Reflexive Thinking in Pedagogy

This book explores how dimensions of reflexive thinking in social foundations pedagogy facilitate an understanding of student and teacher talk and text in a social foundations classroom. Even though pedagogy is defined as both thinking and acting, traditional discussions about teacher pedagogy in teacher education have often focused on the behavior or actions of teachers in the classroom. This book introduces another way to think about pedagogy and focuses on the thinking aspect of pedagogy; thinking in pedagogy is portrayed as a way in which theoretic meaning can be derived from students' talk and text in the classroom.
The concept of reflexive thinking is introduced which draws on Garman's (1998) levels of reflection. This framework is used to explore the problematics of teaching social foundations in order to come to theoretic understandings of students' talk and text. Five fictive vignettes are crafted from student and teacher discourses which demonstrate the notion of reflexive thinking in pedagogy. Each vignette explores a problematic encountered while teaching social foundations and attempts to identify theories that can help explain student and teacher text and talk. These vignettes can assist other instructors who address contentious issues such as race, class, gender and sexual orientation in their classrooms.