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 strategies for fostering subtlety at each level; but they have also consistently encountered a cluster of impediments to the reflective process. These impediments include: (1) unexamined assumptions within the metaphor itself, especially 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 teaching. I use the work of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to argue that a complex understanding of reflection can still guide teacher education programs, but such an understanding must recognize the intersubjective nature of reflective teaching. A Lacanian lens can help us (1) make visible the limits of the 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 discourage reflective teaching.