Reflection ‘on’ and ‘in’ teacher education in the United Arab Emirates

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doi:10.1016/j.ije

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International Journal of Educational Development 26 (2006) 111–122

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

Reflection ‘on’ and ‘in’ teacher education in theUnited Arab Emirates

M. Clarke�, D. Otaky

Higher Colleges of Technology, Abu Dhabi 32092, United Arab Emirates

Abstract

This article examines the uptake of reflective practice, as one of a number of educational discourses, by student

teachers in a new Bachelor of Education degree in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In a recent article, Pat Richardson

[2004. International Journal of Educational Development 24(4), 429–436], argued that reflective practice is incongruent

with the values of ‘Arab-Islamic’ culture and is therefore not an appropriate approach to promote in teacher education

in the UAE. Here we argue that such a view relies on a limited reading of the concept of culture and reduces individuals

to cultural ‘dupes’. We also present evidence from student teachers that, far from endorsing the inappropriateness

of reflective practice in the UAE context, shows Emirati women wholeheartedly embracing—and doing—reflective

practice.

r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Teacher education; Reflective teaching; Culture; Discourse communities; United Arab Emirates; Computer-mediated

communication

1. Introduction and background

Reflection and reflective practices have gainedincreasing prominence within teacher education,drawing on Schon’s seminal works of the 1980s(Schon, 1983, 1987) and on Dewey’s foundationalwritings (Dewey, 1933, 1938), to the point wherethey are now very much de rigueur within teachereducation programmes across a wide range ofinternational settings (Korthagen, 2001). Thisacceptance is indicative of a broad recognition

e front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserve

dudev.2005.07.018

ing author.

that effective teaching necessarily involves acombination of experience, thought and action(Coldron and Smith, 1995). In this paper wediscuss the appropriation of reflective practicesand discourses of critical reflection among studentteachers in a new teacher education programme atthe Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) in theUnited Arab Emirates (UAE).The HCT have a mandate to educate Emirati

youth to enable them to play an active role in therapidly developing UAE economic, educationaland social structures. As part of this mandate,since 2000 the HCT has offered teacher education

d.

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M. Clarke, D. Otaky / International Journal of Educational Development 26 (2006) 111–122112

programmes at all six Women’s Colleges (AbuDhabi, Al Ain, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimahand Sharjah) across the UAE. The programmesoffered include: a four-year Bachelor of Educationdegree to prepare teachers of English for primaryschools, which is our largest programme and thefocus of our discussion in this paper; a one-yearpost-graduate programme in Career Guidance andCounselling; and a 1-year post-graduate pro-gramme to prepare teachers of InformationTechnology.

Our paper is a response to the discussion in PatRichardson’s article, ‘‘Possible influences ofArabic–Islamic culture on the reflective practicesproposed for an education degree at the HigherColleges of Technology in the UAE’’, whichrecently appeared in the International Journal ofEducational Development (2004). In her article,Richardson discusses the development of a teachereducation degree at the HCT, and conveys herconcerns with regard to the appropriateness andlikely effectiveness of ‘‘western’’ approaches toeducation and teaching. These western approachesinclude the reflective practices that for westerncurriculum developers, ‘‘are automatically in-cluded as key components of teacher educationprogrammes’’ (Richardson, 2004, p. 430). Theevidence in the following article will demonstratethat her concerns have little basis in the reality ofthe HCT B.Ed. programme.

Specifically, Richardson argues that

ythe degree to which any one teacher willactually engage in reflection depends on theirindividual propensities and abilities. Thus it isteachers’ underlying personal values and beliefsthat effect (sic) their interpretation of theeducational practices they experience, and theirability to engage in reflection is affected by theirprevious (and current) experiences of theschooling processes, its culture and climate.(Richardson, 2004, p. 431)

Relying on an interpretation of culture derivedfrom business literature, as ‘‘the collective pro-gramming of the mind, which distinguishes themembers of one group or category of people fromanother’’ (Hofstede 1994, p. 4 cited in Richardson2004, p. 431), Richardson characterizes Emirati

students as programmed by ‘‘Arabic–Islamicculture’’ and thus circumscribed in a number ofspecific ways. Overall, she describes the HCT’seducation degrees as characterized by a culturalcontext where ‘‘the ingredients’’ for studentteachers to become ‘‘deeply engaged in criticallyexamining the classroom experiences against theirown implicit theories about learning and openlydiscussing their thoughts are not presenty’’ (2004,p. 434). She thus concludes that ‘‘the cultural valueframeworks underpinning society and education inthe UAE carry with them assumptions about thesocial world about teaching and learning that arenot congruent with the underlying assumptions ofreflective practice’’ (2004, p. 435). We argue belowthat such a view relies on a limited view of thenotion of culture.

