Customer Reviews

Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (Josse Bass Higher and Adult Education)

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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.

Having been in one of Brookfield's workshops I must I think this book captures a lot of what he is about. There are lots of teacher educators out there who write about how important it is to be reflective, or to think critically, without it ever showing in their work. This is something I'm frankly OD'd in in staff developments I've had to go through. But Stephen truly walks his talk. Everything I like about this book I found in his workshop.

One of this book's strengths is that it's very easy to follow. I found it very easy to read and several of the examples could have come from my own classes. The four lenses on practice are things I keep constantly in mind these days having read the book carefully and also seen how Stephen uses them in his workshop. I also found the book extremely helpful in terms of giving me specific techniques. I've always basically agreed that reflection is useful (even if I'm fed up with people telling me) and would improve my teaching but I had little concrete idea about how to go about it. Each of the lenses Stephen examines has lots of techniques and exercises attached to it. One of the most useful was the critical incident questionnaire he explains in the students' eyes lens. I started to use this to evaluate my classes and I've learned lots of surprising things were going on that I had no clue about.

Finally, I appreciated the linking of critical reflection to something a little stronger than just being thoughtful. I'd never really thought about a focus for reflection before, certainly never thought about power dynamics being a focus. And the staff developments I've gone to never really deal with it. This book really got clear in my mind what my own power was as a teacher. I've always known I had it but never really been up front about it. I feel much more comfortable with this now and am ready to make sure my students think I'm using it properly.

I would normally say that a book such as this should fail because of its faulty premises; however, Brookfield has managed to deliever an inspiring message in spite of the fact that his premises are, quite simply, wrong.

First, the good:

Brookfield offers 4 lenses for teachers to use as they become critically reflective about their own teaching practices: an autobiographical lens, the lens of colleagues, and of students, and of theory and research. Brookfield gives quite a bit of detail in both what these lenses mean and how to use them. Taken as a whole, the lenses offer a chance for true transformation, as teachers are exposed to the whole of themselves and how they can realize their goals (and dreams) by improving their practice. The book is no less than a handbook for excellence, offered in the form of 4 "tools" to achieve that excellence.

Now, the bad:

Brookfield never defines what "Critically Reflective" really means! He talks about it, and he describes what happens when one becomes critically reflective, but he never comes out and describes the central term that is the title of his book!

Brookfield also appears to be wholely focused on the notion that critical reflection involves finding out how power relationships manifest in the classroom. This miopic viewpoint becomes pedantic in the first chapters and does a dis-service to Brookfield's aim.

Finally, Brookfield totally misuses the terms "assumption" and "hegemony." According to Brookfield ssumptions are all about power, and hegemonies are ideas that are taken as true but are later found to be detrimental to learning efforts. These definitions are FAR from the definitions accepted in academe and even in real life; nevertheless Brookfield bases his argument for the need for critical reflection on these faulty premises.

HOWEVER, as I stated at the outset, in peculiar fashion he has still crafted a book that is useful and even transformative, for those who take the message to heart. Just don't use the terms in the first couple of chapters as Brookfield would advise you to use them!

I bought this as a required text for a graduate course. It was exactly what I needed, and I got a great price.

Book purchased for Adult Learning course. Found it very informative and easy to understand.

This book has been really helpful in helping me to think more critically about my teaching, which has helped me develop a more conscientious mindset to what I do in the classroom. While the book is a little light on actually defining in objective terms the subject of his book, his descriptions provide a good inductive exposure to the subject from various contexts.

The author notes that, "Trust is the thread that ties these practices [of critical reflection on teaching and transparent dialogue with students] together. Through their actions, teachers build or diminish the amount of trust in the world. Coming to trust another person is the most fragile of human projects." [p. 26] So then, as a fairly new teacher in a college setting, I must find ways to develope that trust with my students and with my colleagues. From what I have studied regarding pedagogy, it seems that self-evaluation goes hand-in-hand with the evaluation of others--both peers and students. And I am pondering the value and power of opening such a dialogue with my students so that I can gain their perspective through more than just a university-mandated evaluation exam on a scantron form (while that does have value for the purposes of the administration of the university).

I borrowed this from the university where I teach French as an adjunct and it has provided a lot of good food-for-thought to chew on. I highly recommend it.

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.