Summary of articles

In Ruth Leitch and Cristopher Day’s aricle “Action research and refletive pratice towards a
holistic view” the main thesis is that the focus should be on the nature of reflection in the
action research process, and its relationship to the purposes, processes and outcomes.
Reflection is considered as a process or activity that is central to developing practices (Dewey
1933, 1938; Loughran, 1996). Acording to the article there are the two concepts that has
captured the imagination of the education community: “reflective practice” and “action
research”. The authors claim that both are critical dimensions of the professional development
of teachers. The article questions about the cognitive models of reflection and suggests that
there should be more attention to the emotion in understanding and developing the capacities
for reflection. Leitch and Day state that early evaluation of the impact of such approaches to
teacher reflection has indicated that they not only provides the individual with opportunities
for profound re-evaluation, but have also led frequently to powerful changes within the
teachers’ practices.
According to Tom Russell’s in his article “Can refletive practice be taught?” many teachers
think that reflective practice is an important part of their professional preparation. The author
claims that reflective practice can and should be taught. The article shows the diffrences
between reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action (Schön 1983) It is said that there is a
program that explore an explicit approach to teaching reflection. There is a file with five
tables. In the end of the article Tom Russels gives his explanation why reflextive practice
should be taught - explicitly, directly, thoughtfully and patiently - using personal reflection-
in-action to interpret and improve one’s teaching of reflective practice to others.

Shosh Leshem and Rivka Bar-Hame in their article “Evaluating teaching practice” state that
teachers need criteria for effective teaching so as to identify their strengths and
weaknesses and use them a improve themselves. A practitioner-based research is showed in
the article. The authors claim that in order to construct a more comprehensive view of the
problem, it is pertinent to collaborate with our trainees and provide some space for their
voices. There are also some examples of the practicum and it’s importaance using literature.
In the article are mentioned some of the most common tools used by pedagogical counsellors.
They use them to record the information that they receive during the lessons. In the end of the
article its authors make and analys of the trainees at their initial stages of teaching.
Author Barbara Larrivee in her article “Transforming Teaching Practice: becoming a critically
reflective teacher” maintains that a framework for conceptualizing developing as a critical
reflective teacher. She claims that the critical remark is an oustanding feature of practicing
teachers. To meet the needs of the current generation, teachers need to develop new
techniques. They need to have qualities as self-awareness, self-inquiry, and self-
reflection.Teachers should be able to move in many directions and to create personal solutions
of the problems. It points out that the teacher should remain fluid and able to move in many
directions in order to be able to manage all predictable and unpredictable situations which can
occur in the classroom on a daily basis.
There are mentiоned pratices for developing crical reflection in the article. The term critical
reflections includes critical inquiry, the ethical impliations an outcome of teaching practice. It
is quite important for teachers to develop the practice of critical reflection otherwise they will
be in a trap of judgement, interpretetions and expectations. It involves the personal believes
and values of the teachers and as a result this is their way of action.