2. Reflections on ‘culture’

As Raymond Williams and others have pointedout, ‘culture’ is one of the most complex words inthe English language in terms of its history andetymology, so it is not surprising to find it used ina range of disparate senses (Williams, 1983;Eagleton, 2000). ‘‘Within this single term, ques-tions of freedom and determinism, agency andendurance, change and identity, the given andthe created come dimly into focus’’ (Eagleton2000, p. 2). In common usage, culture is variouslydefined as a way of life, a network of meanings, ora system of values and beliefs. The problem withthese attempts at defining culture is that theyconvey the impression that culture is a static,synoptic ‘thing’. Such a conceptualization ofculture lends itself to a compartmentalized world-view where different cultures are each self-con-tained and separate. Within this model individualsare seen as belonging to a particular culture. Fromhere it is a small step to see culture as the mainexegetic tool in understanding individuals andcomprehending all social, educational and politicalissues.In discussing the UAE, Richardson employs

expressions like ‘‘Arab-Islamic values’’ and definesthe country as a ‘‘stronghold’’ of such values. Theterm ‘‘stronghold’’ implies a refuge or fort, both of

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M. Clarke, D. Otaky / International Journal of Educational Development 26 (2006) 111–122 113

which carry overtones of being under siege or in astate of combat. Moreover, while religious aware-ness implicitly underpins all aspects of socialpolicy in the UAE, to talk about ‘‘Arabic–Islamicvalues’’ as if these can be taken as given, ignoresthe fact that the relationship between Islamic andArab identities is ‘‘associative’’ and not ‘‘intrinsic’’(Findlow, 2000; Halliday, 2003). It also in no waydoes justice to the complexity of history andsociety in the UAE and ignores past and presentcontestations over the meaning of these ‘‘values’’(see, for example, Halliday, 2003 and Safi, 2003 fordeconstructions of the constructs ‘‘Arabic’’ and‘‘Islamic’’). As Findlow points out in relation tonationalism and Arab–Islamic identity in theUAE, ‘‘There is a wide diversity of identityconstructs in the Muslim world and within theArab-Muslim world’’ (Findlow, 2000, p. 1).

As teacher educators we believe that while it isvaluable for us to reflect on the assumptions andvalues that we bring to any context we work in, toengage in this reflective work within an essentia-lized, dichotomous conceptual framework is bothreductive and limiting. The consequences of suchreductionism is the sort of formulaic stereotypingand over generalizing that Richardson falls in towith comments like ‘‘Arab students prefer pre-scriptive learning environments where they aretold exactly what to do and directed along asingle pathy’’ (Richardson, 2004, p. 432). AsHolliday points out, criticism based on such adichotomous framework works towards ‘‘another-isation or tribalisation of the victim ‘cul-tures’ by reducing them to peripheral, non-think-ing automata’’ (Holliday, 1997, p. 214).

What we hope to demonstrate here, with dataderived from focus groups in 2002–2003 and WebCT discussions in 2003–2004, as well as excerptsfrom the students’ journals, included in theirteaching portfolios in 2003–2004, is the ability ofteacher education students in the UAE to take arange of discourses and populate them with theirown voices. This presentation of data reflects ourcontinued close involvement with the HCT’sEmirati student teachers both at college and inschools and enables us to discuss the students’interpretation of their experience with far moreconfidence than Richardson.

One of the most interesting aspects of the HCTB.Ed. degree is that the social identities beingconstructed in discourse are being created as partof a new and evolving ‘‘community of practice’’(Wenger, 1998). Within this community, thestudents are at the confluence of multiple dis-courses—of Emiratization (nationalization of theworkforce), of global English, of ‘traditional’ and‘progressive’ teaching philosophies—and are hav-ing to configure these different discursive strandsinto a new pattern with no single model to follow.In the following section we offer further insightinto the context within which the students’community of practice is evolving, utilizing thenotion of discourse as part of a richer theorizationof culture that enables a more nuanced reading ofUAE history and society than that underpinningRichardson’s argument.

