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Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 1125–1131

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Teaching and Teacher Education

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Reflection as situated practice: A memory-work study of livedexperience in teacher education

Alan Ovens a,*, Richard Tinning b

a Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92601, Symonds Street, Auckland 1023, New Zealandb School of Human Movement Studies, University of Queensland, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 28 March 2007Received in revised form16 March 2009Accepted 24 March 2009

Keywords:ReflectionTeacher educationMemory-workSituated learning

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ64 95 754 755; fax:E-mail address: a.ovens@auckland.ac.nz (A. Ovens

0742-051X/$ – see front matter � 2009 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.tate.2009.03.013

a b s t r a c t

The aim of this paper is to understand whether student teachers enact reflection differently as theyencounter different situations within their teacher education programme. Group memory-work wasused to generate and analyse five participants’ memories of learning to teach. Three different discursivecontexts were identified in the students’ stories and each demonstrates that students reflexively enactreflection in relation to the discursive nature of the context. The analysis also reveals that criticalreflection is possible, but that further attention must be paid to considering how it can be sustained incontexts outside of teacher education.

� 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Over the past 15–20 years the concept of reflection has becomea popular and core aspect of the discursive practice of teachereducation (Clarke & Chambers, 1999; Loughran, 2006; Tinning,1995). Reflection is promoted in a myriad of ways to help studentteachers unpack their own experiences, beliefs, knowledge andphilosophies and to help them understand how these shape theiridentities and actions as teachers. Often implicit in such promotionis a construction of reflective practice that views the individual asa neutral, self-conscious agent capable of rational analysis. In thissense, reflection is seen as a tool that can be learnt and appliedacross a range of contexts. However, increasing attention is beingpaid to the socially situated nature of human activity and themediating role that context plays in human consciousness, learningand identity (Putnam & Borko, 2000; Rovegno, 2006; Scott, 2001). Ifreflection is mediated by the context in which an individual issituated, the question then arises as to whether the nature of thisreflection is influenced by the different situations student teachersencounter in their journey to becoming a teacher. In this paper wediscuss this possibility through an analysis of the experiences ofstudents in an undergraduate program of physical educationteacher education (PETE).

Numerous studies have confirmed that students can demon-strate reflection when required (for example, Byra, 1996; El-Dib,2007; Hatton & Smith, 1995a; Pedro, 2006; Pultorak, 1996). Our

þ64 96 238 898.).

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own experience as teacher educators has demonstrated thatstudent teachers can and do engage in reflection especially whenrequired to do so for assessment tasks. However we know little ofwhether such reflective activity informs students’ pedagogicalthinking or transfers to other situations. Accordingly, the aim of thispaper is to understand whether student teachers enact reflectiondifferently as they encounter different situations within theirteacher education programme. As opposed to ‘performing’ reflec-tion, the concept of ‘enacting’ reflection acknowledges that socialcontexts are constitutive of the kinds of knowledge, practices andsubjectivities that enable reflective activity (Macdonald & Tinning,2003). By exploring reflection as a situated practice it is possible toacknowledge the social and non-rational aspects that havea mediating effect on reflection.

1. Framing reflection as a situated practice

With its emphasis on the relation between subjectivity andsocial context, the concept of situatedness offers a compellingframework for the study of reflection. In particular, this perspectiveis drawn from the fields of cognitive science, anthropology, andsociology (Cobb & Bowers, 1999; Wenger, 1998). In essence, a situ-ated perspective posits the belief that an activity like reflection isalways situated in a social context, is social in nature, and makesuse of the conceptual tools present in the context (Borko & Putnam,1998; Putnam & Borko, 2000). In fact, as Lave and Wenger (1991)suggest, there is no activity that is not socially situated. In this

A. Ovens, R. Tinning / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 1125–11311126

sense, framing reflection as a situated practice enables attention tofocus on the relationship between participation and context.

