Through the looking glass: Reflective teaching through a Lacanian lens

The metaphor of reflection currently guides many teacher education programs . Educators have worked to articulate multiple levels of reflection and str ategies for fostering subtlety at each level; but they have also consistent ly encountered a cluster of impediments to the reflective process. These im pediments include: (1) unexamined assumptions within the metaphor itself, e specially regarding the self-examination involved in reflective teaching, ( 2) resistance to reflective teaching on the part of many new teachers, and (3) enduring institutional and psychological impediments to reflective teac hing. I use the work of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to argue that a complex understanding of reflection can still guide teacher education programs, bu t such an understanding must recognize the intersubjective nature of reflec tive teaching. A Lacanian lens can help us (1) make visible the limits of t he reflective metaphor, particularly on the level of ethics and politics, ( 2) examine the emotional investments that foster resistance to reflection, and (3) identify and change some of the institutional practices that discou rage reflective teaching.