3. The United Arab Emirates

Kazim (2000) presents a reading of UAE historyand society in which successive ‘‘sociodiscursiveformations’’ (Kazim identifies the Islamic, Trans-formational, Colonial and Contemporary forma-tions) have involved both continuities anddiscontinuities with the preceding formation(s) associety in each period strives to reproduce itself.Thus in the contemporary period elements ofearlier periods continue into the present but inaltered form. Examples of such continuities are thepolitical structures of hereditary rule, the econom-ic structures of agriculturalism, mercantilism andindustrialism and the sociocultural structures oflanguage, art, food, dress and religious beliefs.Other aspects of earlier periods are reconstructedwithin the contemporary formation to serve itsreproduction, for example, camel racing (for adiscussion of the reconstruction of the ‘‘tradition’’of camel racing, see Khalaf, 2000; see Hobsbawmand Ranger (1992), for a wider discussion of‘‘invented traditions’’), urban sculptures of coffeepots, pearl shells and sailing dhows, and tradi-tional Bedouin ‘‘tents’’ located in the marbled atriaof hotels and shopping malls. At the same time thecontemporary period has its own constructions ineach of these areas, for example, a Federal

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government which develops foreign policy andissues passports in the political sphere, sophisti-cated oil, tourism and banking industries linked toglobalization in the economic sphere as well as thedevelopment of multiculturalism and consumerismin the socio-cultural sphere.

Reflecting the thrusts of these continuities,changing patterns and new constructions, Kazimidentifies three discourses operating in the con-temporary UAE. These comprise what Kazimdescribes as ‘‘conservative’’, ‘‘progressive’’ and‘‘moderate’’ discourses; the first seeking to pre-serve past patterns, the second embracing globa-lization while the third seeks a balance between thefirst two (Kazim, 2000, p. 434). All three dis-courses are accommodated by UAE policy makersas each contributes in different ways to the socio-discursive reproduction of the contemporary UAEsocial formation (Kazim, 2000, pp. 452–456). Aswill be evident in the discussion below, this socio-discursive model provides an insightful explana-tory tool that accommodates complexity and iswell suited to understanding the multiple anddynamic realities of the contemporary UAE.

3.1. The United Arab Emirates: education

The UAE as a relatively new ‘nation-state’ hasmade remarkable strides in a number of areas. Oneof the areas where considerable scope for furtherimprovement exists is school education. Increas-ingly in recent years local commentators, such asthose cited below, have called for radical improve-ments in UAE schools.

The UAE thus far has been a successful modeland a leading force in Arabic politics andeconomy. It’s about time for schools to followsuit. (Taha-Thomure, 2003)

This call has been echoed in academic discus-sions of the needs of UAE education generally andof UAE government schools in particular:

Due to dramatic changes that are taking placein the world, particularly in the UAE, therole of the education system has become thefocus of critical analysis. This has resulted in aseries of rather severe criticisms of the educa-

tion system in the UAE. Some of thesecriticisms include:

�
inappropriate methods of teaching and learning � inflexible curricula and programmes which lead
to high drop out rates and long duration ofstudy (Mograby, 1999)

The need for significant improvements has beenaccepted by the UAE Ministry of Education andYouth and led to the development of Vision 2020;an ambitious plan to reform education in theEmirates by embedding continuous quality im-provement as a ‘‘strategic pillar’’ in the practices ofUAE schools, reflected in increasingly effectiveteaching, appropriate methodologies and rigorousevaluation processes (UAE Ministry of Educationand Youth, 2000). More specifically, Vision 2020states:

Radical change in teaching/learning concepts,practices, means and styles will be effectedyThe focus will shift from teaching to learning,from the teacher to the learner, from memor-ization to creativity, reflection, imagination andinnovation: To attain this objective, continuoustraining for teachers and supervisors will beprovided to change the traditional roles theyplay into more effective roles to promote,develop and instill the culture of innovationwhich is a societal ambition. (UAE Ministry ofEducation and Youth, 2000, p. 87)

It was this widespread recognition of the needfor change and improvement in UAE schools andclassrooms that led to the development of theHCT B.Ed. degree, which is the focus of Section.3.3 below. However, first we discuss the role ofwomen in the UAE since her views on this formthe core of Richardson’s argument against theappropriateness of reflective practice in the cultur-al context of the UAE.

