Introduction: From Technician to Reflective Practitioner

For centuries, the model of teacher training was a simple one: apprentice observes master, apprentice imitates master, apprentice becomes master. This model produced competent technicians, individuals skilled in the mechanics of instruction. However, it often failed to produce adaptive, resilient educators capable of navigating the complex, unpredictable, and deeply human ecosystem of the classroom. The crucial element missing from this technical model is reflection—the deliberate, structured process of thinking critically about one's own practice. Modern teacher training has rightfully enshrined reflection not as an add-on, but as its very core, distinguishing between two powerful modes: reflection-in-action (thinking while doing) and reflection-on-action (thinking after doing). This article explores the profound importance of both, arguing that they are the twin engines that drive the transformation from a novice following scripts to an expert navigating uncertainty.

Part 1: The Theoretical Foundation - From Schön to the Classroom

The philosophical underpinning of reflective practice in professional education is most famously articulated by Donald Schön in his seminal 1983 work, The Reflective Practitioner. Schön challenged the dominant "technical-rationality" model, which held that professionals simply apply abstract scientific knowledge to concrete problems. He observed that real-world practice, especially in fields like teaching, is characterized by "messy, confusing problems which do not have a single right answer."

Schön proposed that competent professionals operate in two key reflective spaces:

  1. Reflection-in-Action: The ability to think and adapt while engaged in practice. It is the "thinking on your feet" that occurs when a lesson plan suddenly falters, a student's question reveals a widespread misconception, or classroom energy dips unexpectedly. The teacher does not stop the lesson to consult a theory book; they conduct a spontaneous, on-the-spot experiment, modifying their tone, rephrasing a question, or pivoting an activity based on real-time feedback.
  2. Reflection-on-Action: The deliberate, retrospective analysis of practice after an event. This is the structured debrief, the journal entry, the mentor conversation where the teacher revisits what happened, analyzes why it happened, and considers what could be done differently next time. It connects experience to theory and builds a personal knowledge base.

In teacher training, this means moving the focus from merely acquiring a toolkit of techniques (the "what") to developing the judgement to know when, how, and why to use each tool (the "why" and "how"). Reflection is the process that forges this professional judgement.

Part 2: Reflection-in-Action: The Art of Thinking While Teaching

Reflection-in-action is the hallmark of an agile and responsive teacher. It transforms teaching from a pre-recorded monologue into a live, interactive dialogue with the learning process itself.

What It Looks Like in Practice:
A trainee teacher plans a 10-minute vocabulary presentation. Two minutes in, she sees blank stares. The technical-rational response is to push forward with the plan. The reflective-in-action response is to pause and diagnose in the moment: "Is it the pace? The examples? The complexity?" She might then throw out her prepared sentence and ask, "Okay, show me with your face—confused or getting it?" Based on that instant data, she re-explains using a wildly different, perhaps personal, analogy. She has effectively conducted a micro-experiment and adapted her behavior based on immediate feedback.

Why It's Critical for Trainees:

  • Builds Responsiveness: It trains new teachers to see the classroom as a dynamic system to be read and engaged with, not a script to be followed.
  • Develops Decision-Making Under Pressure: It cultivates the "withitness" (Kounin, 1970) necessary for classroom management and adaptive instruction.
  • Reduces Cognitive Overload: With practice, these in-the-moment adjustments become more fluid and less mentally taxing, freeing up cognitive space for higher-order planning and interaction.
  • Fosters Student-Centered Teaching: It forces the teacher's attention away from their own performance and onto student understanding as the primary compass.

How to Train for It:
Trainees cannot simply be told to "reflect in action." It must be scaffolded:

  • Micro-Teaching with "Pause & Reflect" Interruptions: The trainer pauses a trainee's lesson to ask, "What are you noticing right now? What are three possible things you could do next?"
  • Stimulated Recall: Video-recording a teaching segment and later watching it with the trainee, pausing to ask, "What were you thinking at this exact moment?"
  • "If-Then" Planning: During lesson planning, having trainees anticipate potential "what if" scenarios (e.g., "What if this task is too easy? What if no one volunteers?") and pre-script potential adaptive responses.

Part 3: Reflection-on-Action: The Science of Learning from Experience

If reflection-in-action is the live performance, reflection-on-action is the director's commentary and the post-production analysis. It is where deep, lasting learning is solidified and integrated into a teacher's evolving philosophy.

