Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/creating-frameworks-for-reflective-teaching/5017722/
The new NAEYC accreditation standards for teacher preparation and practices are creating quite a stir. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to more closely examine and debate what we think will enhance more thoughtful, engaged, and effective work with young children in our programs. From my point of view, we can’t just keep heaping more requirements on directors and teachers without putting support systems in place to make the additional work of higher standards realistic and reachable. Without this support, what will motivate people to take on the additional work? Even more critical, what will make this huge extra effort sustainable as a part of an ongoing practice, not just a temporary surge on behalf of preparing for an accreditation visit? How will directors and teachers learn to do the necessary reflection that is underneath a strong professional practice when their own education and experience hasn’t prepared them for (and with) this approach?The task of creating organizational policies and systems that promote and support reflective teaching is multifaceted and seldom enumerated in early childhood professional literature. One of the best overviews I’ve found comes from Carol Brunson Phillips and Sue Bredekamp (1998) which I described in an earlier Exchange article ...