ending up in jail. This experience puzzled her –
a state that Dewey suggests can trigger reflective thought:
I was so impressed with her management of this busload of children; I made the com-
ment to her that, “You’ve really got things under control on this bus.” She said this to
me: “Well, we have to get them in control so they don’t end up in jail. It starts on day
one.” This really hit me! [She] said this is such a nonchalant manner – like it was
everyday knowledge that Black students will end up in jail if she (or any other adult
figure) didn’t lay down the law “on day one.” (Judy, ePortfolio Reflection, Fourth
Semester, Spring 2009)
As Judy reflected, she was still “grappling with the issue of race” and she was look-
ing for external inputs to interact with her puzzlement. Thus she had a conversation
with this researcher who probed her to think further that when a Black woman made
such a comment about her own group, was it truly from what she believed? Where
6 K. Liu
was this belief and assumption coming from? Later on, the prospective teacher
reflected that
[The coordinator] may have been told to believe that some of the students may end up
in jail, or she has personally experienced Black children ending up in jail. Either way
her comments seem to perpetuate the system. (Judy, ePortfolio Reflection, Fourth
Semester, Spring 2009)
This example shows that the prospective teacher had the awareness to look beyond
the micro classroom environment of her teaching to a broader context of schooling
and was open to different opinions in the process of her learning to teach – she
demonstrated Dewey’s quality of openmindedness. However, teacher educators can-
not stop at Judy’s personal realization: rather, there is a need to follow her into the
classroom to see whether she brings that new awareness into her teaching, trans-
forming her own learning as well as that of her students. How can teacher educators
support this further action and analyze the results? Apparently, this needs an exten-
sion of reflection that goes beyond what Dewey points out “active, persistent, and
careful consideration of any belief or practice in light of the reasons that support it
and the further consequences to which it leads” (Zeichner and Liston 1996, 9) to a
next stage of analyzing and questioning one’s own actions in practice.
Writing a half century after Dewey’s masterpiece on reflective thought, Schön
(1983) described reflection as existing in two time frames: reflection-in-action (p.
69), and reflection-on-action (p. 267). These concepts of reflection challenge the
traditional view of knowledge, theory, and practice, which believes that theory and
practice are separated and that practitioners (such as teachers) are consumers of the-
ories constructed by someone else (such as university-based researchers). Schön
argues that practitioners have actions, understandings, and judgments to solve
problems (knowledge-in-action), and that reflection is to think about making this
tacit knowledge more conscious (1983, 59). By encouraging teachers to be aware of
the value of their tacit knowledge and to be critical of the knowledge produced by
researchers, Schön also establishes philosophical justification for the revolutionary
point of view that teachers have a special role as knowledge producers. This critical
lens of questioning authorities is well articulated by van Manen (1977) in his
definitional of critical reflectivity.
Van Manen’s work is influenced by the intellectual tradition of critical peda-
gogy that can be tracked to its theoretical foundation in critical theory. Essential
to critical pedagogy is the role of the teacher as “penetrator of false conscious-
ness” (Brookfield 1995, 208), critiquing education as a process through which
dominant social and economic groups impose values and beliefs that legitimate
their own power and position of power. Therefore, the teacher’s responsibility is
to expose the reality to students and help them to be aware of how the process
works and how to resist this process. According to Habermas (1968), “We have
made this interlocking of knowledge and interest clear through examining the
category of ‘actions’ that coincide with the ‘activity’ of reflection, namely that of
emancipatory actions” (p. 212). For Habermas, the act of reflecting clarifies struc-
tures of domination by providing a vehicle for the genesis of acting and knowing
as interconnected processes. In other words, by reflecting on one’s actions there
can be new knowledge and illumination of one’s interests that can, in turn, inform
new action.
Van Manen identifies three levels of reflection, technical reflection, practical

