Customer Reviews

Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher

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A. Ali Harkonnen's review is complete nonsense (and unfortunately typical of those working in areas such as mathematics).

Brookfield's book remains one of the most useful books I have ever read (and used) in terms of exploring the process of teaching and learning in a clear and entertaining style. The four lenses model is very useful, especially to those who might have been tipped into teaching at university level through their research rather than opting to be teachers.

Harkonnen's concerns that the book has no content and everything is obvious misses this point. Plenty of academics are brilliant in their disciplines but awful teachers. Often this is through ignorance of some basic tenets of teaching and learning - it's easy to become very narrowly focussed and institutionalised within higher education and Brookfield's books provide a counterpoint to this. Teaching is a skill in its own right and anyone wanting to improve their skill in this area would do well to read Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher along with The Skillful Teacher (also by Brookfield).

Brookfield has done it again. An instant classic in adult education. In accessible language and with an uncanny ability to relate humorous and telling anecdotes, Brookfield provides the best available overview of reflective teaching, especially with adults. His notion that we learn to become reflective teachers through the four key lenses of self, students, colleagues, and theory is an important contribution. But what he does to explain how we learn through these four lenses is revealing and insightful. A good read. A lasting contribution.

I shudder to think that this book is being used for teacher training. There is no content. In a sense, the title belabors the obvious: who, after all, does not reflect? A physician, a car mechanic, and a refrigerator repairman all reflect on their craft, and all are problem-solvers in the context of their activity. What, then, does this book say that applies to teachers specifically? Absolutely nothing. The discussion (I use the term loosely) is couched in such broad generalities as to be meaningless. For example,take a section heading such as "Critical Reflection as the Illumination of Power" -- how can this possibly shed light on thinking? The book is replete with such hollow chapter and section titles.

A more fundamental objection that can be levelled against this book -- and others of its ilk -- is related to the question: what does "critical reflection" mean? The premise of the book is that the idea of "critical reflection" can exist without context in, or reference to, a specific recognised discipline (such as, for instance, history or physics). This is absurd; the craft of teaching takes place within the context of a specific discipline with its own methods and problems; teaching itself is not a discipline, no matter how much professors of education may protest otherwise. This attempt to treat the craft of teaching as a discipline ("education"), and to describe "critical reflection" within this pseudo-discipline, is the primary reason why the book lacks any substance whatsoever. There is simply nothing to talk about; "critical reflection" is a bogus notion, both in the abstract and with regard to "education"; hence the vacuous talk of "lenses", "autobiographies", and "critical conversations".

To provide some further elaboration of the vacuity of the notion of context-free "critical-thinking" -- and as such, intimately related to the discussion in the previous paragraph -- the problem is we cannot teach "critical thinking", because there is no such thing. There are areas of study such as mathematics and geography. Each has its own ideas, problems and epistemology. The overlap, such as may exist, belongs to philosophy -- metaphysics and epistemology, where we treat problems in the most abstract setting possible -- and hope to say something useful in the more concrete settings they emerged from. There is no "critical thinking" that applies to all, or even most, disciplines. The kind of thinking mathematics requires will be quite distinct from that which history may require. The only things we can say about thinking *in general* are superficial, misleading and platitudinous. These professional educators need a more rigorous schooling in the history and development of ideas.

Those training to become teachers are not (truth be told) the brightest people around. Unfortunately, drivel like this will leave them even more confounded than before.

The decent books on the craft of teaching remain Highet's "The Art of Teaching, James' "Talks to Teachers", and Barzun's "Begin Here". I warmly recommend them.