More-than-human centred reflection: Addressing the fiction of reflective practice in teacher education

Abstract

This paper seeks to extend the debate around the contested concept of the ‘reflective practitioner.’ This concept has influenced practice-based learning across a range of disciplines, including social work, nursing and teaching and although assumptions are commonly made about its value to the developing practitioner, it has also been subject to critique. From the perspective of Scottish teacher-education, we propose moving beyond commonly accepted reflective practices to arrive at a reframing of it as a ‘more than human’ (Strom and Viesca, 2021) endeavour, in a way that decentres the practitioner from the process of reflection. We firstly consider some benefits and limitations of commonly used, human-centric models of reflection in teacher education; both in practice and in regulation. We then use two familiar classroom scenarios to demonstrate how these models of reflection can constrain the reflective process, and student-teachers’ agentic possibilities. We explore how a theoretical reframing of the problem through connectivism (Downes, 2007; Siemens, 2005), offers a fresh perspective that challenges the practitioner to reflect in multiple dimensions; on their means of connecting with others and the ‘matter’ of their practices – the material, physical and conceptual objects that are drawn into the orbit of the day-to-day work of teaching and learning. The proposed approach invites student-teachers to decentre themselves from their reality and consider a range of realities, allowing their reflections to more genuinely, critically and authentically reflect the realities of their experiences in the classroom. Although situated in the context of Scottish teacher education, this provocation offers fresh consideration of a problem that is currently of relevance to student-teachers and those involved in teacher education in both a UK-wide and international context.