After All, Who Lectures the Lecturer? Exploring the Barriers Impacting the Development of a Reflective Practitioner

Abstract

Reflective practice has successfully shifted towards evolving into one of the standards of lecturers’ professional development, although it would appear that it has been psychologically constricted to student lecturers alone. Because it is often the case where lecturers are submerged in a social field where it is highly necessary for them to blend continuously with the dynamics of the ever-changing field, as well as follow its rules, reflection is one of the ‘performance mirror’ available to lecturers. Some of the key questions that emerged in the study were – are the teaching abilities of the lecturers constrained by the social elements of reflection theories? Why is reflection not practiced by Further Education lecturers in the way it is supposed to? This research paper evaluates the notion and limitation of reflective practice in the Further Education of lecturers. With cognizance of the historical underpinning theories, criticisms and recommendations from relevant literature, this paper draws a conclusion towards reintroducing reflection in the context of Further education using educational technologies.

Keywords: Reflective practice, professional development, performance mirror, reflection, Further Education, educational technologies

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/10-12-01

Publication date: April 30^th 2019