Towards constructivist classrooms: the role of the reflective teacher

Abstract

This paper draws on our experiences of working in a South Australian school reform project entitled ‘Learning to Learn’. The paper focuses on the role of reflection in enabling students and teachers to participate in new ways in the teaching-learning process. The teachers involved in this project actively involved themselves in – and were supported in – a learning process that required them to rethink and reframe their ideas around learning and student participation, so that they could begin to reform their classrooms, based on a constructivist epistemology. The paper provides some insights into how a number of these teachers actively involved their students in a reflective learning process that ‘let them into the secrets’ of learning. Four strategies have been identified: developing reflective attitudes in their students, explicitly teaching metacognitive skills and processes, making space for reflection in their classrooms, and using and encouraging a responsive interaction style. We propose that the role of the reflective teacher in transforming classrooms is to engage in reflective processes for their own learning and to engage their students in reflective processes.