reflection, and critical reflection, corresponding to the interpretations of the practical
described earlier. According to van Manen, critical reflection puts the social, moral
and political dimensions of schooling into consideration. At this level, the ideal of a
deliberative rationality pursues worthwhile educational ends in self-determination,
community, and on the basis of justice, equality, and freedom. An example might be
a prospective teacher who states in a reflection that they have noticed a child from a
poor community habitually arriving late to school. Instead of taking punitive mea-
sures against the student or assuming that they or their parents may not care about
school, the teacher instead considers and even foregrounds the social context of this
student, seeing this context contributing to what takes place in the classroom, and
then considers the many reasons that may have contributed to the student’s tardiness.
Such a reflection may even call into question established norms of conventional
schooling and their appropriateness for students from marginalized communities.
This level of reflection is rarely seen among prospective teachers, in part because
the pool from which teacher education programs overwhelmingly draw does not
demonstrate the kind of diversity visible in the public schools. Prospective teachers,
by and large, simply have not had the breadth of life experience necessary to trigger
van Manen’s critical reflection automatically. As one of the teacher educators at
Midwestern University observed,
I am actually more sympathetic towards who our students are. These people are in their
young twenties. How much have they reflected about? What have they been through? I
would hope that their ability to become more critically reflective would grow as their
career grows. (Laura, interview on February 26, 2009).
However useful they have been, van Manen’s three levels of reflectivity have caused
some argument among teachers and teacher educators. Some teachers argue that lay-
ering the three types of reflectivity elevates the importance of critical reflection on
the social and political factors of schooling but devalues the reality of teachers’ daily
life of technical and practical activities (Valli 1997; Zeichner 2008). Therefore, when
we talk about critical reflection and conduct research on fostering critical reflection,
it is worth pointing out that emphasizing the importance of critical reflection does
not mean other kinds of reflection are unimportant. As Brookfield (1995) comments,
teachers cannot get through the day without making numerous technical decisions
concerning timing and process. At the same time, there is a tendency to limit reflec-
tion to the individualistic and technical concerns of the micro-systems of particular
classrooms, losing sight of the political underpinnings, dimensions, and conse-
quences of reflection, because the “technical and procedural problems of classroom
dynamics are more susceptible to being solved through reflection than are structural
or political ones” (p. 217).
We often see prospective teachers reflect on how they implemented a teaching
strategy or an activity. For example, prospective teacher Judy reflected on her unit
on solstice celebrations of different cultures:
I focused on a unit about Celebrations of Light. I wanted to base my unit on the stu-
dents’ lives and also give them an opportunity to learn about “lesser known” celebra-
tions. The unit was a reflection of my students as well as an opportunity to learn about
celebrations different from their own. (Judy, ePortfolio, Fifth Semester, Fall 2009)
8 K. Liu
Based on this goal, Judy invited three people from the community she knew to teach
specific celebrations based on their life experiences: an African American who was
an Elementary Language Arts Resource teacher to teach about Kwanzaa, a Jewish
student’s father to teach about Hanukkah, and the researcher to teach about the
Chinese Winter Solstice celebration. Judy then reflected on the effects of these guest
speakers’ teaching on the students. For example, she reflected on the effect of the
Kwanzaa celebration:
She mailed individual Kwanzaa Celebration Invitations to the students, she read the
book The Seven Days of Kwanzaa by Ella Grier, we made Kwanzaa mats and cups,
we learned about the seven principles [of Kwanzaa], and applied the principles to our
own lives. (Judy, ePortfolio, Fifth Semester, Fall 2009)
Looking at these reflections, it is important to value Judy’s effort to bring commu-

nity people to enrich the students’ experiences of different cultures and show them
that cultures may differ, but they are equally valuable. However, following her
through the unit, the researcher did not observe her go beyond the technical
implementation of this unit to gauge the effect of the lessons on the students and
their parents. For example, how did Jewish parents respond to their children’s
description of Kwanzaa, which is modeled after Hanukkah, and how would the
students bring the response back into the classroom? What was the effect on the
African American students of bringing Kwanzaa into the classroom? While we value
the learning experiences of the prospective teacher regarding the implementation
process of this unit, teacher educators could take this opportunity to ask pointed
questions to help the prospective teacher take further actions to expand the equity
issues in her teaching.
The social reconstructionist tradition of reflection views schooling and teacher
education as crucial elements in the movement toward a more just and humane
society. Zeichner and Liston (1996) suggest that under this conception of reflective
teaching, the teacher pays attention to their own practice as well as to the social
conditions in which their practices are situated (Carr and Kemmis 1986). Also, the
social reconstructionist conception of reflective teaching has democratic and emanci-
patory impulses, and maintains focus on issues of inequality and injustice within
schooling and society. Furthermore, a social reconstructionist conception of
reflective teaching commits to reflection as a communal project in which teacher
educators encourage the development of “communities of learning” in which teach-
ers can support and sustain each others’ professional growth (Zeichner and Liston
1996, 60).
Different from the critical theorist approach, the social reconstructionist approach
emphasizes the importance of addressing social problems, pursuing a better and
more just society. Reconstructionist educators take actions to reinforce curricula that
highlight social reform as the aim of education. Following this ideology, teacher
educators such Zeichner (1996) and Valli (1993) call for reflective teaching with the
purpose of making a more just schooling and society. For example, Zeichner and
Liston (1996) argue that efforts to prepare reflective teachers must both foster
genuine teacher development and support the realization of greater equity and social
justice in schooling and the larger society. They point out that teacher reflection
should not be supported as an end in itself without connecting these efforts to
making a better society. This concept of reflective teaching differs from just purely
thinking about teaching in a very general way, which Zeichner and Liston termed a
“generic” tradition.
As Valli (1993) describes, proponents of this approach regard schooling and
teacher education as crucial elements in the movement toward a more just and
humane society, arguing that “schools are social institutions, help reproduce a
society based on unjust class, race, and gender relations and that teachers have a
moral obligation to reflect on and change their own practices and school structures
when these perpetuate such arrangements” (p. 46). This point of view was echoed
by Israel Scheffler (1968), who believed that teachers should not ignore the macro
environment and purpose of schooling. He called for teachers to “take active respon-
sibility for the goals to which they are committed and for the social setting in which
these goals may prosper” (p. 11).
To give one example of how sophisticated reflection can be while at the same
time failing to connect micro and macro levels, consider a project another prospec-
tive teacher, Ella, created: a computer game to teach geometric shapes. Rather than
focus on the programming issues, the prospective teacher took advantage of her
knowledge of her students’ home languages to translate the names of the shapes into
her students’ native languages, and then invited their parents to record themselves
saying the names for the game. When asked to reflect on the rationale for this
activity, Ella responded:
I knew that languages spoken at home are comforts and I want to bring them into the
classroom. Kids learn languages very successfully at a young age and so I felt intro-
ducing them to multiple languages at a young age would give them a start at multiple
language learning. (Ella, follow-up interview on February 25, 2010)
From her reflection, the critical part of her teaching this computer shape game was
trying to break the barrier of formal schooling and home life, valuing her students’
feelings about schooling. In terms of the process of thinking, it is apparent that her
approach was relatively sophisticated: analyzing assumptions about teaching strate-
gies, maintaining a contextual understanding of her classroom, and implementing
actions into her teaching based on her reflections. However, her deliberation was not
necessarily based on questioning or critiquing the current school education that often
ignores the cultures and languages of minority students. It was based on her belief
that students learn English, the language that is spoken by the majority, more effi-
ciently when content material is also presented in their home language.
Ella’s reflection on this computer game showed that she challenged the common
teaching methods of teaching minority students in English, but from the social
reconstructionist perspective, she did not deal with issues of equity and injustice in
school and society – she was trying to make the minority students learn English
more efficiently and comfortably, not challenging the domination of English as the
official language in schools and the society. This in turn demonstrates that valuing
the social political dimension of critical reflection should not devalue the teaching
and learning that happens in the micro classroom environment.
Summary of the concept of critical reflection