3.2. The United Arab Emirates: the role of women

In producing a cadre of excellent nationalteachers, the HCT’s B.Ed. degree offers anopportunity to further the twin agendas ofEmiratization and Educational Reform, as well

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as promoting professional opportunities for wo-men at the same time. However, as part of hercritique of the validity of the notion of ‘reflectivepractice’ for ‘Arabic–Islamic culture’ in general,and specifically for the UAE, Richardson (2004)questions the cultural and contextual appropriate-ness of the notion of student teachers acting as‘change agents’. She believes ‘‘it would contradicttheir own view of their ‘place’ in the schoolhierarchy’’ (2004 p. 435). Yet Emirati studentteachers are not shy about criticizing the UAEschool system. As one student commented in afocus group discussion:

What we havey is just failingya failing systemof educating students and they are missingyIfeel that here, the people who are working in theMinistry of Education are missing the point ofwhat is essential knowledge that they have toteach their studentsy Everyday I discover thiswhen I go to the schools. Aysha, Year 4 student,Ras Al Khaimah WC

Another reason Richardson offers to supporther contention that reflective practice may beinappropriate for Emirati female student teachersis the traditional role of women in a ‘‘maledominated society [that] still resists the idea ofwomen thinking for themselves’’ (Richardson,2004, p. 433). She describes the typical Emiratiwoman as one who is ‘‘protected from publicdisplay and not often involved in the public arena’’(Richardson, 2004, p. 432). However, as one recentcommentator, while noting that the continuedmale domination of society ‘‘remains a stumblingblock to true equality’’, remarks:

Women are encouraged to become highlyeducatedyThey are taking on new roles asteachers, doctors and leaders. One out of everythree doctors, pharmacists, technicians andadministrators is a woman. About 20 per centof the total work force are now women.However, in government the percentage is muchhigher. In this sector, the country’s women form40 per cent of the labour forceyOver 80percent of the UAE employees within each ofthe Ministries of Health and Education arewomen. Many are heads of departments–at par

with many Western countries. Strangely, whenone thinks of how writers in The West portrayArab women as meek and servile, many UAEwomen are joining the military and policeforces. (Salloum, 2003)

There is active involvement of women in manysectors of the workforce in the UAE, andeducation is perhaps the most prominent andhighly significant. With kindergartens, primaryschools and girls’ preparatory and secondaryschools in the UAE staffed by females—and withwomen starting to play a greater role as tertiaryeducators—the key role of women in educationcannot be overlooked or underrated. With this inmind, in the next section we discuss the nature andscope of the HCT’s teacher education degree.

3.3. The United Arab Emirates: teacher education

One way of incorporating the sort of socio-historical complexity that we have outlined aboveinto thinking about teacher education is to viewteaching as an ‘‘amalgam’’ of discourses (Coldronand Smith, 1995) that are appropriated andsynthesized in the process of learning to teach.As Miller Marsh notes, ‘‘From this perspective,teacher thinking is a melange of past, present, andfuture meanings that are continually being rene-gotiated through social interactiony In order toattain membership in a given group, an individualmust appropriate one or more of the discoursesthat flows through the community and becomeproficient at negotiating meaning and actionswithin the genres’ borders’’ (Miller Marsh, 2003,pp. 6–7). In this view the task of learning to teachis to create, through this process of discursiveappropriation and synthesis, a philosophy ofeducation, an ‘orientation to teaching’ (seeFreeman and Freeman, 2001), in the broadestterms.What the students are accomplishing in weaving

these discourses into a coherent and meaning-ful pattern is a work of imagination leading to-wards the creation of new ‘‘teaching selves’’(Danielewicz, 2001) as part of an evolving com-munity of practice in the UAE. This dynamicmodel of the ongoing mutual co-construction of

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the individual and the social serves to ‘‘belie anysimplistic notion that identities are internalized ina sort of faxing process that unproblematicallyreproduces the collective upon the individual’’(Holland et al., 1998, p. 169). Building on notionsof teaching as an amalgam of discourses, afterbriefly outlining our research methodology below,we go on to look at reflective practice as one of theeducational discourses available to educationstudents in the UAE to appropriate as part oftheir own self-fashioning as teachers.

