Action research and reflective teaching in preservice teacher education: A case study from the United States

Abstract Following a discussion of different conceptions of reflective teaching, the social reconstructionist view of reflection that underlies the University of Wisconsin-Madison elementary teacher education program is described and then defended in relation to existing inequalities in the United States. This orientation to reflection stresses a commitment by teacher educators to both social justice and to an ethic of care. Various tensions that arise from this dual commitment are discussed. Following a discussion of the place of action research in the Wisconsin student teaching curriculum and of the way in which action research is facilitated by one supervisor, the written reports of action research projects completed by 18 student teachers during 1988–1989 are then analyzed for evidence of the favored view of reflective thinking. The authors speculate about why they did not find as much evidence of attention to the critical domain of reflection as they had hoped for and suggest several possible changes in the student teaching course that grow out of their analysis of action research reports.

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