According to Linda Valli (1997), there are two important dimensions of reflection,
content and quality. Content of reflection refers to what teachers think about; quality
10 K. Liu
of reflection refers to how they think about that content (p.74). These two dimen-
sions of reflection can be used to evaluate reflection and to help teacher candidates
determine whether they are making good decisions. From the literature reviewed
earlier, it is clear that different researchers and educators have different emphases on
the content and processes of critical reflection. By synthesizing their work, we see
that two important factors that contribute to critical reflection. One is the cognitive
process of analyzing, questioning, challenging, critiquing, and acting upon the
reflective insights. As Dewey (1933) points out, this is a habit of critical examina-
tion and inquiry. The other is the content being analyzed, questioned and critiqued.
To be general, according to Dewey, the content of reflection should be “any belief
or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the
further conclusions to which it tends” (1933, 118). To be more specific, according to
the critical pedagogy and social reconstructionist point of view, the object of critical
reflection is the unjust system characterized by dominant and repressive forms of
authority, and the purpose is social reform to create a more just schooling and a
more democratic society.

It is worth mentioning that critical reflection should not only emphasize the
macro social political factors of education, but also the daily life in the micro class-
room environment. Zeichner (2008) argues that connecting teacher reflection to the
larger goal of social justice does not mean devaluing the content and skills that
teachers need to run the class on a daily basis. Teachers need to have the content
and pedagogical background to teach in a way that promotes students’ learning.
Similarly, Linda Valli (1997) argues, “the criticism of critical reflection focusing on
social and political issues is that there is a lack of attention to teaching skills and this
void must be filled” (p. 80). Based on these dispositions, I argue that another impor-
tant element of critical reflection is its ultimate purpose, which should be to support
student learning and the construction of a better schooling and more just society for
all children.
In summary, critical reflection has the following characteristics:
(1) There are two important dimensions in critical reflection: the content and the
processes. Content means what teachers reflect about, and processes mean
what thinking processes they go through while reflecting.
(2) The content of critical reflection includes established assumptions of oneself,
schools, and the society about teaching and learning, and the social and
political implications of schooling.
(3) The processes of critical reflection include constant analyzing, questioning,
and critiquing the established assumptions, and implementing changes to
previous actions that had been supported by those established assumptions.
(4) The ultimate goal of critical reflection is producing actions for enhanced
student learning, better schooling, and a more just society for all students.
Therefore, I propose the following definition of critical reflection to answer the first
research question in this paper and use it to guide my study:
Critical reflection is a process of constantly analyzing, questioning, and critiquing

established assumptions of oneself, schools, and the society about teaching and learn-
ing, and the social and political implications of schooling, and implementing changes
to previous actions that have been supported by those established assumptions for the
Processes Analyzing, questioning, critiquing,

implementing actions in teaching
Assumptions about teaching and

learning in the micro classroom context
Critical Reflection Content

Assumptions about macro social political
issues and their implications for the micro level of
classroom teaching
Goals Making changes for student learning and a

more just society
Figure 1. The processes, content, and goals of critical reflection.
purpose of supporting student learning and a better schooling and more justice society
for all children.
Figure 1 provides a visual explanation of the processes, content and ultimate goal of
critical reflection.
Critical reflection for transformative learning

In Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood (Mezirow, 1990), Mezirow contends
critical reflection addresses “the question of the justification for the very premises on
which problems are posed or defined in the first place” (p. 12) and he further argues
that transformative learning requires critical reflection – questioning the validity of a
long-taken-for-granted meaning perspective predicated on a presupposition about
oneself – that challenges or negates values that have been very close to the center of
the reflecting person’s self-conception. Such challenges and negations of conven-
tional criteria of self-assessment are always fraught with “threat and strong emotion”
(p. 12). Nevertheless, individual and group meaning perspectives can be transformed
through critically reflective assessment of what Mezirow termed epistemic, socio-
cultural, and psychic distortions of knowledge.
Take as an example the experience of Judy, who brought awareness of the social
and cultural resources of her students and the community into her teaching. She
invited community people to her classroom for the “celebration of light” unit
described earlier, and put her students in their hands, which required courage. It
might not have been difficult for other prospective teachers, but for Judy, it was an
important step forward to overcome her own feelings of insecurity. Based on my
observation of her teaching and her supervisor, Mary’s, comments, Judy easily
became nervous and wanted her class to be neat and the students to be well
behaved: “In the class she has to see things going under the way she wants to, other-
wise she thinks it’s a disaster” (Mary, interview on November 9, 2009). Thus open-
ing up the class to people she had never before taught with is a critically reflective
process for her in terms of breaking down her own paradigm of control. Further, the
whole idea of inviting community people to bring their “funds of knowledge”
(González, Moll, and Amanti 2005) to the classroom is a paradigm shift from teach-
ing the prescribed curriculum, which focuses on mainstream culture and knowledge.
Although she accomplished all these goals, Judy nevertheless failed to transform
her own assumptions of different cultures or her actions of working with students
12 K. Liu
whose cultural backgrounds are different from what she is familiar with when she
encountered unscripted classroom issues. For example, an African American student,
Rebecca who did not have pre-school experience joined Judy’s kindergarten class in
the middle of the semester. Judy thought the student had behavioral problems – not
being able to sit still or follow classroom routines. Judy further believed that the stu-
dent’s African American culture made her “different” from the other students. She
reflected: “I think that’s her culture. So she feels like she can move her body
because she wants to move her body” (Judy, interview #4 on January 24, 2010).
When the student did not sit still or follow other classroom routines, Judy felt it is
appropriate for her cooperating teacher to pull the student out of the classroom. The
observation by Ladson-Billings (2006) that prospective teachers have difficulty
understanding how culture operates held true: Judy made a simple connection
between her notion of African American culture and the African American student’s
behavior of not sitting still, ignoring the fact that the other students in the class had
been trained in normalized classroom behavior before entering kindergarten, while
the African American student had not. Judy was thus able to construct an artificial
example of cultural equity in prepared activities, but was unable to respond to the
need for equity arising spontaneously in the classroom, instead falling back on the
combination of culturalist explanations and a request for segregation.
The examples of Judy shows how the critical reflection framework is able to pro-
vide a tool for teacher educators to analyze prospective teachers’ reflections as well
as their reflection-based teaching practice. This analysis demonstrates the necessity
of grounding the analysis of prospective teacher reflection on actions in the
classroom as well as the static artifacts of reflection harvested from journals and
interviews. It is important for teacher education programs to clarify taken-for-granted
vocabulary such as multicultural education, diversity, and equity not just in abstract
terms but in concrete form appropriate to prepare quality teachers. If these concepts
are not clarified and internalized by prospective teachers, they cannot integrate the
pedagogy and achieve transformative learning. Teacher educators and cooperating
teachers play a critical role in helping prospective teachers achieve transformation
through constructive criticism and open deliberation on alternatives for situations
like the ones Judy experienced. How could teacher educator better support prospec-
tive teachers’ transformative learning through critical reflection?
Brookfield (1987, 1988) gives an outline of the process of critical reflection that
includes four components: assumption analysis, contextual awareness, imaginative
speculation, and reflective scepticism.
(1) Assumption analysis tries to identify the assumptions that underlie the ideas,
beliefs, values, and actions that the thinker takes for granted. Once these
assumptions are identified, critically reflective practitioners assess the accu-
racy and validity of these assumptions against lived experience.
(2) Contextual awareness occurs when the thinker realizes that their assumptions
are socially and personally created in a specific historical and cultural
context. What is regarded as appropriate ways of organizing the workplace,
of behaving toward ones intimates, or acting politically, reflect the culture
and time in which the thinker lives.
(3) Imaginative speculation explores ways of thinking and living alternative to
current ways of thinking and living in order to provide an opportunity to
challenge prevailing ways of knowing. This is a realization that one can
replace obsolete, irrational or oppressive social arrangements with more

contemporary, rational or just alternatives. It can be both liberating and
threatening.
(4) Reflective scepticism comes on the heels of imagining and exploring
alternatives. This is the development of a critical cast of mind to doubt the
claims made for the universal validity or truth of an idea, practice or institu-
tion. The thinker calls into question the belief that simply because some idea
or social structure has existed unchanged for a period of time that it must be
right and the best possible arrangement.
Brookfield’s four-stage framework can be quite powerful in fostering critical reflec-

tion, but it fails to provide insight for teachers about what to do next: if reflection
stops with reflection itself, it cannot lead to transformative learning. As Brookfield
(1995) himself comments, “when we become fixated on standardizing reflective
competencies, the process of reflection becomes an end in itself” (p. 217). He argues
that “reflection in and of itself is not enough; it must always be linked to how the
world can be changed” (p. 217). This insight regarding action for change is precisely
what Mezirow (1990) believes necessary in transformative learning. As Mezirow
puts it, “reflective discourse and its resulting insights alone do not make for transfor-
mative learning. Acting upon these emancipatory insights, a praxis is also neces-
sary” (1990, 354). The learner, Mezirow continues, “must have the will to act upon
his or her new convictions” (1990, 354). As discussed earlier, Mezirow points out
there are three types of distortions, namely, epistemic, sociocultural, and psychologi-
cal distortions. These distortions are either institutionalized and require “social
action in some form to change them” or “involve changes in social behaviour – in
ways of judging and dealing with others and their ideas as a consequence of the
new insights gained” (1990, 355). Mezirow therefore believes that although transfor-
mative learning begins with the critical analysis of unexamined presuppositions, it
must end with action based upon the resulting insights. This reflection-based action
is evidence that help triangulate the prospective teachers’ written reflections and
self-selected artifacts to help teacher educators to understand whether or not
prospective teachers achieve transformative learning.
Therefore to link critical reflection with transformative learning, further stages
must be added to Brookfield’s model, enabling teachers to analyze the effects of
their actions on student learning, which may trigger another cycle of critical reflec-
tion and further changes in the classroom:
Reflection-based action derives from previous steps of reflection. Teachers take

