An increased value is being placed on quality teaching in higher education.
An important step in developing approaches to better instruction is unders
tanding how those who are successful go about improving their teaching. Thu
s, several years ago we undertook a program of research in which the concep
t of "reflection'' provided the frame of reference. We envisaged reflection
as a process of formative evaluation, and also saw links between reflectio
n and metacognition. What we have documented and analyzed in detail are the
reflective processes of six university professors in their day-to-day plan
ning, instructing and evaluating of learners. The result is a metacognitive
model and coding scheme that operationalize the process of reflection. Bot
h provide a language for describing reflection and therefore a way to think
about how to improve teaching. In this paper, we describe the research and
the model and the contributions they make to our understanding of teacher
thinking in higher education.