4. Research methodology

The data for the study that forms the basis of thispaper was gathered over a two-year period(2002–2004) of working with the first cohortof students to complete the HCT’s Bachelor ofEducation degree. Building on the notion ofconversation as ‘‘the social justification of belief’’Kvale, 1996, p. 37), the majority of the data wascollected through two forms of ‘conversation’,neither of which was linked to assessment. Theseincluded corporeal, face-to-face conversations in theform of researcher-led focus groups and virtual,online Web CT conversations in which the research-ers were not present. Additionally, some data comesfrom students’ journals, which are part of theirteaching practice portfolios. This data, which reflectsour continued close involvement with the HCT’sEmirati student teachers both at college and inschools, was coded using NVIVO’s NUD�ISTqualitative analysis software to identify key lexicalitems or ‘nodes’ which structured the students’discourse. Reflective practice was one such node.

It is important to stress, however, that we asresearchers, the students as research ‘subjects’, andindeed the whole research process in this study, areall institutionally situated. This increased thelikelihood of particular educational discoursesbeing evident in the data, while excluding, or atleast diminishing the likelihood of, other dis-courses, such as a Marxist inspired critique ofschooling as a conservative force of social repro-duction, being represented.

Yet the alternative of writing/representing sub-jects’ ‘true’ voices is something of a chimera.

Indeed, sensitivity to the potential problem of‘othering’ research participants, by imposing theresearcher’s agenda, can be taken to patronizingextremes—in effect another form of ‘othering’—where people are perceived as passive culturaldupes rather than skilled users of culture. AsAdrian Holliday argues,

The setting culture is not the untouched placeimagined by naturalists in which an ‘active’researcher tramples on a ‘passive’ virgin culture,but a resource which enables a group of peopleto respond to a multiplicity of influences fromother groupsythe research participants may beas culturally skilled as the researcher, and havethe potential, if they wish, to be as muchinvolved as the researcher in negotiating theresearch event. Indeed, both researcher andresearch participants enter into a relationship ofculture making. (Holliday, 2002, p. 149)

Concern for potential ‘othering’ of researchsubjects by researchers has prompted practicesthat actively seek to empower participants, prac-tices such as member checking, co-editing andcollaborative writing. A powerful example of thisgenre is the work of Lather and Smithies (Latherand Smithies, 1997; Lather, 1993), who submittedthe whole body of their work to the participantsfor feedback before publication. At a less ambi-tious level, we gave students copies of the focusgroup transcriptions. While not being intended asindicative of co-authorship or guarantee of co-ownership, this step was an expression of goodfaith, which might have assisted in fosteringmutual trust. Holliday (2002, p. 160) cites Jenkinson this topic (Jenkins, 1986, pp. 223–226), whoargues that such attempts may just be a ‘‘rhetoricalcon trick’’ and amount to ‘‘bogus co-authorship’’when in reality ‘‘everything is in the hands of theresearcher’’, while Phillips and Jorgensen (2002)emphasize the inescapable asymmetric nature ofthe researcher–researched relationship and urge usto embrace authority and responsibility as re-searchers. Similarly, Susan Krieger, in her bookSocial Science and the Self, refers to the hesitancywe may feel in asserting ourselves, our vision andour voices in social science writing:

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I think we often feel we do not have that right insocial science, or we feel it is a right we have toearn. I think such attitudes towards theindividual authorial perspective, while appea-lingly modest, are not very helpful. Theyencourage us to deny that we will speak ofthings in terms that reflect how we see them.(Krieger, 1991, p. 166)

Acknowledging authority and authorial respon-sibility raises the need to be mindful that discursiveconstruction does not mean that all discourses areequally good or valid. While reiterating theemphasis in our study that seeks more to explorerather than evaluate the discursive construction ofthe students’ teaching identities, still, this focus ondiscursive construction does not mean that weare operating within a relativist free-for-all. Westill have ethical responsibilities to strive forhonesty and epistemic loyalty (Chouliaraki andFairclough, 1999), while recognizing that, asMouffe argues:

We can never be completely satisfied that wehave made a good choice since a decision infavour of some alternative is always at thedetriment of another oneysocial division isconstitutivey[therefore we need] to come toterms with the never ending interrogation ofthe political by the ethicaly (Mouffe, 2000,pp. 136–140)

This never-ending interrogation requires us asresearchers to continually strive to balance mod-esty with an awareness of responsibility andauthority; awareness of others with self-awareness;and critical, non-innocence with a capacity foropen-mindedness and engagement. Specifically, asmerited by our genuine interest in, and indeedadmiration for, the student teachers who are ourresearch subjects, we have striven to propose a lineof argument that is substantive and coherent. Yetat the same time, in light of the recognition that wecannot know everything about our subjects andneed to remain respectful of them as complexindividuals, we have tried to ground the claimsthat we make in the words and arguments ofthe students.

