Toward educative communities: teacher education and the quest for the reflective practitioner

The current effort to reform teacher education around the aim of developing reflective teachers is unlikely to make a significant difference unless it is tied to a larger project that challenges the training orientation that dominates our understanding of teaching and schooling. The authors argue that the development of educative communities, based upon an ethic of caring and the establishment of dialogicalrelations, can serve as such an ideal. A discussion of this ideal is followed by two case studies that focus on ways that prcservice programs can link values and meaning to technical concerns, honor and examine what preservice teachers believe and know, and encourage the development of collegial relations.