Structured Reflective Communication as a Meta-Genre in Teacher Education: Creative Uses of 'Critique' in a Teacher Education Program

Y

21

Foreign Countries; Learning Processes; Beginning Teachers; Criticism; Lesson Plans; Video Technology; Reflection; Content Area Writing; Graduate Students; Student Evaluation; Evaluation Methods; Education Courses; Inservice Teacher Education; Educational Technology; College Instruction; Instructional Effectiveness; Classroom Observation Techniques; Lesson Observation Criteria; Protocol Materials

0313-5373

This article develops an expanded, collaborative and structured view of the process of critiquing observed lesson fragments and shows how this process can be used as a model for developing students' understanding and thinking about teaching and learning processes. The authors introduce Carter's (2007) notion of a meta-genre, "[a] way of doing instantiated in written genres" to frame this overall approach. They show how a specific meta-genre "structured reflective communication" can be used in two ways: (1) to challenge beginning teachers to articulate a personal teaching theory in response to an observation of a videoed teaching excerpt; and (2) to show how its use can inform lesson planning. In this process of viewing, reflecting and re-contextualising critical reflection within a meta-genre of structured reflective communication, new opportunities are created for the use of critique. This process helps make explicit beginning teachers' views about the roles of students and teachers and how they connect with personal teaching theories. (Contains 4 figures.)

ERIC

43

2012

EJ969528