5. Reflective practice in the Emirates

Following Roberts (1998) we recognize aDeweyan philosophy as one perspective on reflec-tion that is appropriate to language teachereducation (Roberts, 1998, p. 55). Zeichner andListon (1996) similarly endorse Dewey’s notion ofreflection which he defined as ‘‘that which involvesactive, persistent and careful consideration of anybelief or practice in light of the reasons thatsupport it and the further consequences to which itleads’’ (Zeichner and Liston, 1996, p. 9). Zeichnerand Liston also make the point that reflection isnot so much a series of steps or a procedure butrather, a holistic orientation to teaching, a way ofbeing a teacher that entails open-mindedness,responsibility and wholeheartedness (Zeichnerand Liston, 1996, pp. 9–10). With a similaremphasis on broad approach rather than proce-dure, Roberts sees the Deweyan reflective para-digm as concerned primarily with self-awareness,deliberative thought and a problem-solving orien-tation (Roberts, 1998, p. 53).Given the critical role of women in UAE

education that we noted above, the teachereducator has two options with regard to reflection:either making the choice on their behalf ‘‘thatreflection may not be appropriate to use with Arabwomen trainee teachers’’ (Richardson, 2004,p. 431), hence, potentially reinforcing and replicat-ing their teacher-centered learning experiences atschool; or affording students opportunities toengage with and appropriate a range of ap-proaches, styles and discourses, including onesinvolving notions of critical and reflective think-ing, thus enabling them to make their own choicesabout what would or would not be appropriate intheir own cultural context. We now examine someof the ways Emirati women have taken ownershipof discourses of reflective practice within educationas part of the work of authoring their identities asteachers.What follows are examples from Web CT

discussions in which student teachers discuss andreflect on their growth and development asteachers over the 4 four years of their degree.Despite Richardson’s claims about the incongru-ence of UAE ‘‘cultural value frameworks’’ with the

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underlying assumptions of reflective practice, thestudents here embrace critical thinking and reflec-tive practice, demonstrating considerable self-awareness of their capacity for growth, develop-ment and change:

Teaching has changed my life completely. Idon’t know what would become of me if I choseanother specializationy Teaching made merealize that I have qualities I never thought Ihave and developed others. I BECAME ACRITICAL THINKER and a reflective one. Ilearnt how to reflect on my teaching and themethods I use. I loved being able to use myimagination in teaching because I thought that Iwould not be able to. I also realized thatchildren are different, with different abilitiesand different ways of thinking. I used to thinkthat children are children, yes they are funnyand you can laugh with them but they alsothink about things you never give a secondlook. After all what I’ve gone through thesefour years, I learnt that no matter how long Ilearn I will never get enough. I will always be astudent. I will always be a learner. (Fakhra,Year 4 student, Fujairah WC, emphasis inoriginal.)

This student’s linking of reflection and criticalthinking skills was echoed by other studentteachers:

Teaching enhanced my critical thinking skills. Itmade me a reflective person who reflectsconstantly on everything, not only on theincidents that take place in school but also onevery article I read or programme I watch. I justfeel that reflection deepens my understanding ofcertain things and strengthens my beliefs aboutteaching. I know that what I am going to saymight seem odd to some of you, but I feel thatreflection, somehow, makes me a better person!Yes, teaching has changed my life and when Ilook back on the things I have learned in thelast four years, I realize it’s been a positivechange. (Nada, Year 4 student, Sharjah WC)

The students in the above postings not onlyrecognize the value of reflection but link this totheir overall development as effective teachers. In

this, they directly challenge Richardson’s claim asto the appropriateness of reflective practice withinthe UAE context.The real test of their appropriation of reflective

practice, however, is their ability to not just talkabout, but to ‘do’ reflection. Below are somesample entries from student teachers’ journals,which are one element of their teaching practiceportfolios. In the first excerpt below a studentteacher is engaging in what Schon (1983, 1987)calls ‘reflection-on-action’. That is the student isreflecting after the event about what worked, whatdidn’t work and why it did not work.

