Developing and Sustaining Critical Reflection in Teacher Education

Smyth provides background informa tion on the emergence of reflectivity as a conceptual thrust in teacher education. He also discusses some of the impedi ments to empowerment that teachers and teacher educators confront as they attempt to implement critical reflection in their curricula. Smyth concludes that if teachers (and teacher educators) are going to uncover the forces that inhibit and constrain them, they need to en gage in four forms of action with respect to teaching. These "forms" are charac terized by four sequential stages and are linked to a series of questions: (a) de scribing (What do I do?), (b) informing (What does this mean?), (c) confronting (How did I come to be like this?), and (d) reconstructing (How might I do things differently?).