Developing Reflective Practitioners

Developing reflective habits in preservice teachers is an important task of teacher education. The use of teaching cases in preservice and inservice teacher education has been strongly supported as a tool to promote this process of reflection in education research and music education research. More recently, education researchers have begun to explore the use of video-cases to promote reflection in preservice teacher education. This article first discusses the process of reflective thinking and its importance to preservice teacher education. Next are implications for using video-cases to help preservice music teachers critically examine their beliefs and shift their focus from themselves to their students. Finally, research is presented for effectively structuring video-case experiences, along with recommendations for implementing video-cases in the music education classroom.