‘Zoo animals’ was the third lesson in the unit.Materials were clear and supported the aimsand content of the lesson. Despite the fact thatthe lesson met its objectives, the pair work didnot work well. The task was complicated andstudents did not understand what they have todo. Even though I gave them example, it didn’tsuit the learners’ level. The content was appro-priate for grade one students and the stageswere well timed. The sequence of activitiesworked well, but the pair work too long time,hence I didn’t have time to do the reflectionstage. (Roweya, Year 4 student, Sharjah WC)

The student is working with her students using a‘teaching-learning cycle’ (Love et al., 2000) thatincludes stages of ‘tuning-in’, ‘knowledge build-ing’, ‘transformation’, ‘presentation’, and ‘reflec-tion’. In the latter stage the teacher encouragesstudents to consider what they have accomplishedduring the lesson or unit. Using this cycle as atool for scaffolding her thinking the studentteacher is able to identify precisely where themain problem in her lesson arose. She recognizesthat her expectations for the transformationstage—–when the students work with the ‘knowl-edge’ in order to transform it into personalunderstanding—–was in effect, beyond the stu-dents’ zone of proximal development. As a resultof these difficulties no time was left for studentsand teacher to reflect on the experience. In theexcerpt below another student teacher reflects onthe critical importance of allowing time andspace in the classroom for constructive, formativefeedback.

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Now as I become more experienced, I’m moreaware of the importance of providing thestudents with constructive feedback. Providingthe students with constructive feedback is anessential aspect of the teaching and learningcycle. It allows the students to have a clearpicture of how well they are performing and ifthey need to put extra effort.

Providing the students with positive feedback isconsidered as a vital tool to increase students’self-esteem and learning motivation. It also oneof the important components of social interac-tion patterns between the teacher and herstudents. Through this interaction pattern theteacher provides her students with the guidanceand modeling to help them meet the potentialsand move through their zone of proximaldevelopment (Cameron, 2001, p. 219) eitherindividually or as a whole class. (Fethiya, Year4 student, Sharjah WC)

Note that the student teacher is advocating forher own students the very same reflective practicesthat we, as teacher educators have been encoura-ging and modeling in the college classroom. Thestudent teacher refers to the need for her ownstudents to be able to stand back from their effortsand achievement, in order to ‘‘have a clear pictureof how well they are performing’’. In this way,through externalization and deliberation, thestudents’ progress becomes an object of theirconsciousness and hence more amenable to direc-tion and control. When distilled to this coreessence, which also underlies human language,(Vygotsky, 1986), it is difficult to understand howor why we might want to claim such a funda-mental human capacity as inappropriate to, orincongruent with, any one group or culture.

Theorizing broader principles from one’s ex-perience is a form of engaging one’s reflectivecapacities (Britzman, 1991). Whereas the studentin the excerpt above does this based on her generalbeliefs and experiences, the student in the excerptbelow employs a process of induction to draw atheoretical principle from a specific incident. Inthis she echoes Dewey’s core notion of reflection as‘‘educative’’, as opposed to ‘‘routine’’, experience(Zeichner and Liston, 1996):

I feel that I was using a variety of strategiesappropriate to children needs. For example, thelearning centers cater to different learning styleand multiple intelligences. I was pleased to seestudents guessing the taste of the food, thesound of different things, the smell of items,and the shape of objects. In addition, I wasdelighted to listen to them repeating thesentences related to the five senses and applyingtheir knowledge to writing by working indivi-dually and completing the puzzley My experi-ence lead me to think that when students areimmersed in discovery learning, they are moreengaged and there is a bigger chance for themto remember the concept because they discov-ered it themselves. (Afra, Year 4 student, AbuDhabi WC)

We have discussed our belief that reflection is anintellectual and emotional orientation, rather thana series of steps. Often reflection will be triggeredby an uncomfortable experience or one whereexpectations and reality did not match (Zeichnerand Liston, 1996):

yI would have also changed other things as Iwas challenged by their behavior. They neededlots of time to sit on the carpet and becomesettled. Throughout the story students movedform their places and talked. I should have thenasked them to go back to their seats but I wasworried that it might make things worse.Another solution could be that I could askthem to do TPR in their place, for examplestand or breathe in and out. Because I spent alot of time on getting students attention whiletelling the story students did not get to play thegame, which was when students would be askedto be active and go back to their seats.Therefore, students spent a longer time onthe carpet listening to me, which made thingsworsey (Shaikha, Year 4 student, Abu DhabiWC)

Here the student teacher presents the keyelements of reflection as we have discussed it.She is clearly self-aware: ‘‘yI was challenged by

their behaviour.’’; she engages in deliberativethought: ‘‘yI was worried that it might make

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things worse.’’; and she reframes the situation aspart of a problem-solving orientation: ‘‘Another

solution could be that I ask them to do a TPRy’’

(total physical response). It would be difficult topersuade a student teacher like this that reflectionis not an appropriate approach to teaching for herbecause her cultural values are incongruent withthe underlying principles of reflection.