Social context has been conceptualized in a range of ways. Whilenot all synonymous concepts, some of the names used includecommunities of practice (Wenger, 1998), cultural communities(Clarke, 1996), actor networks (Callon & Latour, 1992), discourses(Foucault, 1972, 1977), activity systems (Engstom, 1990), and affinitygroups (Gee, 2005). In one way or another, each recognises theepistemic nature of collective social culture and the way it givesmeaning and structure to those positioned within the collective.For the purposes of this study, we use the concept of ‘discoursecommunity’ (Ovens, 2002; Rodriguez Romero, 1998) as a way offoregrounding the contextualized nature of reflective practice andthe role people play in (re)creating this context.

As a concept, discourse community links the power discourseshave to create specific perspectives for interpreting the world withthe affiliations people make with particular groups or communitiesthat circulate such discourses. The concept not only focusesattention on the relationships between people and the way agencyis enabled or constrained, but also on the way the collectivepractices of the group provide the cognitive tools, such as ideas,theories and concepts, that individuals appropriate to guide andgive meaning to their actions (Putnam & Borko, 2000). In this sense,a department in a secondary school, such as a physical educationdepartment, can be viewed as a discourse community because ofthe way it represents a collectivity of people all of whom have anaffinity with the value of physical education and contribute tothe shared practices that constitute physical education teaching.Although similar, university faculty teaching the PETE programmecan be thought of as a separate discourse community and this givesrise to different practices and beliefs with respect to teaching(Howley & Spatig, 1999; Ovens, 2003). Each of these communitiescan be identified as a negotiated ‘regime’ of competence that isproduced and sustained by its membership (Wenger, 1998).

Within most teacher education programmes students learnabout teaching in a variety of different sites, from the lecturetheatre through to school-based practica. Students participate indifferent courses that consist of a variety of formal pedagogicalencounters with different academic staff. Each different situation isintended to govern or regulate the production of teacher knowl-edge, dispositions and skill in specific ways. For example, studentsmove between general courses on educational psychology andsociology to more specific courses on teaching methodology andcurriculum. In addition, students move between the universityand schools during their practicum placements. However, far frombeing a coherent and homogenous field, teacher educationbecomes a context where there are competing and contestednotions that student teachers must navigate (Segall, 2002). Withinthis field, a concept like reflection becomes promoted and practisedin a variety of ways as different discourse communities take updifferent positions in the teacher education context.

In this sense, while reflection may appear to have somecommon language and ideas, the way each community frames theconcept and produces reflection as a practice that students enactwill be dependent on the discourses shaping the nature ofthe community. That is, as students move through their teachereducation programme they may encounter quite different formsof reflection, underpinned as they may be by different political,phenomenological or pedagogical commitments (Ovens, 2002).For example, the concept of critical reflection exists as a practicein those communities that value the discourses of social justice,emancipation and empowerment, but becomes diluted andperhaps impossible when conflated with the broader project ofproducing teachers to fit into the changing context of schoolworkplaces (Macdonald & Tinning, 2003).

From this perspective we believe it is important to keep in mindthe duality of the community and the individual. While thecommunity represents a collective set of practices and has culturalnorms regarding how to act, it is the individuals who reflexivelymonitor and discipline themselves within these discursive ways ofbeing that produce and sustain particular practices (Giddens, 1991;Rossi & Cassidy, 1999). It is the individual who construes situationswith contextual features and meaning (Clarke & Helme, 1993). Howstudent teachers construe the meaning of a situation may bedifferent from how it was intended by teaching staff. In otherwords, the pedagogical work done might be different from thepedagogical intention (see Tinning, 2008). In this sense, studentteachers often become very adept at reading the social context andknowing how to perform accordingly (for example, see notions ofstudentship, Swan, 1995, and resistance, Hickey, 2001). This hasimplications for the promotion and performance of reflection, asstudent teachers will reflexively monitor and mediate their actionsas they construe the nature of the social context in which they aresituated.

With respect to the study that is reported in this paper, the aimwas to explore whether student teachers enact reflection differ-ently in different settings. As teacher educators who activelypromote reflection, our students are well versed in undertakinga variety of tasks designed to get them to reflect on their teaching.Our aim was not to find out whether particular tasks make themreflective, since their assessment performances in assignment tasksdemonstrate clearly that they can perform when required. Rather,our aim is to look through our students’ eyes in order to approachan understanding of how reflective activity emerges, varies and isexperienced by students as they participate in the various sites ofpedagogy that constitute their teacher education course.

