Reflective practices of teacher educators in Punjab: A narrative study / Tanzeela Akram
Material type: TextPublication details: Lahore : Division of Education, University of Education, 2023,Description: 194 p. CDISBN:- (hbk)
- 370.954 R25976
Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Theses | UE-Central Library | 370.954 R25976 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Not for loan | TTh436 |
The current study was conducted to understand how teacher educators experience reflection, and how teacher educators use reflective practices during their professional lives in a Pakistani context. Additionally, the study revealed what challenges and issues teacher educators face during their journeys. This study captured the experiences of fifteen teacher educators working in public sector universities in Punjab in the form of narratives. These stories of reflective practices and experiences of teacher educators were constructed using semi-structured interview data, archival data, and field notes. The emerging themes from these narratives indicated that, although teacher educators in Pakistan are aware of the importance of reflection and reflective practices, their use of such practices is limited. Teacher educators expressed that the major hindrances of reflective practices were lack of time, amount of work, lack of administrative support, and organizational culture. Consequently, the study provides insights into the nature of reflection and reflective practices being used by Pakistani teacher educators. The narratives of the teacher educators indicated that self-reflection is mostly an unconscious effort, whereas the use of reflective practices in teaching is sometimes a conscious or forced effort born from actual classroom interactions and experiences. Furthermore, teacher educators’ stories lead us to reflect on institutional support in terms of time, creativity, workload, lack of formal training on how to use reflective practices, as well as organizational culture. Briefly, professional development is an outcome of the experiences of the participants’ self-reflection, self-evaluation, and institutional experiences. Therefore, reporting and sharing teacher educators’ experiences of reflection and reflective practices are two sides of the same coin. Being aware of reflection and reflective practices among existing teacher educators will enable future teacher educators to be reflective practitioners for the improvement of teaching and teacher education in this context.
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