Candidates Use a New Teacher Development Process, Transformative Reflection, to Identify and Address Teaching and Learning Problems in Their Work With Children

This article has two aims: (a) to offer a new model for a teacher preparation course that features reflection and teaching as integral, inseparable actions and (b) to provide empirical evidence from an exploratory ethnography to demonstrate teacher development possibilities with this model. The model, termed Transformative Reflection, was founded on principles from cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and empirical work on reflection. This study examines two CHAT-based mediation practices that became a focus of 12 childhood education masters students inquiry during reflection sessions: (a) posture as a tool for working with students and (b) open questions as a tool to re/orient learners. Based on analysis of observations, interviews, journals, and video, we found candidates took action individually and collectively to interrogate and, in many cases, change how they planned learning activities, how they re/oriented learners to the learning object, and how they viewed students as agents.