actions to change or improve their practice informed by their reflections.
Reflection on the effects of reflection-based action requires the analysis of the
effects of the reflection-based actions on student learning, upon which to make
further decisions for future teaching.
The full hermeneutic cycle of this model of transformative learning is summarized

in Table 1.
14 K. Liu
Table 1. Stages of critical reflection and explanations.

Stages Explanation
1. Assumption analyses Teachers try to identify the assumptions about schooling
and the society that underlie the ideas, beliefs, values, and
actions that they (and others) take for granted, and then
assess the accuracy and validity of these assumptions
against lived experiences.
2. Contextual awareness Teachers realize that their assumptions are socially and
personally created in a specific historical and cultural
context, that what they regard as appropriate ways of
organizing the workplace, behaving toward intimates, or
acting politically reflect the culture and time in which they
live.
3. Imaginative speculation Teachers explore alternative ways to current ways of
thinking and living in order to provide an opportunity to
challenge prevailing ways of knowing. This is the
realization that they can replace obsolete, irrational or
oppressive social arrangements with more contemporary,

rational or just alternatives. It can be both liberating and
threatening.
4. Reflective scepticism Teachers imagine and explore alternatives, leading to
reflective scepticism. This is when teachers develop a
critical cast of mind to doubt the claims made for the
universal validity or truth of an idea, practice or institution.
They call into question the belief that simply because some
idea or social structure has existed unchanged for a period
of time that it must be right and the best possible
arrangement.
5. Reflection-based actions Based on the previous steps of reflection, teachers take
actions to change or improve their teaching practice.
6. Reflect on the effect of Teachers analyze the effect of the reflection-based actions
reflection-based actions on student learning, upon which to make further decisions
for future teaching. This may trigger another cycle of
critical reflection.
Conclusion
The preceding survey of theories of critical reflection, itself a form of critical reflec-
tion, benefits teachers, prospective teachers, and teacher educators in several ways.
First, as Brookfield (1995) summarizes, it helps us understand what is happening as
we start to question assumptions and challenge taken-for-granted ways of thinking
and working, and suggests ways in which we can keep the risks of critical reflection
to a minimum. For example, we can be aware that the real meaning of critical
reflection is achieved by a critical inquiry on specific aspects of education instead of
talking about it in a general way so that it becomes mere jargon.
Second, it reminds us to keep an open mind toward different alternatives when
confronting an educational problem. Crucial to the process of critical reflection is
exploring alternative ways to current ways of thinking and living in order to provide
an opportunity to challenge our prevailing ways of knowing. If we become uncriti-
cally enamoured with certain ways of thinking or believing, including individual
approaches to critical reflection, we may fail to examine our own theoretical
assumptions and practices, our teaching will become politically correct, and the
students will feel indoctrinated rather than educated.
Third, it shows that critical reflection is a complicated social and cognitive

process and that the habit of critical inquiry needs to be cultivated (Dewey 1933).
Teacher educators should not take it for granted that teachers and prospective teach-
ers are able to build up the capacity of critical reflection naturally without support.
Fourth, teacher educators should emphasize the value of actions of change when
fostering critical reflection among prospective teachers. It is indeed valuable to
facilitate prospective teachers to re-examine their assumptions, understand the social
cultural context of their teaching, and search for alternatives, but if there are no
changed actions in the teaching that follows reflection, the value of these processes
remain minimal. It is action based on the cognitive processes of analyzing, critiqu-
ing, and reframing that contributes to transformative learning (Mezirow 1990,
2000).
In the final analysis, although this framework offers a wealth of insight that
guides and inspires teacher educators to explore strategies in our own teaching prac-
tice to enhance transformative learning of our prospective teachers, teacher educators
are, in the end, teachers as well; we can best inculcate habits of critical reflection for
transformative learning in others when we demonstrate them ourselves.
Implications for teacher research

