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Article/Reading Brookfield s. (2017) Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher

1. CONCISE SUMMARY OF READING [1 x A4 page]

This chapter is titled “What it means to be a critically reflective teacher”. It is broken into 5 subsections,
each with examples illustrating their effect on a classroom. The subsections are as follows: Reflection as
hunting assumptions, what makes reflection critical?, Critical reflection as the illumination of power,
Critical reflection as the recognition of hegemonic assumptions, Why is critical reflection important?,
and Conclusion.

The author opens the chapter with a discussion on the intentions of a teacher, in which he ascertains
that regardless of the sincere intentions that teachers have, that alone doesn’t guarantee purity of
practice. He explains that teaching “innocently” is with the idea that you understand all ramifications
of the actions, and that is not possible with the power relations in education. He furthers that an
uncritical approach to teaching will lead to a sense of inability to control chaos, ultimately leading the
teacher to feel incompetent. He uses the phrase “to our eyes” when describing the evidence showing
incompetence. He does not clarify whether it is only perceived evidence of incompetence, or if he
believes that an uncritical teacher is incompetent. He concludes the introduction with the explanation
that critically reflective practice is necessary for survival in the profession.

Reflection as hunting assumptions regards the nature of assumptions. He defines paradigmatic,

prescriptive and casual assumptions. Examples include visiting students in groups as a form of support
rather than the possible interpretation of assessment, experienced teachers would be better teachers
and teaching as a mysterious process. Ultimately, he explained that if we interpret an event based on
an assumption that is false, then our interpretation does not reflect truth.

The following subsection What makes reflection critical clarifies the distinct natures of reflection and
critical reflection. One can be reflective on a surface level, without bringing in critical analysis of
events. He states that reflection on its own is still important, whether it is critical or not. Critical reflection
is defined by the two aims for the inquiry, understanding the impact that power plays, and the easy
shortcuts that we rely on that may be causing difficulty down the line. He elaborates further on both of
these considerations in later subsections of the chapter.

Critical reflection as the illumination of power section is devoted exploring the inherent and societal
power dynamics in a classroom, particularly of the teacher as having “power over learners”, the desire
among teachers is to have a democratic classroom and shift to “power with learners”. He states that
regardless of intentions in the classroom, a teaching strategy that strives for democracy and mutual
learning may not be effective if the students interpret the teacher’s role as a scrutinising authority. It is
necessary to identify and analyse the dynamics in the classroom that undermine the desired
“progressive behaviours”. He provides examples of The Circle, in which confident students may thrive,
and more wary students no longer have the opportunity to analyse the teacher for clues as to the
desired input. The power imbalance, where the students will change their natural behaviour to please
the teacher causes challenges to the teacher’s ability to assess the progress of the lesson. He reinforces
the challenge, with the teacher as a fly on wall as even an unobtrusive observing role is still interpreted

© ATU Dept. of Creative Education 2023-2024

 “as either withholding approval or as tacit agreement”. After further examples, he caps the subsection
as determined by the preestablished trust and comfort the students have with the teacher, so that the
students interpret the teachers actions as of a collaborator rather than an assessor.

Hegemonic assumptions are the focus of the following subsection Critical reflection as the recognition
of hegemonic assumptions. These assumptions are ones that teachers use in practice that are generally
believed to be “natural, preordinated and working for their own good”, but are actually designed by a
minority to preserve the current system. Many of these assumptions are detrimental to the wellbeing
and longevity of a teacher’s career. The author delves into the identity of teaching as a vocation and
the exploitation of labour which is therefore justified. Other examples include the common return to
assessment in a one dimensional fashion, and the recognition that the school environment may mimic
the challenges faced by the wider community. In The perfect 10 syndrome which explores the
reduction of teaching performance to arbitrary 1-10 scale, the students are sometimes the “customers”
and assessors, and the board of management use these scores to determine who deserves promotion.
Unfortunately, this simple solution to a challenge of determining the ability and impact of a teacher,
does not take into consideration that the teacher that challenges student’s thinking, will be met with
resistance, and the teacher who teaches what the students like, will be given better scores. Therefore, it
is not a sufficient reflection of the teacher. This is later reaffirmed in which he explains that students
often take very narrow views of their needs, and therefore the teacher is greatly challenged to meet
them all the time. He suggests that the solution to every problem is sometimes not readily available,
regardless of the research conducted. Perhaps the teacher must engineer it themselves, and perhaps it
is not something that the perfect solution exists for.

