Characteristics of Reflective Practitioners: towards an operationalization of the concept of reflection

This article reports about a research project on reflective teaching in a preservice teacher education program. The program is based on an explicit view of good teaching and a theory of mathematics education. Reflective teaching was conceptualized accordingly. Four studies were carried out: an initial overall evaluation, a longitudinal study into developmental processes in student teachers, a study into correlates of reflectivity as measured with the aid of a questionnaire, and a quasi‐experimental study into the effects of the program. These studies reveal a number of critical attributes and correlates of reflectivity, thus offering building blocks for a theory in which empirically based relationships are established between good teaching, the concept of reflection and characteristics of reflective practitioners.