The framework detailed earlier has clear implications for teacher preparation. How-
ever, the implications go well beyond novice teacher preparation, and support impor-
tant directions for research, both by teachers themselves and by university-based
teacher educators, as suggested by researchers such as Zeichner (2007), Thomas
(2012), Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2006), and Friedman (2006). These implications
are particularly important given today’s climate of government-sponsored, corporate-
directed initiatives such as NCLB (No Child Left Behind), RTTT (Race to the Top),
and edTPA (Educational Teacher Performance Assessment) that exert unprecedented
power over what should be taught, how it should be taught, and how learning
should be assessed. I shall unpack these implications in more detail in this section.
From A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983)
to NCLB (NCLB Act: Public Law 2002, http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/
esea02/107-110.pdf), to RTTT (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Section 14005-6, Title XIV 2009, http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/statu-
tory/stabilization-fund.pdf), the United States has seen unprecedented intrusion by
the federal government into public education in ways previously decided by the
states and local school districts. Compounding this situation are corporate-directed
initiatives that demand market-driven accountability with a reliance on standardized
testing. Government and business thus push a top-down, one-size-fits-all reform that
emphasize economic efficiency and deprofessionalization: teaching as simple
knowledge transmission, and teachers as technicians receiving and implementing
knowledge produced by outside “experts.” This deprofessionalization further
requires practitioners to use “scientific” knowledge (as determined by policy-makers
and business leaders) in their teaching, rather than the knowledge they generate
through their own local practice (Thomas 2012). This political and economic agenda,
as critiqued by Diane Ravitch (2010), is dismantling the American public education
that was once the pride of the nation, and the primary engine for enhancing a
democratic and just society. What could be done as a profession to counteract the
politically motivated deprofessionalization of education? As researchers and scholars
16 K. Liu
have advocated, practitioners – both teachers and teacher educators – need to take
the initiative to research their practice and then accumulate and disseminate the
knowledge thus generated to the larger public (Zeichner 2007; Thomas 2012;
Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1993, 2006). I argue that the critical reflection framework
proposed in this article can be incorporated in education research to help move the
abstract theory of reflective teaching into research into the individual situation of
each classroom, into each individual learner, to achieve transformation of classroom
learning, the educational system, and the research endeavor. The accumulated
knowledge in the community can then be the basis for powerful responses to the
current political deprofessionalization of teaching and fetish of testing.
Critical reflection in teacher research

Different from the image of teachers as knowledge transmitters portrayed by policy-
makers and those who have no knowledge of daily life in a classroom, teaching is
actually interactional work; teachers are therefore insiders with daily access, exten-
sive expertise, a clear stake in improving classroom practice, and most importantly
the ability and authority to conduct their own research (Cochran-Smith and Lytle
1993). Scholars such as Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993, 2006), Somekh and
Zeichner (2009), and Thomas (2012) have argued that positioning “teachers as
researchers” or “teachers as investigators” (Dewey 1929, 46) is an important effort
to dismantle the discourse of teachers as knowledge recipients because their tacit
knowledge, individual-based and context-specific, is able to contribute unique
insights to both the academic research community and the community of teachers
(Cochran and Lytle 1993, 5). This argument is based on the long established belief
that teachers have knowledge gained from the field and daily practice, whether
described as “unworked mine knowledge” (Dewey 1929, 46), “tacit knowledge”
(Polanyi 1966), “local hermeneutics” in craft knowledge (Hirsch 1976), “knowledge
in action” (Schön 1983), or “lived experience” (van Manen 1990).
The core of teacher-conducted research is reflection. Dewey (1904) pointed out
the importance of teachers’ reflecting on their practices and integrating their obser-
vations into their emerging theories of teaching and learning. The cognitive process
of reflection has also been marked as a key element in teacher research (Carr and
Kemmis 1986; Clandinin and Connelly 1998; Elliot 1991; Zeichner 2003). For
example, Elliot (1991) points out that the joint reflection on the relationship of qual-
ity of teaching and quality of learning is a central characteristic of action research,
while Carr and Kemmis (1986) hold that a self-reflective spiral of planning, acting,
observing and reflecting is central to the action research approach. In both
formulations, reflection is key to the research endeavor. Nevertheless, without a clear
concept of reflection, and a transformative goal, teacher-conducted research runs the
risk of missing the critical element, and remain focused on daily technical issues,
which fulfills exactly the image of teachers that policy-makers and business leaders
effortlessly try to convey to the public.
The critical reflection framework articulated here provides guidance for teachers
to expand their craft knowledge within the classroom environment to larger social
political context of their daily practices while it at the same time acknowledges the
importance of the daily practice at the micro classroom level. The overall context
exerts strong control over whether teachers’ tacit knowledge is considered
knowledge at all by themselves as well as the larger society. Therefore it is vital for
teachers to incorporate knowledge of the political agenda and the reform discourse
in their daily decision-making. Otherwise, no matter how well they address the
micro environment of their classroom through research and reflection, they will find
themselves the target of policies that insist of “teacher quality” as the sole determi-
nant of “student success” even though, as Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2006) point
out, “making the teacher ‘the answer’ to the problems of education distracts atten-
tion from under resourced schools and other systemic factors, such as poverty and
racism” (p. 680).
Thomas (2012) points out that knowledge gained as part of practice is tentative,
provisional, and characterized by change; it involves recursions, iterations, revisions,
and repeated review. In this, it is not different from the repeated process of critical
Table 2. Critical reflection for action research.

