For Dewey “experience is … the very way in which living organisms are connected with reality” (Biesta & Burbules, 2003 p. 28) and it is through experience that sense can gradually be made of the world. From this perspective the relationship between organism and environment is reciprocal and active: I act upon the world as the world acts upon me and we are both changed in the process. Drawing on this perspective it is also clear that experience is the unavoidable precondition for meaningful reflectivity in teaching profession. To be able to reflect on teaching, individual teachers have to have enough experiences of teaching. The often outspoken problem of teacher education has been connecting theory with immediate reality. Teacher education is accused of producing teachers that are originally only able to deliver the curriculum and to plan lessons, rather than to deal with complex classroom situations. This paper attempts to look at these problematics in more detail and proposes a model for teacher education in which reflectivity is enhanced through enhancing student teacher agency within teacher education. This model draws on the educational theory of Dewey and the pedagogical sensibility of Bakhtin to critically consider the question of agency and reflectivity and to highlight the role of community in teacher development. Our aim is to propose a model that supports the development of new directions in teacher education that would better prepare teachers to face the challenges in their future work by engaging with the educational community in the present.

Biesta, G., & Burbules, N. C. (2003). Pragmatism and educational research. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.