Reflective practice in teacher professional standards: reflection as mandatory practice

This chapter analyses the contemporary phenomenon of the inclusion of reflective practice in the national professional standards for teachers in a range of countries. Through exploring the teacher standards of Australia, England, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore and the United States of America (USA), the chapter documents the various ways in which reflective practice is characterised by policymakers, showing the theoretical and everyday elements evident in these constructions of reflective practice. It argues that there is a tension in mandatory standards documents between the expectation that teachers are to be encouraged to be critically aware of teaching practices and the standards’ purposes as documents of regulation. That is, while the standards promote critical reflection, they rarely suggest that teachers be reflective about the larger sociopolitical aspects of schooling and education systems.