2. Memory-work as method

In order to understand the students’ experience, the empiricalmaterial used in this study was generated and analysed using theCollective Memory-work method initially developed by Haug(1987) and later modified by Crawford, Kippax, Onyx, Gault, andBenton (1990, 1992). Memory-work was selected because of itsfocus on interpreting participants’ subjective experiences throughan iterative process of individual and collective analysis of partici-pants’ written memories. In general, memory-work involvesparticipants writing narratives about recalled experiences that arethen analysed within the collective research group. The aim,through discussion and reflection, is to achieve an intersubjectiveunderstanding of the participants’ experiences as the basis for(re)interpreting the research material (Markula & Friend, 2005).

Five student teachers in their final year of a PETE programmevolunteered to be participants in the project. This provided a groupsmall enough to allow for each participant to be involved in thecollective discussion and a level of homogeneity that allowed forgroup compatibility (Kruegar, 2000; Small, 2000). One of theresearchers then facilitated the group discussions and took respon-sibility for transcribing tapes and conducting further analysis. Forthe purposes of this paper, the participants’ names have beenchanged to preserve confidentiality.

Memory-work initially proceeds through a four-step cyclicalprocess (Crawford et al., 1992). Step one involves each participantrecalling a specific memory relevant to the research topic. This istypically done by using a particular phrase or word to help triggereach memory. The concern in this study was to find trigger terms thatmay stimulate memories of situations when the student wasinvolved in reflective activity while not overly leading or confiningwhat that reflective activity may be. As Onyx and Small (2001) state,‘‘the trick is to produce the more jagged stuff of personal lived

1 By Freirian pedagogy we mean the way the instructional discourses consti-tuting the course are influenced by the ideas of Paulo Freire (Freire, 1970, 1976,1985), Ira Shor (Shor, 1992, 1996), and Augusto Boal (Boal, 1979).

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experience’’ (p. 776). The five triggering terms were ‘‘politics, valuesand beliefs’’, ‘‘personal pedagogy’’, ‘‘generative spaces’’, ‘‘agency andchange’’, ‘‘mapping spaces’’. Each term was chosen by the researchersprior to each cycle because of its potential to elicit memoriesassociated with reflection without being too obvious or leading. Sincethe discrete descriptive memory is central to the method, it was alsodecided that the researcher should meet with each participant at thestart of each cycle. A range of strategies, such as drawing, question-naires and interviews, could then be used to facilitate the identifi-cation and recall of a particular memory to write about.

Following this meeting, step two of the method involved eachparticipant writing a memory-story according to prescribedguidelines (Crawford et al.,1992). These guidelines included writingin the third person and being as descriptive as possible, even whenit may seem inconsequential. Such a process enabled a detailedaccount of the memory to be recorded in a way that enabled thewriter to distance themselves from the experience so they could seeit anew and not be drawn into interpretation, explanation orbiography (Onyx & Small, 2001). Hence the 3rd person voice used inthe narratives that follow in the next section. The third step of theprocess involved the group meeting to engage in a collectiveanalysis of each story. Essentially, this was a reflexive process thatinvolved each story being read, discussed and reflected on. The aimwas to allow participants to make sense of their experiences byunderstanding the social contexts in which their behaviouroccurred and how they give meanings to the events and actions intheir lives (Friend & Thompson, 2003). Following this, the fourthstep involved offering each participant the opportunity to re-writetheir memory-story, modifying it in light of the group discussion.

The final phase of the method involved the researcher re-analysing all the empirical materials (including those generated aspart of the group discussion) in an attempt to ‘collectivise’ theexperiences of the students and foreground the key embeddedthemes. This meant the researcher had to ‘fracture’ the originaltexts and work with them recursively in a generative mannertogether with ideas presented in the wider theoretical literature(Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000). In this way, theory is used as one wayof making sense of the empirical material rather than the empiricalmaterial being used to verify theory.