Integrating critical
Action research reflection in action

process research Explanation
Initial idea Assumption analyses The teacher researcher tries to identify the
assumptions about schooling and the society
that underlie the initial ideas, beliefs, values,
and actions that they (and others) take for
granted, and then assesses the accuracy and
validity of these assumptions against lived
experiences.
Reconnaissance Contextual awareness The teacher researcher finds that their
(Fact finding) assumptions are socially and personally
created in a specific historical and cultural
context.
General plan Imaginative speculation The teacher researcher explores alternative
(Step 1) ways of thinking and living related to the
initial idea in order to provide an opportunity
to challenge prevailing ways of knowing. This
is the realization that they can replace
obsolete, irrational or oppressive social
arrangements with more contemporary,
rational or just alternatives.
General plan Reflective scepticism The teacher researcher develops a critical cast
(Step 2) of mind to doubt the claims made for the
universal validity of the initial idea, calling
into question the belief that simply because
some idea or social structure has existed
unchanged for a period of time that it must be
right and the best possible arrangement.
Implement Reflection-based actions Based on the previous steps of reflection, the
teacher researcher takes actions to change or
improve their teaching practice in relation to
the initial idea.
Evaluate Reflection on the effects The teacher research conducts research on the
of reflection-based effects of reflection-based actions on student
actions learning, their own understanding of the
problem, and their situation to make further
decisions for future teaching. This may trigger
another cycle of research that is integrated
with critical reflection.
18 K. Liu
reflection, starting from assumption analysis, assumptions both of oneself and the
society and progress through the stages of contextual awareness, reflective
scepticism, imagining alternatives, and finally transformative actions. This process is
thoroughly personal and local from start to finish. The “local hermeneutics” (Hirsch
1976) in craft knowledge that teachers develop through practice is an essential com-
ponent in educational knowledge, based on daily practice in the micro classroom
environment as it interacts with the larger macro environment of society, culture,
and politics. However, the current discourse imbedded in standardized testing
regimes convey a different idea of knowledge that teachers need – subject matter
and techniques of teaching scientifically proved to be effective, ignoring “the
knowledge of pedagogy and the knowledge gained from teaching practica,” as
Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2006, 672) rightly critiqued.
Table 2 shows how critical reflection can be integrated into teacher research,
taking Lewin’s (1946) action research in Elliot (1991, 70) as an example:
Critical reflection for teacher educators

The implications discussed earlier should carry similar value for teacher educators,
especially those who conduct self-studies. I would like to emphasize the importance
of the critical reflection framework for teacher educator research in two dimensions
in the current political context of teacher preparation. First, it provides a valuable
framework for research on the content and procedure of prospective teachers’ reflec-
tion (see, for example, Liu 2011). Second, it provides a critical lens to guide teacher
educators to conduct research on the problematic policy of using reflection as
assessment tool, whether as part of a local institutional policy or through larger-scale
proprietary systems such as Pearson’s edTPA.2 Finally this framework holds promise
as a way around the effects of scientism in current education research and policy –
the use of assessment data to justify policies through an appeal to the authority of
“science” rather than through demonstration of actual efficacy. This framework, in
contrast, by marrying hermeneutic and critical interpretation with data-supported
ground-truthing, brings together both “know-what” and “know-how” into a more
fruitful relationship.
Research on prospective teachers’ reflections and actions

As shown in the earlier analysis of prospective teachers’ reflections, teacher educa-
tors need to provide appropriate prompts to engage critical conversation. Therefore,
when teacher educators conduct research on prospective teachers’ reflection, it is
inappropriate to judge whether a prospective teacher is critically reflective or not
merely based on their self-selected reflection. Prospective teachers’ written reflec-
tions may appear to be critical because they are very aware that they are under eval-
uation and want to meet evaluation standards. As Dewey (1929) put it,
Prospective teachers come to training schools, whether in normal schools or colleges,

with such ideas implicit in their minds. They want very largely to find out how to do
things with the maximum prospect of success. (p. 15)
Under this motivation, they have learnt how to write and talk the way they think
their audience wants to hear. This rationale produces a number of discursive prac-
tices, such as cherry picking (Liu 2011) and sun shining (Thomas and Liu 2012),
quite common in prospective teachers’ written reflections that at best obscure
authentic reflection and at worst replace it. Therefore, it is imperative for teacher
educators to use data triangulation to uncover the extent to which prospective
teachers engage in transformative learning. The research results, in turn, help teacher
educator researchers gain a better understanding of how to improve their own
practice in terms of supporting prospective teachers to achieve transformative
learning. For example, teacher educators can foster prospective teachers’ critical
reflection by prompting them to engage in dialog within a community, to explore
their assumptions more deeply, to situate an educational problem in the larger social
political context, and to ground their discussion in specific examples of their actions
in the classroom.
Research on using reflection as an assessment tool

As alluded to earlier, prospective teachers employ certain discursive strategies that

