Pondering on Issues and Obstacles in Reflective Teaching in Iranian Context

Travelling through time, we can trace the very first steps of writings on reflection in the works of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates under the concept of “educational thinking” philosophy. Dewey[1] argues that reflective action entails a readiness to engage in regular self-appraisal and development. So in reflective teaching, critical thinking on the part of teachers is the central point. This paper is the second phase of a survey which was carried out to examine the status of reflective teaching in the Iranian educational settings. The method employed was as follows. In the first phase, 190 EFL teachers took part to reveal their pursuing reflectivity principles or skipping them by filling out a questionnaire. Afterward, based on the scores obtained, the initial participants were categorized into two main groups of “reflectivity-conscious” and “reflectivity-unconscious” teachers. In the second phase, which is the focus of this paper, five participants of each group were selected by means of purposive sampling to go through a semi-structured interview. The interview questions were fundamentally in line with the literature available on reflection and reflective teaching. Participants revealed their view points towards reflectivity and lack of reflectivity, its meaning, issues, problems, and the howness of bringing reflection to all educational settings. Reflection was scrutinized in relation to other trends in the field and the main themes and issues were pointed out based on the literature. Results of the analysis showed that the main problem contributing to the lack of reflection in Iranian context was the teachers’ ignorance towards reflective teaching principles. It could be concluded that this lack of knowledge, at the same time, could be explained pointing to the failure of Iran’s educational system in fostering reflective teaching and developing reflective teachers.