In the subsection Why is critical thinking important?, he explores the benefits and reasoning for
including critical reflective practice in teaching. He suggests that it helps to take informed practice,
which increases the chance of success, it helps to develop a rationale for practice, which ensures that
a teacher understands what they are doing and helps to develop communication more effectively
with colleagues. Critical reflection helps to develop a healthy distance between the success of
students and their teaching, as this can lead to “self-laceration” which is not beneficial, a key sentence
is “they learn to stop blaming themselves, and they develop a more accurate understanding of the
cultural and political limits to their ability to convert resistance into enthousisasm”. He justifies that it
increases our emotional stability, in which the critically reflective teacher is a step away from the
emotional high of every small success, and the low of every perceived failure. He highlights that a
critically reflective habit increases consistency between what a teacher says and does. This is highly
important when developing trust among students, as it sets clear expectations and a sense of
authenticity. He explains that politics are interactions between people, and a classroom cannot be
devoid of politics. The democratic approach can be presented and developed with students in a
balanced way when practicing critical reflection. Trust is imperative to achieve this.

The conclusion reinforces that critical reflection is “inherently ideological”, yet also morally grounded. It
encourages a balanced understanding of the factors impacting our practice, and therefore allows for
effective growth.

© ATU Dept. of Creative Education 2023-2024

2. CRITICAL REFLECTION [2 x A4 pages]

In this paper, I will discuss the second chapter of the 2017 edition of Stephen Brookfield’s
Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. I will explore the register that he used for address,
the metaphor of students as customers, and how current culture manifests through schools. I
feel that the realistic, grounded and optimistic writing of this author played a very large role
in my ability to enjoy this chapter, and truly digest the information. On initial reading, it was
clear that the author viewed teachers as truly well intending, and he was capable of
articulating many elements of teaching that I found challenging and frustrating.

The address that he used had a very important impact on the reception of the book. It
seems that Brookfield was aware that the teachers who are interested in developing critical
reflexivity are those with true intentions of improving their practice. It felt very intellectually
and emotionally affirming that he was able to propose critical reflection with a reasoned
approach that displays an understanding of the desires of teachers, and the challenges
imposed on them. In and of itself, he is presenting this chapter as an example of critically
reflective thought. He is showing consistency between his words and his actions, therefore
increasing trust between the teacher (himself) and the student (the reader). Kirilloff (2018)
examined the impact that the address has on the reader’s interpretation of the literature,
which has changed throughout history and is also influenced by whether the author is male
or female.

Interestingly, it can be observed that Brookfield was aware that there can be gender biases
in his book and made sure that the examples used had a balance of male, female or neutral
register. Perhaps I was more inclined to notice this after completing the write up for my
dissertation, in which I made sure to use gender neutral code names for the data analysis, as
I did not want the reader to be influenced by preexisting gender biases. It could be argued
that in order to truly ensure that the reader is not influenced by gender, he should have kept
to the neutral throughout. I think that doing this could have caused the reading to be less
natural and detract from the accessibility of the chapter, see gender fatigue (Kelan, 2009). It
is a topic of debate that can draw very emotive responses from the public, as seen in the
article Staff Requirement to Promote ‘Gender Ideology’ Is Threat to Academic Freedom, Say
Lecturer(The Irish Times, 2024). The discussion of gender ideology is a very current one, as the
Irish Times released an article discussing lecturers’ reservation around enforcing the
promotion of gender ideology in Higher Education. As a strong advocate for gender
equality, I sometimes feel that the necessity to sign agreements and acts can be interpreted
as pushing off the responsibility of enforcement to a large authority that may not be as
effective at smaller allegations. It is very important that staff and the general public maintain
their vigilance and strive to address gender inequality around them.

The second learning I got from this chapter was regarding students as customers. The
metaphor of students as customers is one that reminded me of an interaction that I had with
friends, years ago, from my secondary school, in which we were discussing our experience as
a student. The friend in question referred to all education as capitalist. I was shocked by this,
and suggested the term authoritarian, as that made more sense in context. I remember
being very angry and frustrated that they would be telling me what sort of teaching I am
doing. They were adamant it was capitalist that they desired to use. While I put it down to
them having the terms wrong, it often returns to me as I try to understand how it fits together.
However, I think that my ego was stopping me from listening to their side adequately, and
perhaps we could have reached an understanding together if I was more patient. As I have
become more confident in my teaching, it has become easier to set my personal opinion
aside, and to listen more effectively. This article by Nemec et al (2017) supports the
incorporation of listening skills in teacher education, and I feel that I will seek CPD training on
listening skills.

