Advancing reflective practice and building constructive collegiality: A program's influence on teachers experiences in urban schools.

摘要

In order to respond to criticism about staff development that is top-down, irrelevant or impractical for teachers, many schools are implementing programs that focus on building collegiality and promoting reflective practice. This study looked at teachers from three urban high schools who were all involved in a program entitled “Critical Friends Group” (CFG). Teachers committed to two years in which they met monthly with 7–15 other teachers to (1) discuss issues related to their personal teaching practice, (2) observe and be observed by a peer partner monthly, and (3) develop a portfolio that documented change in their practice.; The focus of this case study was twofold. First, the study explored the degree to which the program increased collegiality and advanced reflective practice in these teachers. Second, this study identified lessons learned from the three programs in order to inform plans for future programs with similar goals as the CFG program. The program was successful at increasing collegiality a step beyond the existing collegial environment in each school. Even when the collegiality that was promoted did not rigorously push teacher's practice, most of the teachers highly valued their participation in their program. They believed it was important to be connected with other teachers who cared about their teaching.; The program was also successful at supporting aspects of the reflective practice process for many of the teachers involved. The program was stronger at supporting the “reflective” part of reflective practice than it was at supporting teachers to change their practice based on that reflection. Perhaps, the strongest criticism of the program was its inability to push teachers to a deep and rigorous level of reflective practice. This lack of rigor is partly due to the reluctance of teachers to give each other difficult-to-hear feedback. In addition, teacher conversation about teaching practice was often not explicitly linked to an action following the conversation, which left the conversations ineffectual. This study explores these and other issues as well as provides suggestions on how a similar program might be strengthened to push rigor in reflective practice.