Welcome to this month's edition of Researching education: 5 further readings. In this series, we take a look at some further readings available on a particular topic, including open access research papers from various online databases, and Teacher archive content you might not have come across yet.
What do you understand to be involved in the process of reflective practice? How does the process of reflective practice in Australia compare to an international approach? In this edition of Researching education: 5 further readings, we share 5 readings on the topic of reflective practice from researchers in Australia and overseas.
- Reflection through critical friendship: Promoting growth of teachers. This research out of the US has found that teacher practice is enhanced and strengthened when educators come together as critical friends to share their experiences with each other and are given the opportunity to provide meaningful feedback to their peers. If you’d like to continue reading about this topic, we explored Australian research into a reflective circles peer support model which encouraged teachers to share their experiences and seek responses from their colleagues, in a recent Teacher article.
- Reflective thinking practices among pre-service teachers: Comparison between Malaysia and Australia. This paper shares the results of a study comparing the reflective teaching practices of pre-service teachers in 2 culturally different countries, Australia and Malaysia. Almost 400 participants from each country were involved in the research, and the results show that the understanding of the reflective thinking process is vastly different between the 2 countries.
- One teacher educator’s strategies for encouraging reflective practice. In this paper, Tom Russell from the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University in Canada, shares his strategies for encouraging reflective practice which is grounded in self-study methodology. The strategies for teacher education students outlined in the paper include an extended writing assignment focused on professional learning, teaching how to learn from personal experience and the unrecognised power of listening.
- A reflective guide to mentoring and being a teacher-mentor. This reflective guide, published by the Victorian government, is designed to support experienced teachers who are mentoring their less experienced colleagues. It takes readers through 5 key questions: what is the purpose of mentoring? How well does our school context support mentoring? What kind of mentor do I want to be? What do I need to know and do as a mentor? And, what does the international research say about effective mentoring?
- Beyond reflective practice: Blogging-with Place as a diffractive practice for (re)imagining place-based education. This recent article by Karen Nociti from Edith Cowan University considers diffractive practice as an alternative to reflective practice, specifically when used for the purpose of ascertaining a teacher’s experience and knowledge about sites that are intended for place-based teaching and learning. Nociti explores the practice of blogging-with Place and discusses the associated possibilities and challenges.
Some of the resources featured in this article can be found through Cunningham Library Catalogue and EdResearch Online. At the links below, you can search for more resources on the topic of reflective practice in these 2 online databases.
- Reflective practice: Cunningham Library Catalogue
- Reflective practice: EdResearch Online
You can also browse other education topics at this page.
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