3. Tales of experience

The method provided an opportunity for the participants towrite about and discuss their specific memories of learning to teachin response to the trigger topics used. Initially, there was concernthat the participants may have been too homogeneous as a group.They were all from the same year group of the degree and had thesame range of experiences in common. Their familiarity with eachother did influence the group discussions since they often recog-nised the event a story was about and focused on analysing thisrather than focusing on how it was represented through thememory-story text. However, as the project progressed we weresurprised by the diversity the group displayed. What emerged wasthe realisation that these were five very different people withdifferent opinions, experiences and viewpoints. Within a commonand shared set of experiences, the biographical trajectories of eachparticipant steered an individualised pathway.

Through the story writing and group discussions, a wide range ofdata was generated. These data provide a narrative representation ofhow each participant experienced memorable elements of learningto teach. They also provide an insight into whether the participantsconstruct meaning and reflect within particular settings.

A difficulty in analysing such tales of experience is in decidingwhat represents reflective activity. Numerous texts that havesought to explicate the concept in detail (for example, Hatton &

Smith, 1995b; Tsangridou & Siedentop, 1995; Yost, Senter &Forlenza-Bailey, 2000; Zeichner & Liston, 1996), however theassumption of this study is that reflection is constituted in andthrough discourse. Any precise definition would run the risk ofexcluding how reflection was possibly being constituted or enabledin any given situation. At the same time, it is also important not toaccept all activity as reflective activity. Consequently, it was decidedto begin by focusing attention on activity that represented‘‘deliberate thinking about action’’ (Hatton & Smith, 1995a, p. 52) orfitted with the idea that ‘‘some phenomenon has been subjected tothorough consideration’’ (Bengtsson, 1995, p. 27). By using a broaddefinition, analysis could then be focussed on whether the partic-ipants were reflexively constituting reflective activity.

The following discussion presents data in relation to threeparticular contexts. These contexts were identified from within thestories, often because several people may have used them as thefocus of their memory. In focusing on each context, the discussionexamines how the students discursively construct the nature ofeach context and then how they represent the nature of thereflective activity within this context.

3.1. The lecture context

New Zealand degree programmes, such as that experienced bythe participants in this study, are typically divided into courses inwhich the lecture is the dominant form of pedagogy. Each lecturehas a pedagogical intent that relates to the overall course objec-tives. The participants’ narratives provide some insight into the factthat they were sensitive to the discourses structuring the pedagogyof each lecture and that not all of these were generative forreflective activity.

When asked to write in response to the trigger ‘‘generativespace’’, four of the five participants chose to write about the courseThe Sociocultural Foundations of Physical Education that is offered inthe first year of the degree. This course aims to broaden studentsunderstanding of the social and cultural contexts that constructconceptions of physical activity and the body. It aims to challengeand disrupt students’ beliefs and assumptions and to this endemploys a Freirian pedagogy1 to engage students in active ques-tioning and dialogue rather than in the transmission of informa-tion. The following excerpt demonstrates a typical way the contextof the course was constructed within the memory-stories.

Maree remembered herself walking into one of the first lectures ofthe course bursting with enthusiasm to get started. However thissoon vanished five minutes after entering the room. She remem-bered feeling like she had hit a brick wall. The focus of the first classwas on what is PE? And, why do we do it? ‘‘What did this lecturerthink he was doing?’’ Maree had thought to herself she had notcome here to be strung out on a limb like this and to have to answersuch huge questions. She thought she had come here to be given theanswers. The lecturer gave no hint of an actual answer butcontinuously challenged anything put forward with exclamationsof, ‘‘Why? Why? Why?’’ As Maree and her class left the roomeveryone was in an uproar.(Maree, memory-story, generativespaces)

Maree remembers the course in a slightly negative way, focusingon the challenging and dialogical nature of the pedagogy. Sucha perspective was shared by others in the group and also reflectedin the evaluations for the course that year. As the extract above

2 Studentship is defined by Swan (1995) as ‘‘an array of behaviours that areemployed by students to enable them to progress through a programme withgreater ease, more success and less effort than if such behaviour had not beenemployed’’ (p. 2).

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suggests, the pedagogy of the course was not well received bystudents because the typical lecture discursively constructs thestudent as a passive receiver of transmitted information and thispedagogy broke that unstated convention. Despite this, whenreflecting back as fourth year students, four of the participants,identified the sociocultual course as a generative space for criticalreflection.