tend to dilute or divert authentic reflection. One practice of teacher educators that
tends to encourage this behavior is the attempt to use reflective journals, portfolios,
and the like as summative assessment tools. Elsewhere (Thomas and Liu 2012) I
describe an example of this problem arising from a custom-built electronic portfolio
for a single school of education. Recently, however, education departments across
the United States have increasingly turned to a national system called edTPA. Based
on a system developed in California by a group led by Linda Darling Hammond and
colleagues called Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), edTPA
has been developed by Pearson Education Corporation and promoted heavily by the
US Department of Education. As another summative assessment method based on a
portfolio of reflective writings and short video clips of lessons, edTPA shares the
problem of discursive strategies obscuring or replacing authentic reflection. However,
edTPA comes with another twist: the individuals examining a prospective teachers
portfolios and rendering the final assessment – which could result in denial of a
teaching license – are anonymous, unknown to either prospective teacher or their
teacher educators, and from another part of the country as well. The edTPA
assessors, then, have no real knowledge of the local context of a prospective
teacher’s classroom experience, nor of their eventual classroom should they achieve
licensure. For their part, the prospective teacher is likely to be just as unaware of the
national and global context of the standards by which their portfolio is assessed.
edTPA has been critiqued (and defended) vigorously on various grounds ranging
from “science” (for edTPA) to “justice” (against). For the purposes of this article, I
just wish to underscore that the addition of distant, anonymous assessors will only
make authentic critical reflection more difficult. Not only does the system encourage
the very discursive strategies that hinder reflection – particularly sun shining and
cherry picking – but the teacher educators themselves are likely to follow suit,
encouraging prospective teachers to present themselves at their best in their
portfolios rather than use them as a platform for collaborative reflection. In fact, the
pressure on teacher educators to “teach to the test” will likely become all the
stronger should teacher educator programs be subject to ranking based on the edTPA
performance of their prospective teachers, as has already happened with high-stakes
testing in K-12 schools.
20 K. Liu
As a final note, as Ladson-Billings passionately states, “I do not want to destroy

teacher education, I want to strengthen it; and I do not believe this can happen until
we look honestly at what we are doing” (2005, 229). Conceding that there is no
single solution, I argue for the importance of teacher and teacher educators research-
ing the preparation of future generations and assessing their development regardless
of the shortcomings of broad technical solutions such as NCLB and edTPA,
nurturing the minds and hearts of our future teachers by enabling critical dialog.
This is the heart of knowledge, as Thomas (2012) puts it, “lies at the heart of inquiry
for teachers – at the heart of our science” (p. 42).
Interviews and reflection artifacts

Doug (Spring, 2009) Fourth Semester ePortfolio
Ella (February 25, 2010) Follow-up Interview
Ella (Fall 2008) Third Semester ePortfolio
John (June 19, 2009) Interview #2

Judy (January 24, 2010) Interview #4
Judy (Spring 2009) Fourth Semester ePortfolio
Judy (Fall 2009) Fifth Semester ePortfolio
Kant (February 23, 2009) Interview
Karla (March 31, 2009) Interview #1
Laura (February 26, 2009) Interview
Mary (November 9, 2009) Interview
Tom (December 9, 2009) Interview
Notes
1. See a detailed definition of the three attitudes by Dewey (1933). Openmindedness is
“freedom from prejudice, partisanship, and such other habits as close the mind and make
it unwilling to consider new programs and entertain new ideas” (p. 30). Whole-
heartedness is when anyone is “thoroughly interested in some object and cause, he
throws himself into it” (p. 31). Responsibility is conceived as “a moral trait rather than
as an intellectual resource. But it is an attitude that is necessary to win the adequate
support of desire for new points of view and new ideas and of enthusiasm for and
capacity for absorption in subject matter” (p. 32).
2. edTPA stands for Educator Teacher Performance Assessment. See more information
about edTPA at its website: http://edtpa.aacte.org
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Critical reflection as a framework for

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Critical reﬂection as a framework for transformative learning in

Curriculum and Instruction, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI, USA

When I conducted my research on enhancing prospective teachers’ critical reﬂection,

Critical reﬂection is challenging one’s assumptions, looking at issues in a deeper way.

© 2013 Educational Review

When reading teacher education program mission statements or conversing with

and political contexts (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, and Bransford 2005;

structionist perspective, Dinkelman (1999) deﬁnes critical reﬂection as:

Reconceptualize critical reﬂection based on existing theoretical underpinnings

Van Manen identifies three levels of reflection, technical reflection, practical

Looking at these reﬂections, it is important to value Judy’s effort to bring commu-

Summary of the concept of critical reﬂection

more democratic society.

Critical reﬂection is a process of constantly analyzing, questioning, and critiquing

Processes Analyzing, questioning, critiquing,

Assumptions about teaching and

Critical Reflection Content

Goals Making changes for student learning and a

Figure 1. The processes, content, and goals of critical reﬂection.

Critical reﬂection for transformative learning

replace obsolete, irrational or oppressive social arrangements with more

Brookﬁeld’s four-stage framework can be quite powerful in fostering critical reﬂec-

 Reﬂection-based action derives from previous steps of reﬂection. Teachers take

The full hermeneutic cycle of this model of transformative learning is summarized

Table 1. Stages of critical reﬂection and explanations.

oppressive social arrangements with more contemporary,

Third, it shows that critical reﬂection is a complicated social and cognitive

Implications for teacher research

Critical reﬂection in teacher research

Table 2. Critical reﬂection for action research.

Action research reﬂection in action

Critical reﬂection for teacher educators

Research on prospective teachers’ reﬂections and actions

Prospective teachers come to training schools, whether in normal schools or colleges,

Research on using reﬂection as an assessment tool

As alluded to earlier, prospective teachers employ certain discursive strategies that

As a ﬁnal note, as Ladson-Billings passionately states, “I do not want to destroy

Interviews and reﬂection artifacts

John (June 19, 2009) Interview #2

Tse, H. 2007. “Professional Development through Transformation: Linking Two Assessment

Theory and Practice 1 (1): 33–50.

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Reﬂection-based action derives from previous steps of reﬂection. Teachers take