© ATU Dept. of Creative Education 2023-2024

 I understand the example now, after far too long, in which it is very difficult to measure the
success of teaching on a long-term basis, so pared down criteria such as student
contentedness, student examination results and extracurricular success, are easier to
measure and compare. This reduces education to a transaction, in which the students are
customers and the teacher (and school) are the service. The metaphor can turn concrete,
especially in other education systems, such as the UK, where the staff salaries are dependent
on their performance (which is measured by limited criteria) see (School Teachers’ Pay and
Conditions, 2023). There is a disparity between the service that the students think they need
and what the teacher must provide. Awareness of this may help us to understand that we
cannot please everyone, and that we must make a morally informed choice as to what
teacher we will become. As I am nearing the end of my initial teacher education (ITE), I feel
that I am eager to move away from self-motivated needs (getting the best qualification that
I can) and focus on the classroom, where my purpose is to provide myself for the betterment
of students.

Brookfield aptly suggested that many factors of education curriculum and assessment
“reproduce the inequalities and social contradictions of the wider environment”. It must be
addressed that our society runs on transactions, money for products, time for education,
salaries for teaching. Society needs students to fill the gaps in our skilled labour, it needs
productivity and efficiency to run. Our students are required to put a vast amount of time
into education, and one of the largest resistances to student learning is that they only work if
they deem it profitable – note that they are not being paid and the future promise of pay is
not going to appeal to many. It is very challenging to motivate students when they do not
have choice in their actions, especially if they act with the understanding that society is only
interested in manufacturing productive workers. This is even a source of some of my own
disillusionment with teaching! However, I understand that I must agree to the contract of
working to earn, earning to live, and finally I need to find joy in what I do.

I am drawn to the technical subjects as I am more able to apply their use to everyday
functions, such as repairing a house, or even design principals in appreciating art and form
(which is everywhere around us). However, I am aware that I find motivation in my this
because I am naturally inclined to appreciate these things. I found merit in every subject that
I did, but I knew that I cannot do all of them, so I specialised. A critically reflective teacher
understands that we do not need students to excel in every subject, but rather that there is
some form of meaningful learning to be made in everything you do. I found quite a lot of
solace in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Anderson, 2024), as he debated the
relationship between meaning in life and joy. Ultimately, we need to set personally
meaningful aims in life, and to find joy in the simple wonder of what we do. I want my
students to be able to feel safe and motivation in my subjects, and to feel that learning in
itself is beautiful and joyful simply because we can.

I really enjoyed this chapter and nearly every paragraph had something that I resonated
with. However, I feel that as it was all very rich in meaning – consequently it was labourous to
read. When writing the summary, I found it necessary to break the chapter into the sections
and subsections using a diagram. Only then could I understand the flow of the chapter. I
would suggest that the chapter is broken down more clearly for the reader to access from
initial reading.

In conclusion, the chapter broached many topics, but the ones of most importance to me
was the fashion in which he optimistically viewed the intentions of the reader and the
reflection that society has on education, and the restrictions that it applies. Teachers need to
be adequately aware of themselves and the environment in which they work, to be most
effective. This is identified through living in a critically reflective way.

© ATU Dept. of Creative Education 2023-2024

© ATU Dept. of Creative Education 2023-2024
 3. LIST OF REFERENCES

Anderson, R. L. (2024). Friedrich Nietzsche. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2024). Metaphysics Research Lab,

Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2024/entries/nietzsche/

Kelan, E. K. (2009). Gender fatigue: The ideological dilemma of gender neutrality and

discrimination in organizations. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences / Revue

Canadienne Des Sciences de l’Administration, 26(3), 197–210.

https://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.106

Kirilloff, G. (2018, June). ‘This, Reader, Is No Fiction’: Examining the Rhetorical Uses of

Reader Address across the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Novel - ProQuest.

https://www.proquest.com/openview/4508ef057062c6aa7c75985f0dc12780/1?pq-

origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750

Nemec, P. B., Spagnolo, A. C., & Soydan, A. S. (2017). Can you hear me now? Teaching

listening skills. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 40(4), 415–417.

https://doi.org/10.1037/prj0000287

School teachers’ pay and conditions. (2023, October 13). GOV.UK.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-teachers-pay-and-conditions

Staff requirement to promote ‘gender ideology’ is threat to academic freedom, say lecturers.

(n.d.). The Irish Times. Retrieved 12 March 2024, from

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/2024/02/27/staff-requirement-to-

promote-gender-ideology-is-threat-to-academic-freedom-say-lecturers/

© ATU Dept. of Creative Education 2023-2024