Renee focuses on the transformative nature of the course in herstory about a time she remembers showing around a group ofpotential applicants during an open day to the university and shesits in with them on a talk about the sociocultural course. Thefollowing is an extract from that story.

To Renee, Sociocultural had been a word she had become accus-tomed to using. When she heard the word she instantly associated itwith things like body image and challenging the hegemony ofsociety. It suddenly occurred to her that these people sitting aroundher would have no idea what the word meant or what it stood for.She realized how much she had progressed through this coursealready and how much more she was aware of within the societyshe lived in because of lectures like these. She reflected on thediscussion work which was encouraged in most lectures and howthis helped to challenge her ideas and discuss them by bouncingideas off fellow class-mates and the lecturer. While some of thesediscussions became rather heated it just showed the passion of thepoint of views [sic] people had. Which also illustrated what differentbackgrounds everyone had and because of these backgrounds wehad to now challenge these former ideas to incorporate the new.Renee must have been falling asleep because she came up witha rather strange analogy for the situation. People often talk of beergoggles when a person is seeing something a little different fromeveryone else and often a lot different from reality. Renee realizedthat through her courses she had a chance to take off these beergoggles she could see everyone else in society wearing and seethings a lot more clearly. She had a chance to see things througha new reality where things were not always as pretty as they hadonce seemed.(Renee, memory-story, generative spaces)

In comparison, John writes retrospectively in this extract aboutsitting in the first lecture for the course.

This would be the beginning of the concept of critical thinking beingintroduced to John’s intellectual world. Part of this concept involvedthe understanding of hegemony and hegemonic process; little didhe realize how significant this would be for him during the next fewyears at Teachers College and possibly for his teaching career.A way of thinking, a way of learning, John considered this to be oneof the most valuable transitions in his development as a teacher.This way of thinking is a process enforced by most of his lectures,to be critical in his thinking and discover the hegemonicbarriers.(John, memory-story, generative spaces)

A significant aspect within both Renee’s and John’s extracts isthe way each student represents the course as providing a trans-formative learning experience. This can be observed not only in theplot of each story, but also in the fact that they chose the socio-cultural course to write about in response to the trigger of gener-ative space. Each student appears to be implying that as a result ofthat course they make sense of their worlds in different ways. Ina sense the course has had a re-orienting effect on their personalepistemologies.

Both extracts also suggest how the nature of this change mightbe considered. John describes it as the beginning of ‘critical thinking’being introduced to his world. He suggests that the core of this waslearning concepts like hegemony and how such concepts structuredknowledge. This may be what Renee means by her metaphor of the

beer goggles and being able to appreciate that she could now seethings a lot more clearly and that the effect of this was that thingswere not always as pretty as they had once seemed. In each sense,they represent the development of a critical orientation as positive.

3.2. The assignment context

In addition to the lecture as pedagogy, set assessment piecessuch as the assignment also constitute a form of pedagogy. Doingassignments becomes one of the specific practices of the universitycontext that students have to successfully master. As fourth yearstudents, each of the participants was competent in doing assign-ment work and their comments reflected how the universitycontext mediated their conception of, and approach to, doing anassignment. For example, during one group discussion John askedCindy to explain how she approached doing an assignment likewriting a programme plan. This is a brief extract of the discussion:

Cindy I usually start at the easiest question – simply because it getsyou going and you feel like you’re getting somewhere. Whereas,sometimes the first question in the actual assignment can be quitehard and then.John What if the assignment is just one question?Maree There may be different parts within there.Cindy Yeah, you may want to leave your introduction till last, andwrite the rest of the assignment and do all the fluffy beginnings andendings at the end.(Group meeting, agency and change)

What is interesting in such comments is the way the students’engagement with an activity like planning appears to be mediatedby its construction as an assignment task. Studentship2 is a featureof how they engage with such a task, initially gauging its size andtime requirements, then working out where to begin. Skilledstudentship will involve them knowing who the assignment is for,what knowledge should be demonstrated and the productionquality required (Rush, 1997; Swan, 1995).

