Reflective Mentoring in Norwegian Teacher Education:

Difficulties of the “Action and Reflection Model”

Abstract

  Educators and researchers on teacher education agree that promoting reflection in teacher education is important. However, the current attempts to do so are not producing the desired result. The purpose of this article is not to suggest another definition or method of reflective teacher education, but rather to focus on why reflection in teacher education is so difficult to realize, using the case of Norway.

  In the early 1980s Norwegians Handal and Lauvås developed a mentoring strategy called the “action and reflection model” which is now dominant in teacher education in Scandinavia. The strategy emphasizes the integration of theory and practice through students' self-reflection. However, recent research shows that reflection is not being realized as the strategy intended.

  Study of the dissemination process of the “action and reflection model” shows that not much emphasis is put on verifying students' actual reflection. Instead their subjective impression and the strategy's execution procedure are given most weight. The characteristics of teacher education colleges could explain this tendency: they have a so-called “seminar tradition” which emphasizes method-oriented learning. The separation of the colleges and the research universities appears to cause problems; reflection in this model is intended to integrate practice and theory, but the context in which it is practiced divorces practice and theory.

  The article mentions some possibilities for reflective mentoring in recent teacher education reforms.