Finally, as noted in Section. 4 above, we asresearchers and our students are institutionallysituated. We were thus reassured when our view ofthe students’ capacity for engaging in reflectionand reflective practices was shared by an indepen-dent external examiner for the Bachelor ofEducation students’ final year portfolios, who,writing from the perspective of a UK universityteacher education department, commented speci-fically on the students’ reflective capacities: ‘‘Inmany ways students’ work exceeded the interna-tional standard in terms of breadth of under-standing and degree of reflection evidenced’’ (HCTBachelor of Education: External Examiner’s Re-port, 2004, emphasis added). Similar affirmationhas come from the Faculty of Education at theAustralian university which has been extensivelyinvolved in the design and international certifica-tion of the degree. The Department Head, whooversees the certification process, noted in a recentreport that the student teachers ‘‘are a remarkablegroup of women-confident, articulate and intelli-gent–and potentially a major intellectual resourcein the future development of education in theEmirates’’ (HCT Bachelor of Education: Univer-sity of Melbourne Certification Report, 2004).

6. Conclusion

We argue, in contrast to Richardson (2004) whosees the assumptions of reflective practice asincongruent with the beliefs and values of ‘‘Arab–Islamic culture’’, that culture can be usefullyunderstood as a never-finished site of competinghistorical and social discourses, rather than as areceived set of beliefs and values. We wish toemphasize ‘‘the given and the possible’’ rather thanjust the ‘‘given’’ (Britzman, 1991) in order to resistwhat we see as another form of cultural imperial-

ism. We advocate a view of reflection as a‘‘human’’ capacity akin to our abilities to createand use language and other ‘‘tools of the mind’’,even though the particular forms it takes willinevitably be shaped by historical, cultural andsocial factors.In a similar fashion, we view learning to teach as

the situated appropriation and re-construction ofsocial and educational discourses, which formspart of an ongoing process of self-authoring anidentity as a teacher. Within this framework, weview reflective practice as an educational discourseavailable for student appropriation as part of theirongoing identity construction. This discourseemphasizes qualities of deliberation, self-aware-ness and a problem solving orientation to theclassroom as valuable and appropriate for tea-chers. We have presented evidence of Emiratistudent teachers discussing, reflecting on, andengaging in reflective practices, both for them-selves and with their own students. We hope ourdiscussion and in particular our students’ wordshave offered food for thought to those who see‘‘culture’’ as a hindering constraint and anobstacle to Emirati students’ engagement withreflective practices.In conclusion, we argue that if the HCT is to

fulfill the call for improving the country’s educa-tion system, we cannot rule out the reflectivepractice paradigm, i.e. a concern with deliberativethought, self-awareness, and the reframing ofproblems (Roberts, 1998), for teacher educationin the UAE. We believe that this is particularly thecase within a framework that views students as fullparticipants in an ongoing process of co-construct-ing and re-negotiating their teaching knowledgewithin their existing experience and understand-ings. Our examples of Emirati student teachersdemonstrate that they see themselves as bothcritical, reflective thinkers and as much neededagents of change in UAE education. We leave youwith the vision of one of the B.Ed. studentsconveying her strong desire to be an agent ofchange at the individual student, the classroomand the national level:

I dream of the day when everyone around mepoint at me saying: ‘‘this teacher is the one that

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made a change’’. I want to implement every-thing I’ve learnt and to utilize everything I’verevealed throughout my academic years. I wantto be part in changing the teaching vision inthe UAE and to be one of those who willdraw this vision appropriately. Adding to that,I dream to make a change with my students.I want them to love English as a languagethat might help them in their life, not becausethey are forced to learn it. I dream to seemy students speak English fluently as a proofthat I taught them differently. Simply, I wantto make a change! Hamda, Year 4 student,Al Ain WC

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Documents

Reflection ‘on’ and ‘in’ teacher education in the United Arab Emirates