Reflective practice in teacher education in Ireland and Norway: Exploring the reification of performativity discourses in educational policy.

Author(s):

Oliver McGarr(presenting / submitting)Anne Berit Emstad(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 12 B, Knowledge Regime and Performativity Discourses in Education

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-26

09:00-10:30

Room:

NM-C214

Chair:

Itxaso Tellado

Contribution

Across many professions reflective practice appears to be an indisputable component of professional practice. For example, in the health and social care professions Saltiel (2010) noted that it appeared to, ‘constitute a new orthodoxy’ (p. 130). Similarly, within the field of nursing education Gilbert (2001) observed that reflective practice was beginning to achieve a status that was beyond question. Further back Smyth (1992) noted that within teaching there was, ‘something commonsensical, natural, almost indisputable about the suggestion that teachers should be thoughtful and reflective about their work’ (p. 284). Within teacher education it is now common for reflective practice to be integrated as an important element of initial teacher education programmes (Belvis et al, 2013, Lane et al, 2014; Jay and Johnson, 2002).

However, as Smyth (1992) notes reflection can mean all things to all people. It is commonly justified and framed by a rhetoric of ethical, emancipatory or transformational discourses (Gilbert, 2001). Reflective practice from this perspective is seen as a way of thinking as much as doing, reflecting Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (2009) concept of ‘inquiry-as-stance’. It could be argued that, while this reflection may result in changes in practice, Hagevik et al (2012) note that critical action research can also involve gaining greater levels of self-understanding and an appreciation of the social forces that shape the school, echoing Brookfield’s (1995) contention that for critical reflection one must challenge the assumptions that impose limiting perspectives on teachers and examine the socio-political dimensions of educational practice. Reflective practice as a tool for teacher empowerment however is just one of many conceptualisations. Set within a ‘culture of audit and managerialist prescription’ (West, p. 67), reflective practice can take on very different functions whilst continuing to be cloaked in a rhetoric of professional empowerment.

Within an increasing environment of performativity and accountability, reflective practice can be seen as a form of monitoring and surveillance (Gilbert, 2001; Taylor, 2003) focusing exclusively on the improvement of ‘teacher effectiveness’ and student test scores. Set within this technical rational paradigm, where, ‘good teaching is equivalent to efficient performance which achieves ends that are prescribed for teachers’ (Halliday, 1998, p. 597) reflective practice can be seen as a ‘skill’ that, ‘focuses on improving teacher performance as a result of reflection on their practices’ (Belvis et al, p. 279).

The extent to which reflective practice in teacher education policies in Ireland and Norway is framed within a discourse of emancipation and empowerment or in a discourse of performativity is the focus of this study. Hallman (2011) notes that, ‘reflective practice in teacher education still vacillates between associations with the personal and the pedagogical’ (p. 533). We contend that within a performativity culture, conceptions of reflective practice increasingly reflect a technical rationalist perspective influenced by concerns of national competitiveness and the ‘performance’ of state educational systems. To that end, the aims of this study were to examine references to reflective practice in teacher education policy documents and explore:

The extent to which reflective practice is seen as improving the performance of the teacher or empowering them professionally?
The extent to which current manifestations of reflective practice reify a technical linear approach to teacher learning.

Method

To investigate this issue all current teacher education policy documents, published from 2008 to 2015 in both Ireland and Norway were collated. These sources included policy papers on teacher education and professional development, professional and national guidelines as well as regulatory guidelines. Once collated all references to reflective practice in each document were identified. Employing a discourse analysis, drawing on elements of Gee’s (1999) building tasks of language, we analysed all sources. In reviewing the sources we were particularly interested in the constructive nature of language and how reflective practice, and the rationale for its use, was constructed. Working from the concept of reflexivity, which posits that descriptions are not simply about something but that they are also doing something (Potter, 1995), we explored the extent to which reflective practice was framed from a performativity perspective or whether broader interpretations of reflective practice were encompassed. We also explored the extent to which interpretations of teachers skills and knowledge were presented from a deficit model and the discursive resources employed in this context. Once all sources were analysed we then determined common themes that appeared to be emerging from the sources in each country separately. Following this analysis we then compared the analysis of both countries to identify commonalities and differences.

