Stepping Back to Step Forward: Reflection in a Community of Practice

Abstract

Educators may craft 1,000 to 1,500 decisions a day, making teaching not a matter of prescribed steps but a mass of involvements and responses (Goldberg & Houser, 2017; Good & Brophy, 2008). Teaching is a complex collection of creative actions with ongoing consequential choices and decisions; therefore, it necessitates educators’ ongoing reflection. As educators who currently serve art teacher candidates at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, a small public university in the rural Northeast serving a student population primarily identifying as state residents, we view ourselves, our preservice educators, and our pedagogy in a state of ceaselessly becoming (Nordlund, 2019; Unrath & Nordlund, 2009). As we constantly seek to rework ourselves and expand our lens on the world, we continuously think about how we might inculcate reflection as a habit of mind in our teacher candidates who are embarking on a lifetime of collaborative learning. We define reflective practice as a serious consideration or intentional thought focused on refining purposes and practices. Reflection is an act of seeking betterment. We consider great educators to be those who know why they do what they do (L. M. Danielson, 2009) because they have a good sense of when to step back and think deeply—a pause to reflect. Within the pandemic’s uncertainty and daily onslaught of the unforeseen, we noticed our teacher candidates finding it challenging to step back and reflect. The pandemic’s ever-changing mandates perpetuated flux in classrooms and art spaces and required greater attention and intention from educators. This climate was an opening for reflection as a means for sensemaking. Our teacher candidates’ reflections easily moved away from asset-based introspection (Bertling, 2019; Klein & Miraglia, 2017) to negative feelings such as regret and judgment. This facilitated the need to house and support their acts of reflection in a community of practice. Reflection in a Community of Practice