Introducing Reflective Practice from a Sociocultural Perspective: Toward a Strategically Mediated Reflective Practice Framework

Abstract

Regarding the current body of literature dealing with second language (L2) teacher education copious references are made to the concept of reflective teaching for teachers to have better understanding of their careers. It is widely accepted that reflective practice should be started from a sort of difficulty, a state of doubt, uncertainty and puzzlement or let’s say a problem which teachers face during their teaching practice. However, in general, reflective movement has been severely criticized for introducing reflection and reflective practice as an introspective process. Having added some more factors to the inefficiency of starting a reflective process by focusing on a problem in one’s won teaching practice, the present paper goes on to argue how introducing reflective practice from a sociocultural perspective can be a remedy to the already mentioned criticisms. Although, the application of a sociocultural perspective to the field of teacher education has already been addressed and suggested, there has been no attempt to directly taking up the issue so far. As a result, the main concern of the present paper is to propose a framework under the rubric of Strategically Mediated Reflective Practice where reflective practice is strategically mediated with the help of more knowledgeable others and new insights and understanding emerge as a result of dialogical thinking highlighting the Vygotskian notion of Concept development.