Reflective-transformative professional development predicated upon critical reflection and enabled by a school-university partnership: a microethnographic case study

Date

1995-08

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Publisher

Texas Tech University

Abstract

The purpose of this microethnographic case study was to describe and interpret the professional development activities and discourse of a reflection group open to educators in a public school setting. Consistent with a reflective-transformative perspective on professional development, critical reflection served as the focus of activities undertaken by this group. This comparatively long-term, site-based, professional development was enabled by a school-university partnership. The following research question guided this case study: What are the dynamics of critical reflection as the focus of reflective-transformative professional development for site-based, school-university partners?

Analysis of participants' discourse, as interpreted through a transformation theoretical framework indicated five phases of reflectivity in participants' approximations of critical reflection. These phases ranged from a prereflective phase of perlustration to reflective phases of concatenation, precritical interrogation, and intersubjectification, to the critically reflective phase of problematization. Indirect and direct sublimators of reflectivity associated with the educators' workplace culture were also identified. Direct, interphasial transition, sublimators were most influential vis-a-vis participants' reflectivity, as each, concomitantly, operated as a barrier to intersubjectively defined collegiality.

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