Despite this, the programme planning assignment was the topicof three of the participant’s stories for the trigger ‘‘agency andchange’’ and a focus during the group discussion. This assignmentwas part of a third year course which required students to plana year-long program based on their philosophy. For three of theparticipants, this assignment engaged them to actively reflect ontheir philosophy and beliefs. The following extract shows howAndrea represented this in her story.

She decided upon several concepts which would flow through eachyear. She wanted to somehow create a sense of direction in herprogram. That each little unit she was doing would be part ofa larger scheme. She presented her ideas to her lecturer whochallenged her choice of activities. Andrea found herself arguingpassionately about many underlying issues which influenced herdecisions on specific selection and organization of activities. Thelecturer also questioned her exclusion of some activities. Her excuseof there not being enough time in the year was pitiful. She began torealize that her draft was not perfect but she felt confident that itwas a start in the direction she wished to follow. She also began torealize that this assignment was far more than attempting to fit inall the activities which she thought were important into a year’sprogram. It was going to involve a thorough examination of thebeliefs and philosophies behind the choice of these activities.

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She thought that it was a shame that the requirements of theassignment were to simply hand in a typed presentation of theprogram. She wished that she could present it in an interview typeway. Then she would be able to present all the intricate thinkingthat had gone behind the planning. In using the typed assignmentapproach several people could hand in similar assign-ments.(Andrea, memory-story, agency and change)

For Andrea, a key moment came when she met with the lecturerto discuss a draft of the assignment. The lecturer’s questioning wasable to move her conception of the task away from one of fittingactivities into a year program and challenged her to reflect on thecoherence between her philosophy and her program plan. From ourgroup discussions it became clear that assignment work fell intotwo camps: those done for the sake of completion, requiring littlemeaningful engagement from the student; and those that studentsfelt were meaningful because of their perceived relevance or thatthey engaged students at a deeper level. This cannot always bedetermined in advance, and at some point in doing some assign-ments students move beyond the aim of task completion and beginto engage in a more meaningful way with the task. The followingextract from John’s story reveals how the task engaged him inreflective activity.

But this assignment has engaged John; the process is not shallowbut a journey, and John has still to find the end. John begins tore-read one of the many articles that he has already read which willcontribute to his knowledge on this topic, he finds it interesting thatthe trend the articles follow is dissimilar to his own previousconception of the subject, the question he asks himself is why doescurrent teaching practice he has observed seem to support hisprevious conceptions rather than the trend he has observed withinthe readings. Continuing to read and re-read John moves throughthe articles piecing together, weighing up, accepting, or rejectingthe various facts or ideas.(John, memory-story, agency andchange)

The plot of John’s extract is oriented around him questioning hisphilosophy and being motivated by the dissonance between hisbeliefs, his experiences and the reading he is doing. An importantaspect of this is the way he respects what has been written. Johnreflexively positions information underpinned by research as being‘truthful’ and therefore it carries a lot of validity in his view. In thisway a real dilemma is created for him when the reading is notcoherent with his beliefs or experiences. The result is that heengages in the activity in more depth to try to resolve the conflict ordifference he is seeing. As he says, continuing to read and re-read,John moves through the articles piecing together, weighing up,accepting, or rejecting the various facts or ideas. In this sense, heengages in reflective activity to resolve the difference he seesbetween his reading, beliefs and experiences.

3.3. The practicum context

The practicum, variously known by the participants as ‘section’,‘teaching rounds’ or ‘teaching practice’, is an important pedagogicalsite within teacher education programmes. Discursively, suchexperiences are organized quite differently from lectures andinvolve students being placed in schools for several weeks andlearning by actively participating in the daily practices and cultureof teaching (Ovens, 2003). In this study, the participants had beenon practicum twice a year during their four years, usually for fourweeks each time. The narratives of the participants provide aninsight into how they construct the significant aspects of thiscontext. Issues related to pupil misbehaviour and classroommanagement were often the focus of discussions and stories to do

with their personal pedagogy, as can be seen in the followingextract from John’s story.

