Social foundations approach to educational psychology: Basis for educating the critical reflective educator

Educational Foundations, Spring 2001 by Tutwiler, Sandra Winn

Critical Analysis as the Basis for Reflection

Reflective practice has become a popular notion, embraced by a number of teacher education programs. Schon's (1983) conception of practitioners reflecting on action-the type of thinking engaged by teachers as they plan for and after they teach a lesson-and practitioners reflecting in action-the process by which teachers frame and solve unanticipated circumstances or reactions while in the process of teaching-exemplifies "reflective practice" for many teacher education programs. Reflection of this nature is basic to teachers' growth and development into the profession. However, teacher candidates will need to develop additional habits of thinking, in order to work effectively with an increasingly diverse student population.

By the year 2010, an estimated one third of the nation's youth will be students of color (National Commission 1996). Even though higher concentrations of these students will likely live in urban areas, Hispanic, Asian American, Indian, and African-American children, children living in poverty, and children having limited English proficiency will attend schools in districts across the nation (Gay 1993). Yet, as the student population becomes more diverse, the majority of teachers continue to be white and/or middle class. Recruitment ofpeople of color into teacher education has been one strategy to address this reality. However, teacher educators compete with other professions as they attempt to encourage people of color to enter the field of teaching. While recruitment of teachers of colors must continue, their numbers in the teaching profession will not ameliorate the need for teachers able to teach children from a number of diverse social, cultural, economic, and language backgrounds.

In a clear sense, it is both an erroneous and unfair assumption that inclusion of people of color into the teaching profession will take care of the multiple issues related to teaching in diverse classrooms. Such notions ignore the need for all preservice teachers to learn to how to effectively teach students different from themselves. Gay (1997) warns that a monoracial teaching force educated in monocultural teacher education programs will be less able to address the needs of an increasingly diverse student population. Still, the vast majority of nonwhite teachers will be educated in these same programs, the content and structure of which will likely promote monocultural views of what it means to teach and what it means to learn. Osborne's (1996) call for a reconceptualization of teaching that begins with a framework for understanding students from various backgrounds, if needed to, will have a positive impact on educating all teachers regardless of their ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Suggested here is a framework that provides preservice teachers opportunities to not only understand schools and the processes of schooling, but also to understand the lived experiences of children and youth, inside and outside of schools, and from historical and contemporary perspectives. Learning experiences such as these facilitate preservice teachers' understanding of the cultural contexts and communities from which their students come and the cultural resources they bring to school settings that could be used to support their cognitive, social and emotional growth (Zeichner 1996; Delpit 1995). This body of knowledge is specifically requisite if preservice teachers are to become proficient at creating learning experiences and environments appropriate for culturally congruent classrooms and to, as Gay (1993) suggests, act as "cultural brokers," creating learning opportunities that establish links between and among cultures.