Abstract
Reflective practice enables educators to engage in self-examination of personal narratives and potential implicit bias that might impact their engagement with the learning communities they serve. Reflective practice informed by critical pedagogies supports educators in fostering learning spaces that affirm diversity, cultivate intellectual and personal growth, and invite community voices. Reflective practice work is grounded in deep trust, reciprocal mentorship, and a shared commitment to culturally sustaining education. As part of the Reflective Practice in Teacher Education project, the authors designed and discussed teaching for critical consciousness resources and reflective practice modules that allowed PreK-12 educators to delve into identity, implicit biases, culture, privilege, and resilience through a variety of methodologies (including dialogue, eloquent listening, journaling, mindfulness, portraiture).
Top1. Theoretical Framework
Our Reflective Practice in Teacher Education project rests on the shoulders of Freirian-inspired pedagogical approaches and Dewey-informed experiential learning frameworks. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire advanced teaching and learning endeavors that oppose the “banking system” of education, where students are viewed as receptacles of information being deposited on them by teachers, and teachers have the ultimate decision on what should be taught and how. Freire advocated for a model of education that encourages students to think critically and engage in the type of inquiry that provides opportunities for educators and educatees to partake in mutually respectful learning (Freire, 1979). Freire undermined the assumption that teachers are the leading authority in possessing and disseminating knowledge as he welcomed learners’ diverse expertise in the classroom and elevated their voice as co-creators of learning opportunities and knowledge (Freire, 2000: 70-86). Freire’s reformulation of schooling undermined Western dominant praxis in education that negated knowledge creation as an inquiry-based process, decimated learners’ ability to develop a broad worldview and forced them “to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them” (Freire, 2000: 72).
Freire invites us to view education as liberation, as the practice of freedom (Freire, 1979, hooks, 1994), and think of ourselves as educators who facilitate intellectual exploration, start where students are and respect people’s knowledge (Horton & Freire, 1990: 97-108). Emancipatory models of education that lead to critical consciousness involve problem-posing, analysis and dialogue that occur within egalitarian relationships (Freire, 2000): “through dialogue, the teacher of the students and the students of the teacher cease to exist, and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers” (Freire, 2000: 80). Engaged educators nurture the mind and souls of students, challenge the assembly-line approach to learning (hooks, 1994; Sousanis, 2015) and foster opportunities for students to steward their own learning through dialectic rather than prescriptive and oppressive pedagogies.