Expected Outcomes

Preliminary findings to emerge to date indicate that across both the Irish and Norwegian sources reflective practice is framed primarily as a means of improving one’s pedagogical practice rather than seen in a broader context, although differences in the two jurisdictions are also apparent. Framing the teachers’ ‘practice’ primarily as pedagogical in nature perhaps reflects growing global pressures as a result of international comparisons of educational outcomes, for example PISA tests scores, as well as an increasing performativity culture underpinned by neoliberal reforms of public services (Nicoll, 1998). Such framing also has the potential to present the teacher in a deficit manner as one in need of ‘improvement’ and continuous self-monitoring. This cycle of improvement appears to present, what Fenwick (2003) terms, ‘a technical, mechanistic view of development, potentially reducing teacher knowledge to observable, pre-specifiable, trainable items’ (p. 347). Framed in this way, the ‘critically reflective teacher’ represents progressive teaching that is responsive to changing societal and school contexts, however this responsiveness appears to be narrowly focused towards classroom performance and pedagogical improvement. The narrowing of reflective practice in this manner also has the potential to foreclose opportunities for teachers to explore the, ‘real structural problems that are deeply embedded in social, economic, and political inequalities’ (Smyth, 1992, p. 287). We argue that this analysis highlights the need to challenge the current ‘narrowing’ of reflective practice that appears to be evident in the sources analysed and begin the debate about its future possibilities beyond its current manifestation in teacher education policy.

References

Belvis, E. Pineda, P., Armengol, C., Moreno, V. (2013) Evaluation of reflective practice in teacher education, European Journal of Teacher Education, 36 (3) 279–292 Brookfield, S. 1995. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (2009). Inquiry as Stance: Practitioner Research for the Next Generation. New York: Teachers College Press Fenwick, T. (2003) The 'good' teacher in a neo-liberal risk society: a Foucaultian analysis of professional growth plans, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 35:3, 335-354 Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. New York, NY: Routledge Gilbert, T. (2001) Reflective practice and clinical supervision: meticulous rituals of the confessional, Nursing and Health Care Management Issues, 199 - Hagevik, R., Aydeniz, M. & Glennon Rowell, C. (2012) Using action research in middle level teacher education to evaluate and deepen reflective practice, Teaching and Teacher Education, 28 (2012) 675-684 Halliday, J. 1998. “Technicism, Reflective Practice and Authenticity in Teacher Education.” Teaching and Teacher Education 14: 597–605 Hallman, H. (2011) Shifting genres: a dialogic approach to reflective practice in teacher education, Reflective Practice, 12:4, 533-545 Jay,J. & Johnson, K. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology ofreflective practice for teacher education, Teaching and Teacher Education 18 (2002) 73–85 Lane, R., McMaster, H., Adnum, J & Cavanagh, M. (2014) Quality reflective practice in teacher education: a journey towards shared understanding, Reflective Practice, 15:4, 481-494 Nicoll, K. (1998) 'Fixing' the 'facts': flexible learning as policy invention. Higher Education Research And Development, 17 (3), 291-304. Potter, J. (1996) Representing Reality: Discourse rhetoric and social construction. Sage London Saltiel, D. (2006, July). Judgement, narrative and discourse: Critiquing reflective practice. In conference: Professional Lifelong Learning: Beyond Reflective Practice (Vol. 3). Smyth, J. (1992) Teachers' Work and the Politics of Reflection, American Educational Research Journal, 29 (2) 267-300 Taylor, C. (2003). Narrating practice: reflective accounts and the textual construction of reality. Journal of advanced nursing, 42(3), 244-251. Reid, H., & West, L. (2011). Struggling for space: narrative methods and the crisis of professionalism in career guidance in England. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 39(5), 397-410. West, L. (2012), Really reflexive practice: auto/biographical research and struggles for a critical reflexivity. In Bradbury, H., Frost, N., Kilminster, S., & Zukas, M. (Eds.). (2012). Beyond reflective practice: New approaches to professional lifelong learning. (pp. 66 – 80) Routledge

Author Information

Oliver McGarr (presenting / submitting)

University of Limerick

Education and Professional Studies

Limerick

Anne Berit Emstad (presenting)

Department of Teacher Education, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

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