The pupils know that volleyball is on the agenda for today and thebadminton courts need to be set up, but this won’t happen withoutJohn continuously pushing. John finds this disappointing andannoying, year eleven, fifteen or sixteen years old without theself-control or self-direction to be left to undertake the simplesttasks. John’s thinking how can he change these attitudes, with onlya few lessons left he doesn’t have any answers, he hopes whenteaching his own class full time he can create the realization thathigher standards are expected of his students.(John, memory-story, personal pedagogy)

Such narratives provided an insight in to how the participantsconstructed the significant aspects of the teaching community. Akey aspect of this was the situatedness of teaching, especially in theway teaching contexts were represented as variable and unpre-dictable. Problems were often seen as unique and context specific,often linked to the policies that schools used to place students intoclasses, or to the numbers of students in each class, or to inter-ruptions caused by rain or school activities. The central plot in moststories and discussions was oriented around issues to do withstudent behaviour and classroom management, such as immatu-rity, truancy, lack of self-control or responsibility, low motivationand the wide differences in ability. These became the key peda-gogical problems that were foregrounded in their memory-storiesand discussions.

The group discussion also provided an opportunity for theparticipants to further extend the points made in their stories. Thefollowing two extracts are comments made during the groupdiscussion:

Like, you can tell if, just from our experience of being on lots ofsections now, there’s heaps of things where you can tell if some-thing is going to snow-ball into a big thing, or if it’s just a little thingthat you can just leave, like perhaps you may have a badmintonlesson going that maybe your playing – does anyone play top-dog?It’s like four square in badminton, and you’ve got your two playerswaiting on the outside and they maybe might go off and practicehits while they’re waiting to hop on. Someone who hadn’t been outthere very much might call those people up and say ‘‘now hold onyou two should be standing here’’ – whereas someone who hasbeen out there for a while might leave it – because they’re notreally disrupting the class. But then if it was something else, likemaybe basketball and you’ve got someone smashing windows,then you know that’s just going to lead to the whole class goingnuts.(Andrea, Group meeting, personal pedagogy)

It’s really like two problems you’ve got – with the problem-solvingsituation – you’ve got your management which is how you’recontrolling the situation and the content side and in the middlethere is a brush over – the management of the content and how youchange it around when you’re presenting it. I know most of mycontent side before the lesson – I pretty much know all the contentbefore I go in and then during the lesson it’s more management sideof behavioral problems plus adaptation of the content to suit thesituation.(Maree, Group meeting, personal pedagogy)

A key theme in the memory-stories was the issue of managingpupil behaviour. Andrea represents this in her extract by using themetaphor of snowball to imply how student misbehaviour can, ifnot properly managed, steadily grow into a large problem wherethey could smash windows or possibly lead to the whole class goingnuts. Experience, in the sense of both accumulated experience andauthentic school experience, becomes important in being able tothink on your feet and problem solve the situations presented, very

A. Ovens, R. Tinning / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 1125–11311130

similar to a notion of reflection-in-action (Schon, 1983). Thisexperience shapes not only the ability to problem solve, but also theability to read a situation and discern when to intervene.

4. The practice of reflection

Increasing attention is being paid to the socially situated natureof human activity and the mediating role that context plays inhuman consciousness, learning and identity (Putnam & Borko,2000; Rovegno, 2006; Scott, 2001). The narratives in this studyprovide some insight into how reflective activity emerges, variesand is experienced by students as they participate in differentsettings of their teacher education programme. It is apparent thata different form of reflection is enacted within the differentsettings. The discursive nature of each setting mediates the forms ofactivity, consciousness and reflection that occurs in that setting.

The context of the sociocultural course is influenced by thepractices of those teaching staff who have an affinity to thecommunity whose discourses align with critical pedagogy andsocial justice. The pedagogical work of the course mobilizesreflection as a form of conscientization (Freire, 1970, 1976) wherethere is a constant search for that which lies beneath the surface inan attempt to transform oppressive social structures. The partici-pants represent themselves in this setting engaged in reflectiveactivity where they could begin to peel back some of the layers oftheir social reality. They use terms like hegemony, hegemonicbarriers, critical thinking, all appropriated from the discourses of thesociocultural course itself, as the mechanisms through which theybecome conscious of the way their social realities are constructed.To represent this consciousness they use terms and phrases such asawareness and a way of thinking, metaphors like beer goggles, andimages like breaking the wooden frame and reaching into a world oflight.

