Reflecting on Reflective Practice: (Re)Visiting Dewey and Schön

PREAMBLE Since I began work in reflective practice, at first informally in the late 1970s and then more formally in the mid-1980s, I have always looked at reflective practice as a compass of sorts to guide teachers when they may be seeking direction (and I was and still am) as to what they are doing in their classrooms. The metaphor of reflection as a compass enables teachers to stop, look, and discover where they are at that moment and then decide where they want to go (professionally) in the future. My beginnings in reflective practice were very tentative, but I realized early in my second language teaching career in Korea that I was always interested in, and even worried about, the impact my classes were having (or not having) on students’ learning. For example, I remember wondering in the middle of one particular class if the group work I was making them do was actually useful for them or just easy for me to monitor and easier than teaching particular grammar items. Yes, I had all the latest readings at that time, especially those suggesting that it is better not to teach grammar overtly but to provide opportunities for students to use the language in class. I bought into all of this even though I wondered many times if the students in my classes were at times just practicing their mistakes—at that time, too, I had read that it is best not to correct each mistake because it threatens the students’ motivation to speak, so I let them practice speaking and only went over common errors at the end of each lesson. I remember thinking at the time that it was fine for me as a teacher