What It Looks Like in Practice:
After the same vocabulary lesson, the trainee sits with her mentor. Using a structured framework (e.g., "What went well? What was challenging? What does this tell me about my students/my planning?"), she dissects the event. She connects her moment of in-action pivot to broader principles of checking for understanding or scaffolding. She researches "concept checking questions" for her next plan. She transforms a single incident into a generalized professional insight.

Why It's the Bedrock of Professional Growth:

  • Creates Meaning from Experience: It prevents teaching from becoming a series of disconnected events, instead weaving them into a coherent narrative of professional development.
  • Links Theory and Practice: It is the bridge where academic theories about learning styles or motivation are tested, understood, and personalized through lived experience.
  • Develops Metacognition: It cultivates awareness of one's own thought processes, biases, and assumptions—a critical skill for lifelong learning.
  • Builds a Personal Pedagogy: Over time, through consistent reflection, teachers move from applying borrowed methods to developing their own unique, principled approach to teaching.

How to Structure It in Training:
Effective reflection-on-action must be more than "think about your lesson." It requires tools and routines:

  • Structured Reflective Journals: Prompts that move beyond description ("What did I do?") to analysis ("Why did it happen?") and futurization ("What will I change?").
  • Collaborative Reflection (Peer Feedback): Using protocols like "Critical Friends" or "What, So What, Now What?" to gain multiple perspectives and move beyond self-critique.
  • Mentor-Led Dialogues: Moving from evaluative feedback ("Your instructions were unclear") to reflective questioning ("How did you know students understood the task? What evidence did you have?").
  • Digital Portfolios: Curating lesson artifacts, student work, and reflective commentaries to create a longitudinal record of growth and understanding.

Part 4: The Synergistic Cycle - How "In" and "On" Action Feed Each Other

The true power of reflection is realized not in isolation, but in the virtuous cycle created between the two modes. Reflection-on-action provides the raw material and analytical depth for reflection-in-action. When a teacher spends time after a lesson deeply analyzing why a particular questioning technique failed, they stock their mental toolkit with that insight. The next time a similar classroom moment arises, they are not starting from zero; they have a pre-considered, analyzed strategy to try. Their in-action reflection is richer and more informed.

Conversely, reflection-in-action provides the authentic, high-stakes experiences that give reflection-on-action its substance. The richer and more challenging the in-action moments, the more potent the subsequent analysis can be. A lesson that goes perfectly to plan offers little to reflect on. A lesson filled with moments of adaptation, challenge, and surprise provides a treasure trove of material for deep, on-action learning. This cycle is the engine of experiential learning (Kolb, 1984), where concrete experience is followed by reflective observation, leading to abstract conceptualization and active experimentation.

Part 5: Overcoming Barriers and Cultivating a Reflective Culture

Promoting true reflection is fraught with challenges. For trainees, it can feel vulnerable, time-consuming, or like an exercise in fault-finding. A "performance culture" that prioritizes flawless execution over learning from mistakes will kill reflective practice.

Strategies for Teacher Educators:

  1. Model Vulnerability: Trainers must openly share their own past failures and reflective processes, normalizing struggle as part of growth.
  2. Separate Reflection from Evaluation: Reflective journals and dialogues must be safe spaces for honest appraisal, not directly tied to pass/fail grades.
  3. Provide Time and Structure: Reflection is cognitive work that requires dedicated time and clear frameworks to be effective.
  4. Focus on the Student Learning Impact: Ground reflection in evidence of student understanding (e.g., "Look at the students' work here. What does it tell us?") rather than the teacher's performance alone. This depersonalizes the critique and keeps the focus on the core purpose.

Conclusion: The Reflective Teacher as an Adaptive Expert

In an era of rapid change, standardised testing, and diverse learner needs, we cannot train teachers for a world of predictable routines. We must train them for complexity. Reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action are the foundational disciplines for this task. They are what allow a teacher to navigate the gap between the neat theories of the training manual and the wonderfully messy reality of 30 unique minds in a classroom.

Ultimately, reflective practice is about fostering adaptive expertise—the ability to apply core principles flexibly to novel situations, not just routine efficiency in familiar ones (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986). The reflective teacher is not a technician applying a manual, but a principled artist, a pragmatic scientist, and a continuous learner. By embedding dual reflection at the heart of training, we do not just produce teachers for today's classrooms; we cultivate the lifelong learners and innovative practitioners who will shape the classrooms of tomorrow. The mirror of reflection, held up both in the moment and after the fact, is what allows teachers to truly see their practice, understand their impact, and consciously craft their professional selves.