In contrast, the reflective activity identified within the partici-pants’ assignment work was different. The context of an assign-ment is linked with it being a specific practice of a universitycourse. Students are asked to perform activities like lesson planningas an assessment task and students appear to approach doing suchactivities in a different way than if they were in a teaching context.Despite this difference, the participants identified that someassignments created the setting for reflective activity, particularlywhen it stimulated questioning of the person’s own philosophy andbeliefs. As Renee suggests at the group meeting, You’re not goingand finding crap out of books, you actually have to keep going back toyourself. Represented like this, the key reflective space in assign-ment work is in the process of doing the assignment rather than theend product.

The context of the practicum is constructed within the profes-sional discourse community of teaching and the type of reflectiveactivity enacted by the participants in this context was orientedaround the students’ ability to perform as a teacher to the situa-tional demands presented in each lesson. Reflection was repre-sented as part of being able to think on your feet and problem solve.Certainly, from what was written and discussed, it did not appearthat students ‘stepped back’ and reflected on their teaching in anybroad sense nor did they consider the moral and political conse-quences of their work. This dimension of reflection was not part ofthe student’s stories or discussions.

From reading and discussing the participants’ stories, reflectionappears to be mediated by the discursive context the individual issituated within. Broadly speaking, courses and assignments areassociated with the discourse community of teacher education, yetwhile on practicum student teachers are located in the discoursecommunity of teaching. This categorization of the practicumand the university teacher education as different discourse

communities suggests a homogeneity within each community thatmay not exist. Nevertheless, they are the most obvious divisionsobserved.

5. Conclusions

It is noticeable that none of the tales of experience are explicitlyabout reflective activity. This does not imply that the participantsdid not engage in reflective tasks in other aspects of the degreeprogramme or did not value them. Since the underpinningphilosophy of their teaching degree foregrounded critical reflectionas a key element in learning to teach, the participants in this studywere all well versed in practices aimed at facilitating their capacityfor reflection. Many of the pedagogical practices the studentsexperienced throughout the degree were expressly aimed atproblematising professional knowledge and each student haddemonstrated the required reflectivity to advance to the fourth yearof the degree. The use of memory-work method enabled a shift ofattention away from how reflection was constructed as an officialpractice and allowed an examination of how it is lived and expe-rienced by the students. Accordingly, it was possible to understandhow the concept of reflection was enacted by the student as part ofthe reflexive ordering of their day-today life as teacher educationstudents.

We contend that reflection is not something that is acquired asa form of discrete knowledge or skill but is something that isenacted as part of the discursive contexts in which student teachersfind themselves. That is, the nature of the discourse communityin which the individual is situated enables different forms ofreflection. This is evident in the participants’ stories and discus-sions. The participants appear to be critically reflective within thosecontexts constructed around the discourses of social justice andemancipation such as those in the sociocultural course. When thecontext is a different discursive formation, such as an assignment,the participants’ stories show that a different form of reflection isenabled. This was also revealed in the practicum context. Framedwithin the professional discourses of management and control,reflection in this context was enacted more as an ability to ‘think onyour feet.’ Reflection, in this sense, was reflexively enacted as thestudents participated in the different contexts of their teachereducation programme.

Such findings raise both questions and concerns for thoseinvolved in the design and delivery of teacher education pro-grammes. We suggest greater attention has to be paid to under-standing the discursive communities that are present in the teachereducation field and how student teachers negotiate such commu-nities in the process of learning to teach. We also suggest thatreflection needs to be viewed as a situated activity, enabled bystudents’ participation in particular discursive contexts. Theimplication is that certain contexts may be more conducive thanothers to promote critical reflection. The chances of studentteachers enacting critical reflection might be seriously limited incontexts like the practicum if the dominant discourse is one ofmanagement and control. Accordingly, the limits imposed by thesituated nature of reflection need to be recognised in relation to theexpectations made of teacher education programmes in order tograduate better reflective practitioners.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dawn Garbett, Roger Peddie,Alison Jones and the reviewers for their helpful critique andsupport.

A. Ovens, R. Tinning / Teaching and Teacher Education 25 (2009) 1125–1131 1131

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